Esther 7

₁The king and Haman went to Queen Esther to eat dinner. ₂While they were drinking wine on the 2nd day, the king said to Esther again: ‘Queen Esther, I will give you anything you ask. I will do what you want. Even if you ask me to give you half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.’

₃Queen Esther answered: ‘Your_Majesty, this is what I ask and what I want: If you love me and want to be good to me, then I ask that my people and I may live. ₄Because someone has sold us. He has sold me and my people. He wants to kill us all. He does not want any of us to live. If he had sold us to be slaves and slave women, I would have kept quiet and I would not have asked you for help.’

₅Then King Ahasuerus asked Queen Esther: ‘Who is it? Where is the person who made this plan?’ ₆And Esther said: ‘It is this bad man, Haman. He is our enemy.’

₇The king became very angry. He got up from the table and he went to the garden of the palace. Haman stayed there with the queen and he begged Esther to help save his life, because he saw that the king had decided to punish him. ₈When the king came back from the garden to the room, he saw Haman kneeling on the chair on which Esther was sitting and the king said: ‘Do you also want to rape the queen? Do you want to do it here in my palace?’

Then the king told his servants to cover Haman's face. ₉Harbona, one of the emasculated men, said: ‘There is a pole at Haman's house. He put the pole in the ground to hang Mordecai. The pole is 50 cubits high. But Mordecai was the man who saved the king's life when he told us that some of the officials wanted to kill the king.’ The king said: ‘You must hang Haman on the pole.’

₁₀They hanged Haman on the pole that he had put into the ground to hang Mordecai and the king did not feel angry anymore.