3Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared.

4For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king.”

5“Who would do such a thing?” King Xerxes demanded. “Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you?”

6Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen.

7Then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden.

8In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden.

9Then Harbona, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, “Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet7:9 Hebrew 50 cubits [23 meters]. tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination.”

10So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.