Esther 7 - Haman's End

Esther 7 - Haman's End

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A. The second banquet

1. (1-4) Esther finally makes her request: please spare my life!

a. Esther, even when she finally makes her request, shows great tact - she does not immediately identify herself as a Jew, targeted for destruction - even as Haman hid the identity of the group he targeted when he made his request (3:8)

b. Esther also shows wisdom in how she frames her request; she appeals on a personal basis (let my life be given me at my petition), knowing that she has never done anything but please the king

2. (5) The king's reaction: who is this wicked man?

a. Ahasuerus perhaps should have known that it was actually he himself who authorized such a plan; he was the one who gave authorization to Haman to carry out this plot (3:10-11), though he did it in ignorance

3. (6) Esther identifies the guilty party: Haman!

a. Esther exposes the truth about Haman - he is not a faithful servant of the king, he is an adversary and enemy, more interested in his own fame and status than the benefit of the king

b. Haman never imagined that Esther was a Jew; now he stands before the king being rightly accused of plotting the murder of the king's wife

c. Now the wisdom of Esther's strange request to invite Haman to these banquets can be seen; it maximizes the impact upon both the king and Haman himself

B. Haman's wretched end

1. (7-8) Haman's doom is sealed

a. The king is filled with wrath; probably because he now realizes that Haman had played him for a dupe in getting this decree to kill the Jews in effect

b. For all of Haman's pleading, he only gets himself into deeper trouble - now he is accused of personally assaulting Esther!

i. A Jewish writing says that the angel Gabriel pushed Haman so he fell on Esther's couch just as king Ahasuerus was coming back into the room

c. Haman's head is covered as a preparation for execution

2. (9-10) The execution of Haman

a. As in the case of the people executed in 2:23, Haman was probably not hanged with a rope around his neck; he was impaled on a huge stake in an ancient precursor of crucifixion

b. Haman finds his end on the same instrument he had intended for the end of Mordecai; he is caught in his own web

i. God often works this way; and we should pray as the Psalmist did: Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity; Yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood. He made a pit and dug it out, And has fallen into the ditch which he made. His trouble shall return upon his own head, And his violent dealing shall come down on his own crown. (Psalms 7:14-16)

ii. Perhaps the greatest example of this was when Satan thought that he won by getting the crowd to crucify Jesus, but the cross turned out to be the instrument of his defeat

c. In the case of Mordecai and Haman, it was the guilty dying in the place of the innocent; in the case of us and Jesus, it is a matter of the innocent dying in the place of guilty