Discovery BoxEsther 5:13-14 
Context5:13 Yet all of this fails to satisfy me so long as I have to see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”
5:14 Haman’s 1 wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows seventy-five feet 2 high built, and in the morning tell the king that Mordecai should be hanged on it. Then go with the king to the banquet contented.” 3
It seemed like a good idea to Haman, so he had the gallows built.
1 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Haman) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tn Heb “fifty cubits.” Assuming a standard length for the cubit of about 18 inches (45 cm), this would be about seventy-five feet (22.5 meters), which is a surprisingly tall height for the gallows. Perhaps the number assumes the gallows was built on a large supporting platform or a natural hill for visual effect, in which case the structure itself may have been considerably smaller. Cf. NCV “a seventy-five foot platform”; CEV “a tower built about seventy-five feet high.”
3 tn Or “joyful”; NRSV “in good spirits”; TEV “happy.”
