Esther 3:9 - Exposition

If it please the king, lot it be written that they may be destroyed, and I will pay , etc. This startling proposition, to which the king might well have demurred, for even Xerxes could scarcely have regarded such a massacre as a light matter, is followed immediately, and before the king has time to reflect, by the tempting offer of such a bribe as even a king could not view with indifference. Xerxes had once, if we may trust Herodotus, declined to accept from a subject a gift of money equal to about four and a half million of pounds sterling (Herod; 7:28); but this was early in his reign, when his treasury was full, and he had not exhausted his resources by the Greek war. Now, in his comparative poverty, a gift of from two to three millions had attractions for him which proved irresistible . To the hands of those that have the charge of the business . Not the business of the slaughter, but the business of receiving money for the king, i.e. the royal treasurers. To bring it . i.e. " for them to bring it," or pay it, "into the royal treasuries." On the multiplicity of the royal treasuries see the comment on Ezra 7:20 .