Esther 8:6

6 For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”

Esther 8:6 in Other Translations

6 For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?

6 For how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?"

6 For how can I endure to see my people and my family slaughtered and destroyed?”

6 How can I stand to see this catastrophe wipe out my people? How can I bear to stand by and watch the massacre of my own relatives?"

6 For how could I bear to see the evil that would come on my people? How could I bear to see the destruction of my relatives?"

Esther 8:6 Meaning and Commentary

Esther 8:6

For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my
people?
&c.] I cannot bear it; it will break my heart; I shall die to see all my people massacred throughout the realm; the thought of it is shocking and shuddering; to see it, intolerable: or "how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?" the same thing in different words, and somewhat more express and explanative. She explains the evil coming upon her people of the utter destruction of them, not barely an oppression, but an extermination of them; and she makes use of a word expressive of their relation to her, as more endearing, being her kindred; she and they being, as it were, of the same family, and with whom she could not but sympathize in distress.

Esther 8:6 In-Context

4 Then the king extended the gold scepter to Esther and she arose and stood before him.

5 “If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if he regards me with favor and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches that Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, devised and wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces.

6 For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”

7 King Xerxes replied to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, “Because Haman attacked the Jews, I have given his estate to Esther, and they have impaled him on the pole he set up.

8 Now write another decree in the king’s name in behalf of the Jews as seems best to you, and seal it with the king’s signet ring—for no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked.”

Cross References

• 1. Genesis 44:34; Esther 7:4; Esther 9:1