And the king returned from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine, as Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was. And the king said, “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the word left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman's face.
Haman's last act is a plea for his own life, made to the woman whose people he had wanted dead. The king walks back in, misreads the scene, and one sentence from the throne finishes his own favourite.
A king's wrath, and a plea that made things worse
The king had left the table in fury before this verse begins. That gave Haman his last minutes alone with the queen.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe king went into the garden in the heat of his anger. Great excitement had seized him and left him speechless. When an eastern king rises angry from his own table, there is no mercy for the one who caused it. Meanwhile Haman begs like a coward for his life. He must have fallen at her feet weeping and wailing. And Esther did not open her lips.
The worst possible reading
Haman's desperation left him in a position no man could survive. The charge of assaulting the queen is the king's own reading of what he saw.
William KellyWhen the king returns, he finds Haman in his agony, fallen on the couch where Esther was. The king is glad to read it in the worst way. His word goes out, and they cover Haman's face for immediate execution.
Guilty of something else entirely
Commentators agree the king's charge was a misreading. They also agree it changed nothing about Haman's guilt.
Leslie M. GrantThe king was no doubt mistaken in thinking that Haman meant to assault the queen. But that is how it looked to him. When he said so, the servants covered Haman's face (v. 8), because Haman had lost all right to see the light.
The covering of the face was not an insult invented on the spot. Gaebelein explains it as a Persian custom. Servants covered a criminal's face to show he was no longer fit to see the light. Darkness of death was now his lot.
Not one voice raised for him
The men who cover his face are the same court that had bowed to him hours earlier. Kelly sets that fickleness against the hand that is really at work.
William KellyWhen the favourite falls, no one speaks up to shield him — not even those who until then had bowed to him like slaves. In fact, the man they blamed for daring to refuse honour to Haman is now praised for his service to the king. Such is man, changeable as the wind, and not least so at court. But He who rules unseen carries out His righteous judgment wherever He sees fit, until the day when He will act directly and perfectly, through the One whose right it is, to the joy and peace of all the earth.
Trapped by his own device
The gallows Haman built becomes his own scaffold. Writers see that same reversal again and again in Scripture.
J. G. BellettHe is caught in his own trap. Mordecai receives the honour he had planned for himself, and he hangs on the gallows he had built for Mordecai... Daniel's accusers are thrown into the den they had prepared for him. The flames killed the men who lifted the captives to throw them into the furnace. The same is foretold of the adversaries and apostates of the last days: their own iniquity will be brought back on them. Satan himself, who has the power of death, is destroyed through death.
The larger picture
Some writers read the scene as a preview of a future judgment. In it Haman stands for the last great enemy of God's people.
H. L. RossierThis enemy is at last revealed as "the Adversary, the Enemy, the Wicked one". The Word gives those names to Satan and to the Antichrist. It is too late for him. Anguish seizes this man who had sought the death of the righteous, and whose folly had gone so far as to attack Israel's protector! The king's wrath is not calmed until Haman hangs on the gallows he had meant for Mordecai.
Summary
- Wrath — the king rose from his own table in fury. In that court, an angry king meant no mercy for the man who caused it.
- Refused — Haman begged Esther for his life, and she did not open her lips.
- Misread — commentators agree the king's charge about the queen was a mistake. Haman had still lost every claim on mercy.
- Covered — covering the face was the Persian sign of a condemned man, no longer fit to see the light. Not one courtier who had bowed to him spoke up for him.
- Trapped — the gallows he built became his own. The same pattern caught Daniel's accusers, and it ends with Satan, who has the power of death, destroyed through death.