Esther 7

It’s unclear what the king presumes Haman is doing. The Hebrew word is kabas. It can mean to attack, molest, manipulate, among other possible meanings. Some people reading this story as fiction say they see some comedy here: the king thinks Haman is trying to make love to his wife—which would be an odd thing to do under the circumstances. Other students of the Bible say the king suspects an attempted rape. Or perhaps he simply things Haman is trying to manhandle or bully her into saving his life.

Twenty-three meters. That’s the height of a seven-story building, which was higher than Persian palaces.

The Hebrew word is tala. I can mean to hang or to impale or to expose to the elements of Mother Nature. Persians, like Assyrians and Babylonians before them, executed people in creatively painful and vicious ways. Impaling was especially popular and showed up in battlefield pictures displayed on Assyrian palace walls. Executioners sometimes impaled people through the bottom of the torso and sometimes through the stomach or the chest. Death usually followed quickly. A skilled executioner could sometimes impale a person in ways that produced a lingering death.