This Wicked Haman
1 So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. 2 The king said again to Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, “What is your petition, queen Esther? It shall be granted you. What is your request? Even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed.” 3 Then Esther the queen answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. 4 For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for male and female slaves, I would have held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the king’s loss.” 5 Then King Ahasuerus said to Esther the queen, “Who is he, and where is he who dared presume in his heart to do so?” 6 Esther said, “An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.
Esther finally asks, and she frames the request so that the king cannot grant it without discovering who she is.
The second banquet, and the offer is repeated for the third time: even to the half of the kingdom Esther 5:3 Esther 5:6.
This time she answers, and the order of her petition is the whole strategy. Let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. Her own life first — which is the disclosure. The king had no idea she was under any sentence, and the only way she could be is if she belongs to the people he condemned without asking their name Esther 3:11.
So the revelation of her identity is not announced; it is deduced from a request for her own survival. She never says I am a Jew. She makes it the only possible explanation for what she has just asked.
Verse 4 states the charge in the decree's own words — sold, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish — and then adds a comparison that puts the scale beyond commerce: had it been slavery, I would have held my peace. She would have accepted her people being sold. It is the killing she cannot let pass.
The king's question in verse 5 is genuine ignorance, and it is his indictment: who is he, and where is he? He sealed the thing with his own ring and does not know what it said.
Verse 6 gives the accusation in five words: an adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman. She names him in his presence, at her own table, having arranged for him to be there.
And the last clause is the reversal in miniature: then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.
settled What this mark means