Esther 7:3, commentary and pictures

Esther's plea is a petition asking the king to spare her own life and the life of her people, placing their deliverance in his hands. The word rendered "life" is nephesh. It is addressed to the great Persian king Xerxes, called in the Bible Ahasuerus.

It was spoken at the banquet, the second feast Esther had prepared for the king and Haman, which furnished the proper occasion for the request. There, after the king again promised to grant her petition even to half the kingdom, she made her petition and request directly to the king in Haman's very presence, asking that her own life be given her and her people be given her. She asked this because she and her people had been sold to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish, adding that if they had only been sold for bondmen and bondwomen she would have held her tongue, although the enemy could not make up for the king's loss.

The timing was providentially prepared by the events of the preceding night to make the king decide the request rightly. Had she presented the petition the day before, before providence had prepared the way, a different decision might have been given, and the king very likely would have granted Haman's project to hang Mordecai if his attention had not first been providentially called to Mordecai's faithful service in saving his life. In God's providence a Jewish maiden had been brought to the throne of Persia at a time when the Amalekites, the wicked and sworn enemies of God's children, were in the favor of the king with Haman the prime minister at their head and Haman was plotting to destroy the Jews.

In the setting of Haman's plot to destroy God's people, the verse belongs to the account of God's overruling power thwarting the intended destruction and bringing about their salvation. God worked through Esther's appeal to bring deliverance from Haman's deadly decree, turning the nation's danger into hope and defeating Satan's malice with divine love. Her appeal was part of how she saved the nation from massacre, while Mordecai overcame Haman through wisdom.