Bible Commentary - Esther 7

In this chapter, Esther finally makes her petition to the king, resulting in Haman’s death.

This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for; Esther finally works up the courage to ask for her people’s lives, and things instantly get bad for Haman when Esther accuses him of constructing the order to kill her people (which is true).  The king is so mad that he can’t even deal with it and he runs off to the garden to… swear at the trees or something like that.

One thing that’s kind of funny about the king’s anger is that the king approved the edict.  Although it was Haman’s idea, one could reasonably say that the king had more responsibility for it because he was the authority who issued the command.  But Esther blames Haman, and the king also blames Haman.  Obviously Esther can’t blame the king because the king is the person she is petitioning for help.  Still, I would include this as another piece of evidence that the king is easily malleable and controlled by others, because not a single person in this scene thinks that the king is responsible for the edict that he issued against the Jews, because it’s so obviously Haman’s fault that the king couldn’t possibly be responsible here.

Haman sees that he has only one chance left to save his life, and that’s to convince the queen to convince the king to not kill him.  Haman “falls on Esther’s couch” (v. 8), which we can imagine him grabbing her leg or arm or something as he pleads for his life.  The king is obviously not impressed because touching the queen would be a violation of standard decorum.

Conveniently, at that very moment one of the eunuchs (Harbonah) helpfully points out that Haman had constructed gallows at his house for the purpose of killing Mordecai, “who spoke good on behalf of the king”.  I think it’s unlikely that this is the very moment the eunuch learned about the gallows, but Harbonah chooses this moment to point out that a method of execution has already been prepared, you know, just in case the king should decide that some person may need to die.

This moment is the culmination of both Haman’s plots against the Jews: first, his decree to wipe out all the Jews, and second, the gallows he built to murder Mordecai in particular.  I personally think it’s clear that Haman was finished from the moment in Esther 5:2 when the king received Esther favorably and more or less promised to give her whatever she asked for.

Even more generally, Haman was in a very dangerous position when he sought to kill the Jews because Esther was secretly a Jew, and Esther could reasonably convince the king that Haman’s actions against her constituted some kind of treason.  Haman taking action against Mordecai (who was honored by the king earlier in that same day) helped to assure the outcome, but the situation was clearly working against him.

This is the fifth feast, and it marks the end of nearly all the conflict in the book.  The remainder of the book is wrapping up loose ends and the conclusion.

In the next chapter, Mordecai is given permission by the king to revoke the earlier decree and issue a new decree on behalf of the Jews.