The Unspoken Request

On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and went to stand in the inner court of the palace, across from the king’s hall. The king sat on his throne, facing the entrance. When he saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she found favor in his sight, and he held out to her the golden scepter in his hand.

Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter.

Then the king spoke to her. “What is it, Queen Esther?” he asked. “What is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it will be given to you.”

Half the kingdom. It was the kind of promise a king could make when a queen had risked her life simply to stand in a doorway. Whatever weighed on her, whatever had driven her to break the law to reach him, he was ready to hear it and to grant it.

But Esther did not ask for what she had come to ask. Not yet.

“If it pleases the king,” she answered, “may the king and Haman come today to the banquet I have prepared for him.”

A banquet. That was all. The king gave the order at once. “Hurry and get Haman,” he said, “so we can do as Esther has asked.” And so the king went, and Haman with him, to the banquet Esther had made ready.

As they reclined over the wine, the king asked again, because a request like Esther's was not one he intended to leave unmet. “What is your petition? It will be granted. And what is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it will be fulfilled.”

Once more the promise was laid before her, whole and open. And once more Esther held her request back.

“My petition and my request,” she said, “is this: If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and fulfill my request, may the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet I will prepare for them. Then I will answer the king's question.”

Tomorrow. Another table, another day, and then she would speak. The king agreed, and Haman rose from that banquet a man lifted high.

He went out that day joyful and glad of heart. He had dined with the king and queen; he had been asked back again, alone among all the officials, to a second banquet the next day. No man in the empire stood where Haman stood. And then, on his way home, he saw Mordecai at the king's gate.

Mordecai did not rise. Mordecai did not tremble before him. He gave Haman nothing—no fear, no honor, not so much as a movement to acknowledge him. And Haman was filled with rage.

Still, he restrained himself and went on home. Once inside, he sent for his friends and for Zeresh his wife, and he gathered them to listen while he recounted everything that made him great. He told them of the splendor of his riches, of his many sons, of every way the king had promoted him and lifted him above the other officials and servants of the court.

“What is more,” Haman said, “Queen Esther invited no one but me to accompany the king to the banquet she prepared. And tomorrow I am again invited by her, along with the king.” Then his voice changed. “Yet none of this satisfies me,” he went on, “as long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.”

Every honor he possessed, and one unbowed man in a gate had swallowed all of it.

His wife Zeresh and all his friends had an answer for him. Let a gallows be built, they told him—fifty cubits high, tall enough to be seen across the city. In the morning he could ask the king to have Mordecai hanged upon it. Then Haman could go to the banquet with the king, glad and unburdened, the offense in the gate finally removed.

The plan pleased Haman. He gave the word, and the gallows was built fifty cubits high, waiting for the man who would not bow.