Esther 7:3

3. My life… my people Esther has had time to carefully prepare her words, and her earnest language rises to the emotionality of poetic parallelisms. We may throw her address into the following form:

If I have found favour in thine eyes,

O king, And if to the king it seem good,

Let my life be given me at my petition,

And my people at my request.

For we are sold

I and my people

To be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish.

If, now, for slaves and for bondwomen we were sold I had been silent,

For the enemy is not to be compared with the injury of the king.