Глава 7

1–6. Esther's Second Feast: Presentation of a Request. 7–10. Haman's conviction and execution. Esther 7:4. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, killed and destroyed. If we had been sold as male and female slaves, I would have remained silent, although the enemy would not have compensated the king for the damage. “Although the enemy would not compensate for the damage to the king” is another betrayal of the original’s thought: “but our enemy did not compensate for the damage to the king,” i.e. the damage that should follow from the death of so many subjects. And this, and the main thing is that her people were sold not into slavery, but for complete destruction, forces Esther not to “keep silent”, but to speak in defense of the innocent, with whom she is doomed to perish, and to satisfy whose request the king just promised not to spare even half of his kingdom. Esther 7:5. And King Artaxerxes answered and said to Queen Esther: Who is this, and where is he who dared in his heart to do this? Esther's apparently clear hint would not have allowed for the possibility of that surprised and blissful ignorance in which the king inquired about further details of Esther's message. Does he not remember (perhaps the bloody order was torn from him in his drunkenness), or did he not want to suspect his connection with Esther, only he, in any case, at the first name of Esther’s “enemy” involved here, considers it necessary to inquire: “who is this, and where is the one who dared” to do this? Esther 7:6. And Esther said: the enemy and adversary is this evil Haman! And Haman trembled before the king and queen. Esther 7:7. And the king got up in his anger from the feast and went into the garden of the palace; Haman remained to beg Queen Esther for his life, for he saw that an evil fate had been determined for him by the king. Esther’s sharp and bold reference to Haman seems to be not at all too unexpected for the king, a startling discovery for him, and easily produces the desired revolution in his opinion and attitude towards his recent favorite. This once again seems to confirm the guess that the king’s disappointment in Haman began a little earlier, prepared in other ways and making such a delicate and risky matter easier for Esther. Esther 7:8. When the king returned from the garden at the palace to the feast house, Haman was crouched on the bed on which Esther was. And the king said: he even wants to rape the queen in my house! The word came out of the king’s mouth, and they covered Haman’s face. At the moment of the king's return to the palace from the garden, where he had gone to calm down from his angry excitement, Haman overflowed the cup of the king's anger. While begging the queen for life, he discovered a careless, insufficiently respectful proximity to her bed (“Haman was crouched on the bed”) and this, being noticed by the king, finally ruined him and decided his fate. “I’m even ready to rape the queen in my house!” - an undoubted ironic hyperbole, inspired by the strong angry mood of the king and, of course, did not have an exact correspondence with reality: neither Haman, nor Esther, nor everything that surrounded and happened in the least was such that anything similar could have been possible. “They covered Haman’s face” - as a sign that, having fallen out of favor, he could no longer see the king with his own eyes. Esther 7:9. And Harbonah, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, “Behold, the tree that Haman prepared for Mordecai, who spoke good things for the king, stands by the house of Haman, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, hang him on him. “For Mordecai, who spoke good things for the king” – i.e. who rendered a service to the king by famously preventing the conspiracy. Esther 7:10. And they hanged Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai. And the king’s anger subsided. A quick solution to Haman’s fate can hardly be allowed and recognized as natural without assuming, as mentioned above, that the king’s disappointment in Haman had already begun. You might be interested in: