Esther 7:3

3 Ester the queen answered, "If I have won your favor, king, and if it pleases the king, then what I ask be given me is my own life and the lives of my people.

Esther 7:3 Meaning and Commentary

Esther 7:3

Then Esther the queen answered and said
Not rolling herself at the king's knees, as Severus ^F6 writes; but rather, as the former Targum, lifting up her eyes to heaven, and perhaps putting up a secret ejaculation for direction and success:

if I have found favour in thy sight, O king;
as she certainly had heretofore, and even now:

and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition;
not riches, nor honour, nor any place or post at court, or in any of the king's dominions for any friend of her's, was her petition; but for her own life, that that might not be taken away, which was included in the grant the king had made to Haman, though ignorantly, to slay all the Jews, she being one of them:

and my people at my request;
that is, the lives of her people also, that was her request; her own life and her people's were all she had to ask.

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FOOTNOTES:

F6 Hist. Sacr. l. 2.

Esther 7:3 In-Context

1 So the king and Haman went to Queen Ester's banquet;

2 and the king again said to Ester at the wine banquet, "Whatever your request, Queen Ester, you will be granted it; whatever you want, up to half the kingdom, it will be done."

3 Ester the queen answered, "If I have won your favor, king, and if it pleases the king, then what I ask be given me is my own life and the lives of my people.

4 For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, killed, exterminated. If we had only been sold as men- and women-slaves, I would have remained quiet; since then [our] trouble would not have been worth the damage it would have caused the king [to alter the situation]."

5 King Achashverosh asked Ester the queen, "Who is he? Where is the man who dared to do such a thing?"