Bible Commentaries

The banquet of wine; so it is called, to note that it was not designed for a feast to fill their bellies, but rather for a banquet to delight and please their palates with wine and other delicacies: See Poole "Esther 5:8".

It is my humble and only request, that thou wouldst not give me up to the malice of that man that designs to take away my life, and will certainly do it, if thou dost not prevent it.

And my people; and the lives (which is easily supplied out of the foregoing branch) of my people the Jews, of whom I am descended.

We are sold by the craft and cruelty of that man, who offered a great sum of money to purchase our destruction.

I and my people; for we are all given up to his malice and rage, without any exception of my own person.

To be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish: she useth variety of expressions to make the deeper impression upon the king’s mind.

I had held my tongue, because that calamity had neither been irrecoverable, nor intolerable, nor yet unprofitable to the king, for whose honour and service I should willingly have submitted myself and people to any kind of bondage.

The enemy could not countervail the king’s damage; his ten thousand talents, if paid into the king’s treasury, would not repair the king’s loss in the customs and tributes which the king receives from the Jews within his dominions.

Who is he? and

where is he? The expressions are short and doubled, as proceeding from a discomposed and enraged mind.

To do so, i.e. to circumvent me, and by subtlety to procure an irrevocable decree, whereby not only my estate should be so much impaired, and so many of my innocent subjects be destroyed without mercy, but my queen also should be involved in the same danger and destruction.

The adversary and enemy of the king, and of my person and people.

Went into the palace garden; partly, as disdaining the company and sight of so ungrateful and audacious a person; partly, to cool and allay his troubled and inflamed spirits; and partly, to consider within himself the heinousness of Haman’s crime, and the mischief which himself had done by his own rashness, and what punishment was fit to be inflicted upon so great a delinquent.

He saw, by the violent commotion of the king’s mind and passions.

Upon the bed; or, by or beside the bed; on which the queen sat at meat, after the manner; where he was fallen upon his knees, and upon the ground, at her feet, as humble suppliants used to do, and as the queen did at the king’s feet, Esther 8:3.

Will he force the queen also? will he now attempt my queen’s chastity, as he hath already attempted her life? His presumption and impudence I see will stick at nothing. He speaks not this out of a real jealousy, for which there was no cause in those circumstances; but from an exasperated mind, which takes all occasions to vent itself against the person who gave the provocation, and makes the worst construction of all His words and actions.

Before me in the house; in my own presence and palace.

They, i.e. the king’s and queen’s chamberlains then attending upon them, covered Haman’s face; partly that the king might not be offended or grieved with the sight of a person whom he now loathed; and partly because they looked upon him as a condemned person, for the faces of such used to be covered.

Harbonah knew this either by his own observation, or by the information of some of his brethren, who were lately sent to Haman’s house, Esther 6:14, where they might easily see it, or at least hear of it. And this he said, either out of a distaste which he had taken against Haman for his great insolency and barbarous cruelty; or in compliance with the king’s inclinations, and the queen’s desires.

Had spoken good for the king, even to the saving of the king’s life, Esther 2:21-23, and therefore deserved a better requital than this even from Haman, if he had not basely preferred the satisfaction of his own revenge before the preservation of the king’s life.

The gallows that he had prepared; which stood in his own house, as was now said, and made the punishment more grievous and ignominious.

Then was the king’s wrath pacified; judgment being now most justly executed upon this abominable criminal.