Esther 3:9

that they be destroyed lit. to destroy them. Let an edict be issued for their destruction.

I will pay ten thousand talents of silver about £3,750,000 sterling. Xerxes, unscrupulous though we know him to have been, might well be staggered by the request that he should direct this wholesale massacre on such slender grounds as had hitherto been adduced. Hence Haman at once supports his petition by the offer of enormous pecuniary gains to follow, meaning apparently that he will pay the amount, if he has leave to plunder the Jews. The king at an earlier period of his reign had declined a gift from a subject, the value of which was much beyond four and a half million pounds of our money [69] (Herod. vii. 28). His resources, however, had not then been exhausted by the war with Greece. The condition of the imperial treasury was doubtless now very different, and if any such offer as Haman's was now made, so tempting a measure for replenishing it, and thus supplying Xerxes with the means of gratifying his love of ostentation and excess, might well prove irresistible.

[69] The offer was made by Pythius of Celaenae (see note on Esther 1:4) to Xerxes when visiting that town in connexion with his expedition against Greece. Rawlinson (Herod.vol. iv. 30) calculates the amount to have been "little short of five millions of our money (£4,827,144)." Grote, however (Hist. of Greece, Esther 3:36 note), considers the sum an incredible one.

those that have the charge of theking's business i.e. the royal treasurers. The A.V. -those that have the charge of the business" would rather suggest the business of the massacre. But the word -king's," though it is not indeed expressed, is implied in the Hebrew.