If I have found favour in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my petition, and to perform my request, let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do to morrow as the king hath said.

Ver. 8. If I have found favour in the sight of the king] As she had, not so much by her beauty and bravery (wherein Vashti perhaps might easily have compared with her), but by the finger of God, who tames for his elect the fiercest creatures (as he did the lions to Daniel, and other savage beasts to the martyrs, whom they would not meddle with), and turneth the king's heart, as the rivers of water, into what channel soever he pleaseth to put it, Proverbs 21:1, as the ploughman doth the watercourse with his paddle, or the gardener with his hand.

And if it please the king] See Esther 5:4, and submit to God, James 4:7 .

And I will do tomorrow as the king hath said] She had learned to prefer opportunity before time. There might be some by at this first banquet whose company she liked not; or she might not yet have so clear an answer in her own heart to her former prayers, and therefore desireth some further time that night to seek God: whatever the reason of her putting it off till next day was, God's holy hand was in it, that Mordecai might be first so greatly honoured, and Haman's high gallows prepared: Ilium utique magis securum, Regem autem magis benevolum magisque fecit attentum, saith Rupertus. Hereby she made Haman more secure, and the king more kind and attentive.

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