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We have here -

1. A most serious crisis. "So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen" (ver. 1). The culminating point in this great issue is now reached. The lives of the chosen people of God throughout all Persia, in all her provinces, hang on this interview between an arbitrary sovereign, his wife, and his minister. Except the wife shall prevail over the crafty and all-powerful statesman, the race must die by one cruel blow.

2. A powerful plea. At the king's invitation (ver. 2) the queen makes her appeal in simple but forcible language. She appealed

(1) to his affection for herself: "Let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request" (ver. 3);

(2) to his pity for a suffering people: "We are sold," and sold not even to bitter bondage, but "to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish" (ver. 4);

(3) to his sense of what was politic: the loss of so many subjects would be greatly to "the king's damage" (ver. 4).

3. A great deliverance (vers. 5, 6). Having readily consented to the slaughter of thousands of his subjects, the king with equal readiness consents to their lives being spared. He appears to have been shocked at the idea of what was contemplated; but he had not reckoned on the sanguinary decree including his own wife in its evil range. We learn -

I. THE MYSTERIOUSNESS OF GOD'S GOVERNMENT. Why the Divine Ruler should allow his Church to come into such terrible danger, barely escaping from utter destruction; why he should sometimes permit such fearful atrocities to be inflicted, not interposing, as here, to save them, but allowing the beheadings, burnings, burials alive, imprisonments, etc. on which so many skies have looked down in different centuries; why he should allow a Haman of ancient times, or an Alva or Claverhouse of more recent times, to wreak such cruelties on the people of God, and why he should choose such instruments to avert and overthrow as one woman's beauty - this we cannot tell. God does and suffers many things which we do not understand. He declines to interpose when we should have confidently expected his aid. The truth is that he is too high and too great, and we are too low and too small to understand him. "His way is in the sea, his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known." "His ways are past finding out." We are but very little children before him, and must wait awhile; we shall understand hereafter what we know not now (John 13:7).

II. THE GOOD WORK THAT ONE WEAK VOICE MAY DO. Little did Esther think, when she was first accepted as queen, that she would do a good work for her race which should never be forgotten. But the hour came for her to make a great attempt; she made it, and succeeded. Her success was due to her courage and her charms and her address. But these were the outcome of a life of virtue and piety. By the exercise of these she had "bought up the opportunity" (redeemed the time), and "when the occasion came she was equal to the occasion." Wisely use the present, and when the hour of opportunity comes you will be ready to speak, to strike, to suffer, or to save.

III. THE UNENVIABLENESS OF RANK AND POWER WITHOUT WISDOM. Judging from the notion of mere worldliness, we should say that Abasuerus occupied the most enviable position in Persia. As king of that great empire, he held in his hand all that men usually desire. But judging from a distance, impartially, and in the light of God's truth, how little should we care to be such as he was. How unlovely the haste and passion of the man. Hungrily seizing the opportunity of reimbursing his treasury, he makes a decree which would have the effect of slaughtering a race, of ultimately weakening his resources, and of taking the life of his own queen. Happily, but accidentally, in the right mood when the chance is given him of retrieving his error, he turns with characteristic passion and precipitancy on his favourite minister, and wreaks vengeance on his head. Moral littleness in high places is very pitiable.

IV. THE UNSUSPECTED RANGE OF OUR ACTIONS IN THEIR EFFECTS. How amazed was Ahasuerus to find that in striking at the Jews he was aiming a blow at his own wife, and so at himself. All our actions, good and bad, stretch further and come closer home than we realise at the time when we do them. - C.

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KJV: So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.

WEB: So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.