Hey, this is a year in the Bible with Daily Grace. We're going to wrap up the book of Esther today. We hope that you're enjoying this book that you're learning something. Wherever you're listening or watching, maybe leave us a comment. Let us know what you've enjoyed about this book. We would love to hear from you. So, Scott, we're going to talk through chapter 7 through 10 today. We're going to finish up this entire book. What's going on in these chapters? I'm sad to leave Esther. This is a great book. Short, but so, so great. All right, so a couple things to remember from the chapters we looked at yesterday. The first thing was that Esther had invited Haman and the king to a second banquet

where she said she would make her request to the king. Second thing to remember is Haman had

constructed these gallows to impale Mordecai on, which we were talking before we recorded

just about how ludicrously tall these gallows were. very imposing. And we get that second and bake

what early on in chapter seven. It's here that Esther calls out Haman and his plan to exterminate

the Jews. Now, back in chapter three, Haman had not mentioned that he wanted to kill the Jews.

He kind of just made this vague comment about a certain ethnic group that he wanted to get rid of. And the king just

kind of signed off on it without doing any further investigation. But Esther reveals at last,

the plan was to kill the Jews in that she, his beloved queen, is a Jew as well. And so the king is

enraged. This is a plan he signed off on, though. So he can't just

like, his hands seem to be tied. And so he leaves the scene. I don't know if to cool off or

what the deal was, but Haman stays behind with Esther alone, which would have been illegal. And that's

just kind of all the justification the king needs to punish Haman. And so he impales Haman on the

very gallows that Haman had set up for Mordecai.

Irony, dramatic reversals, it's a good story telling.

Yeah, absolutely.

That just still doesn't solve the problem, though, of this decree to exterminate the Jews.

But the king can't just cancel this order. He sign off on this, so instead

he does a follow-up decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves, which they do very valiantly.

I love this comment at the start of chapter 9 that on the day when the Jews' enemies had hoped

to overpower them, just the opposite happened. The Jews overpowered those who hated them.

That's so cool.

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