Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request.
Esther has held her secret through two banquets, and now the king asks a third time what she wants. She asks for two things at once: her own life, and her people with it.
The moment chosen for her
One writer sees God's hand in the timing of this third asking:
William KellyFor the third time the king renews his desire to know and to grant the queen's petition. Something had made the king remember the deliverer he had forgotten. He did not forget, either, that Esther still had a deeply felt request. God's secret providence had ordered that moment, and it had now come. He alone can order anything rightly. And the queen unburdened her pent-up soul freely, in words most moving about her people, and most indignant about their enemy.
A queen begging for her life
One writer marks both the strangeness of the request and the force with which it struck the king:
William KellyWhat! had it come to this? the queen a beggar for her life! "Let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request." She had struck the right chord. All the king's affections burst out at the insult done to the one he loved above all in the kingdom. There was more. Someone had dared to plan the destruction of the queen and all her people, without even the king's knowledge.
Favour, not right
One writer traces her boldness to a promise the king had already made twice:
H. L. RossierWhatever may happen, she may have full confidence, because the king has confirmed the promise twice with his own mouth. And so she now becomes quite bold... The moment has come for the Jewish wife to reveal where she comes from, in front of the Gentile ruler whose favour she has won.
"My people" — the words that reveal her
One writer sees her taking her stand with the people of God at the moment the enemy seemed about to win:
H. L. RossierEsther reveals herself. She cannot let Haman carry the victory, so she proclaims her relationship with the people of God, whom she calls "my people". She does this in the presence of the sovereign ruler who is infinitely favourable toward her and who cherishes her.
Another writer points out that this phrase runs through the book:
Michael HardtThe Jews are described as "her people" (2:20; 4:8; 7:3). This detail does not apply to the church at all, but it casts much light on the true meaning. The fate of the whole people hinges on their representative, the faithful remnant, pictured in Esther. The fate of the Jewish people is central to the book.
Two listeners, two shocks
The same sentence lands on two listeners at once. The king learns that his wife is under sentence; Haman learns whose nation he has bought:
Leslie M. GrantWhat a surprise it would be to both the king and Haman that she asked the king to spare her and her people from total destruction! ... Haman, though, would realise, with astonishment of his own, that Esther must be a Jewess. He had plotted to destroy her nation.
What the request sets in motion
One writer reads the chapter as a picture of a later deliverance. On his reading, the enemy falls first, and the rescue of the people follows:
H. L. RossierHaman is judged before God steps in for the complete deliverance of His people. The Antichrist will be judged in that same order. But Esther — the remnant of Judah — is recognised in her royal dignity and as belonging to the people of God, before the Antichrist is cast down.
Summary
- Timing. The king asks a third time, right after remembering the deliverer he had forgotten. One writer calls this a moment ordered by God's secret providence.
- Ground. Esther asks nothing as a right. She asks on the ground of favour, and rests on a promise the king had already made twice.
- Reach. The petition is for her life; the request is for her people. She will not be saved on her own. She names them "my people" in front of the king.
- Weight. That one phrase runs through the book (2:20; 4:8; 7:3). In it one writer sees a whole nation's fate hanging on one representative.
- Result. Speaking exposes the enemy. On one writer's reading, the enemy falls first, and the rescue of the people follows.