Esther 7 Study Notes

7:1-10 Up to this point two intertwined conflicts have remained unresolved: the primary conflict, the threat of extinction of the Jews because of Haman’s royal edict; and the secondary conflict, the personal struggle between Mordecai and Haman. The national threat is not resolved until chap. 9. This short chapter concludes the confrontation between Haman and Mordecai with poetic justice.

7:1-2 King Ahasuerus did not literally expect Esther to ask for half the kingdom, but her delayed answer must have convinced him that she had a well-thought-out, significant request.

7:3-4 Esther’s request was direct and to the point: spare her life and spare her people. Esther continued with a carefully nuanced assertion: For my people and I have been sold. She could hardly charge her husband directly (“You sold me out”), but she couched it in an indefinite passive voice (“have been sold out,” Hb nimkarnu). Esther had not told the king she was Jewish, and she did not identify “her people.” But as she continued her plea, the king was given a clue: they had been sold out to destruction, death, and extermination, a direct quote from the edict crafted by Haman and authorized by her husband (3:13).

7:5-6 Both Ahasuerus’s questions and Esther’s reply reflect the intensity of their emotions. The term terrified (Hb niv‘at) is the same word used to describe King David’s terror when he was confronted by the angel of the Lord with a sword in his hand at Araunah’s threshing floor (1Ch 21:30), and to portray Daniel’s intense fear when the angel Gabriel approached him (Dn 8:17).

7:7 For the first time in the book of Esther the king had to make crucial decisions without his counselors. Suddenly he was forced to choose between his prime minister and his wife. But if he deposed Haman for threatening his wife and her people, would not Haman counter by revealing that the king himself had approved of the plan? While the king struggled with his decisions in the garden, Haman stayed back with Esther to beg (Hb lebaqqesh) for his life. Before, it was Esther (v. 3) who had sought (“desire,” Hb baqqashah) to be spared, but now the tables were turned.

7:8 If the king was still undecided about Haman’s fate as he returned from the garden, his decision was made certain as he caught Haman fawning over the queen. Court documents from the Assyrian period state that a man must not come closer than seven steps to one of the women in the palace (D. J. A. Clines). The Jewish Targums of Esther (Aramaic paraphrase of the Hb texts) state that Haman was falling on the couch because the angel Gabriel gave him a shove!

The author of the story skillfully used the concept of falling (Hb naphal). Haman was furious at Mordecai because he would not bow down to him (3:1-4). This resulted in the casting (Hb naphal) of the Pur to set the date for the extermination of the Jews (3:7). Then Haman’s wife and friends warned him that “since Mordecai is Jewish, and you have begun to fall (Hb naphal) before him, you won’t overcome him, because your downfall (Hb naphal) is certain” (6:13). Only hours later Haman was falling (Hb naphal) on Esther’s couch. With this final fall his fate was sealed.

7:9-10 The irony demonstrated in these verses is stated proverbially in Pr 26:27 and Mt 26:52.