Esther

7 and hurried Haman to the banquet Esther had got up, and the king and Haman went in to drink with Queen Esther.

2* And again on the second day the king said to Esther over the wine “What have you to ask for, Queen Esther? it shall be given you; what is the boon you want? up to half the empire, it shall be done.”

3* And Queen Esther answered “If I am in favor with the king and if the king thinks best, let me be given my life as the thing I ask for and my people as the boon I want; for we have been sold, I and my people, to be killed, destroyed, rooted out. 4 And if it were that we had been sold for slaves I would have kept silence because the suffering would not have been worth troubling the king about.”

5* And King Xerxes said to Queen Esther “Who is this, and where is he, whose heart has excited him to do such a thing?”

6 And Esther said “A hostile and malicious man—this wretch Haman.” And Haman was dazed with fright before the king and the queen.

7 And the king in the heat of his temper got up from the wine-table into the palace garden, while Haman stood to beg Queen Esther for his life, because he saw that he was in for trouble from the king. 8 And the king came back from the palace garden to the banquet house, and Haman had thrown himself down on the couch Esther was on; and the king said “Even forcing the queen in the house with me?” and as the words came out of the king’s mouth they muffled Haman’s face. 9* And Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, said before the king “Besides, there at Haman’s house stands the seventy-feet-high stake Haman made for Mordocai who spoke out for the king’s good.” And the king said “Impale him on it”; 10 and they impaled Haman on the stake he had got ready for Mordocai, and the king’s temper went down.