Esther Pleads for Her People
And the king and Haman came to drink with Esther the queen.
And the king said to Esther on the second day too, at the feast of wine, “What is your petition, Esther the queen? And it shall be given you. And what is your request? To half the kingdom — and it shall be done.”
And Esther the queen answered and said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, O king, and if it is good to the king: let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.
For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. And if we had been sold for male slaves and female slaves, I would have kept silent — for the adversary is not worth the king’s loss.”
And King Ahasuerus said, and said to Esther the queen, “Who is he, and where is he, whose heart has filled him to do so?”
And Esther said, “A man, an adversary and an enemy — this evil Haman!” And Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
The Hanging of Haman
And the king rose in his wrath from the feast of wine to the garden of the pavilion; and Haman stood up to seek for his life from Esther the queen, for he saw that evil was determined against him from the king.
And the king returned from the garden of the pavilion to the house of the feast of wine, and Haman was fallen on the couch on which Esther was. And the king said, “Will he even force the queen, with me in the house?” The word went out of the king’s mouth, and they covered Haman’s face.
And Harbona, one of the eunuchs before the king, said, “Look — the tree that Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good for the king, is standing at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on it.”
And they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai; and the king’s wrath subsided.