Discovery BoxEsther 5:8 
Context5:8 If I have found favor in the king’s sight and if the king is inclined 1 to grant my request and perform my petition, let the king and Haman come tomorrow to the banquet that I will prepare for them. At that time 2 I will do as the king wishes. 3
Esther 5:12-14
Context5:12 Haman said, “Furthermore, Queen Esther invited 4 only me to accompany the king to the banquet that she prepared! And also tomorrow I am invited 5 along with the king. 5:13 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 6 wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows seventy-five feet 7 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.” 8
It seemed like a good idea to Haman, so he had the gallows built.
1 tn Heb “if upon the king it is good.” Cf. the similar expression in v. 4, which also occurs in 7:3; 8:5; 9:13.
2 tn Heb “and tomorrow” (so NASB); NAB, NRSV “and then.”
3 tn Heb “I will do according to the word of the king,” i.e., answer the question that he has posed. Cf. NCV “Then I will answer your question about what I want.”
4 tn Heb “caused to come”; KJV “did let no man come in…but myself.”
5 tn Heb “called to her”; KJV “invited unto her”; NAB “I am to be her guest.”
6 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Haman) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
7 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.”
8 tn Or “joyful”; NRSV “in good spirits”; TEV “happy.”
