Haman Executed

7 So the king and Haman entered to feast and drink with Queen Esther. ² The king repeated to Esther what he had said on the previous day while drinking wine, “For what are you asking, Queen Esther? It shall be granted to you. Now, what is your request? Even if it is half of the kingdom, it will be done!”

³ Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, at my petition, let my life be given me, and my people at my request. ⁴ For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated. If only we had been sold as male and female slaves, I could have kept quiet, for that distress would not be sufficient to trouble the king.”

⁵ Then King Ahasuerus answered and demanded of Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who would dare presume in his heart to do so?”

⁶ Esther said, “This wicked Haman is the adversary and enemy!”

Then Haman was seized with terror before the king and the queen. ⁷ And the king arose from the banquet of wine in his wrath and went into the palace garden. But Haman remained to plead for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm was determined against him by the king.

⁸ Now the king returned from the palace garden back to the hall of the banquet as Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was.

Then the king said, “Will he also violate the queen while I am in the room?”

As the shout erupted from the king’s mouth, they covered the face of Haman. ⁹ Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in the king’s presence, said, “The gallows, fifty cubits^[a] high, which Haman had constructed for Mordecai (who had spoken good on behalf of the king), stands at the house of Haman.”

¹⁰ Then the king said, “Hang him on it!” So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the king’s wrath was pacified.