14 While they were still talking together, some of the royal guardians arrived to bring Haman quickly to the banquet that Esther had had prepared.

7 So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet. 2 While they were drinking wine at that second banquet, the king asked Esther again, “Now please tell me what you really want, Queen Esther. Tell me, and I’ll do it for you—I’ll give you anything you ask for, no matter what it is.”

3 “Your majesty,” Queen Esther replied, “if you are pleased with me, I hope you’ll be willing to do what I ask. Please allow me to live, and please save my people. That is what I am asking for 4 because someone has turned me and my people over to our enemies and they’re going to completely destroy us. If someone had just sold the men and even the women to be slaves, I wouldn’t have said anything, because that wouldn’t have been important enough to bother your majesty with.”

5 “Who has done this?” King Ahasuerus asked her. “Where is the man who has dared to do such a thing?”

6 “The man who is our bitter enemy is this evil man Haman!” answered Esther.

By this time, Haman was terrified standing there in front of the king and the queen. 7 Now the king became so angry that he got up and abandoned his wine-drinking at the banquet and went outside into the palace garden. But Haman stayed inside to beg his life from Queen Esther because he recognized that the king wanted to execute him. 8 As he was pleading for his life, Haman knelt down very close to Esther as she was reclining on a couch. When the king returned from the palace garden to the room where they had been drinking wine, he saw this and exclaimed, “Now he’s even trying to rape the queen in my presence and in my own house!”

As soon as the king said this, some of his servants covered Haman’s face (as a sign that he would be executed). 9 Then Harbona, who was one of the guardians who served the king personally, said, “Your majesty, Haman has also set up a pole twenty-five metres high at his house because he wants to hang Mordekai on it. But Mordekai saved your life.”

“Execute Haman on it!” the king commanded.

10 So they impaled Haman on the pole that he had set up for Mordekai, and then the king’s anger dissipated.