Esther 7:4
For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage.
The verse belongs to the history of the Jews under Medo-Persian rule, under the great Persian king Xerxes called Ahasuerus, when in God's providence a Jewish maiden was brought to the throne of Persia. At that time the Amalekites, the wicked and sworn enemies of God's children, were in the king's favor with Haman the prime minister at their head, and Haman plotted to destroy the Jews. Esther and her people were sold under the king's decree and Haman's decree to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish, condemned to destruction, slaughter, and death; the threat was not merely enslavement but the destruction of all God's people.
The word countervail means recompense: Esther says if they had been sold only for bondmen and bondwomen into servitude or slavery, she would have held her tongue and remained silent, although the enemy could not make up for the resulting damage and loss to the king. The verse is Esther's request to Ahasuerus at her second feast that her own life and the life of her people be spared. Esther acted with wisdom in choosing the occasion, for the second feast was the proper time, and the events of the preceding night, when the king was led to remember Mordecai's faithful service, prepared him to decide in her favor; if she had petitioned the day before, before the way was prepared, the decision might have been different and Haman's plan to hang Mordecai would very likely have been granted, and by that wisdom she sought to save her people from Haman's planned massacre.
The planned slaughter was an attempt to destroy the people through whom the promised Man-child would come, and their danger was a time of darkness. Esther's appeal exposed the danger, and by God's overruling providence and power the plot was frustrated and overruled, His people were saved, and He brought deliverance through Esther, defeating the malice aimed against them. The destruction facing Esther's people under the enemy's decree parallels the later attempt by Antiochus to extirpate the Jews, while the deaths of the martyrs show steadfastness under persecution.