3 Then Esther the queen answered, "If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Let my life be given me - This was very artfully, as well as very honestly, managed; and was highly calculated to work on the feelings of the king. What! is the life of the queen, whom I most tenderly love, in any kind of danger?
Then Esther the queen answered and said,.... Not rolling herself at the king's knees, as Severus (f) writes; but rather, as the former Targum, lifting up her eyes to heaven, and perhaps putting up a secret ejaculation for direction and success:
if I have found favour in thy sight, O king; as she certainly had heretofore, and even now:
and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition; not riches, nor honour, nor any place or post at court, or in any of the king's dominions for any friend of her's, was her petition; but for her own life, that that might not be taken away, which was included in the grant the king had made to Haman, though ignorantly, to slay all the Jews, she being one of them:
and my people at my request; that is, the lives of her people also, that was her request; her own life and her people's were all she had to ask.
(f) Hist. Sacr. l. 2.
My life - It is my only request, that thou wouldst not give me up to the malice of that man who designs to take away my life. Even a stranger, a criminal, shall be permitted to petition for his life. But that a friend, a wife, a queen, should have occasion to make such a petition, was very affecting.
*More commentary available at chapter level.