7:3 Queen Esther replied, “If I have met with your approval, 1 O king, and if the king is so inclined, grant me my life as my request, and my people as my petition. 7:4 For we have been sold 2 – both I and my people – to destruction and to slaughter and to annihilation! If we had simply been sold as male and female slaves, I would have remained silent, for such distress would not have been sufficient for troubling the king.”
2:3 I replied to the king, “O king, live forever! Why would I not appear dejected when the city with the graves of my ancestors 4 lies desolate and its gates destroyed 5 by fire?” 2:4 The king responded, 6 “What is it you are seeking?” Then I quickly prayed to the God of heaven 2:5 and said to the king, “If the king is so inclined 7 and if your servant has found favor in your sight, dispatch me to Judah, to the city with the graves of my ancestors, so that I can rebuild it.”
21:1 The king’s heart 8 is in the hand 9 of the Lord like channels of water; 10
he turns it wherever he wants.
1 tn Heb “If I have found grace in your eyes” (so also in 8:5); TEV “If it please Your Majesty.”
2 sn The passive verb (“have been sold”) is noncommittal and nonaccusatory with regard to the king’s role in the decision to annihilate the Jews.
3 tn Heb “my kindred” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV); NAB “my race”; NIV “my family”; NLT “my people and my family.”
4 tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 5).
5 tn Heb “devoured” or “eaten” (so also in Neh 2:13).
6 tn Heb “said to me.”
7 tn Heb “If upon the king it is good.” So also in v. 7.
8 sn “Heart” is a metonymy of subject; it signifies the ability to make decisions, if not the decisions themselves.
9 sn “Hand” in this passage is a personification; the word is frequently used idiomatically for “power,” and that is the sense intended here.
10 tn “Channels of water” (פַּלְגֵי, palge) is an adverbial accusative, functioning as a figure of comparison – “like channels of water.” Cf. NAB “Like a stream”; NIV “watercourse”; NRSV, NLT “a stream of water.”