Esther 7:3

3 Queen Esther answered, "If I have found favor in your eyes, O King, and if it please the king, give me my life, and give my people their lives.

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.


FOOTNOTES:

F6 Hist. Sacr. l. 2.

Esther 7:3 In-Context

1 So the king and Haman went to dinner with Queen Esther.
2 At this second dinner, while they were drinking wine the king again asked, "Queen Esther, what would you like? Half of my kingdom! Just ask and it's yours."
3 Queen Esther answered, "If I have found favor in your eyes, O King, and if it please the king, give me my life, and give my people their lives.
4 "We've been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed - sold to be massacred, eliminated. If we had just been sold off into slavery, I wouldn't even have brought it up; our troubles wouldn't have been worth bothering the king over."
5 King Xerxes exploded, "Who? Where is he? This is monstrous!"
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.