7:4a

have been sold out: This could refer to the money Haman offered to the king (see note on 3:9b) or as a way of saying “betrayed” or “handed over to.” It is probably the latter.

destruction, death, and annihilation: These are translated from the same three Hebrew verbs as in 3:13b. See the note on that verse. Even if you do not use three words in your translation, be sure to use language that is very strong and includes the idea of no Jew being left alive.

7:4c

no such distress would justify burdening the king: The meaning of this clause in Hebrew is not clear because several of the words have more than one meaning. The two most likely meanings are:

(1) If Haman had intended only to sell the Jews as slaves, that would not have been sufficient reason to trouble the king with the problem.

(Berean Standard Bible, New International Version, Good News Translation, New Century Version, Contemporary English Version, God’s Word)

(2) The word translated distress in the Berean Standard Bible can also mean “enemy” and the verb translated burdening can also mean “compensate.” So the expression means that no enemy would be able to compensate for the loss to the king caused by the death of so many of the people in the empire.

(New Revised Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible)

It is recommended that you follow the first interpretation.

© 2000 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.