Esther 5:14; 7:9–10
A gallows, a stake or a cross?
Haman makes an 'ets ("tree, wood, pole") fifty cubits high to "hang" Mordecai. The KJV says gallows; the library's Greek (Giguet) "potence" (gallows); the Vulgate "a high beam" and then "a cross." Persian practice suggests impaling or display on a stake.
Read Esther 5:14; 7:9–10 in every edition
Same letters, different readings: the consonants agree, but ancient readers vocalized or interpreted them differently
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Composed c. 400–150 BC (debated)
Original Esther
No original survives. No copy of Esther has been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Translated c. 2nd–1st century BC
Old Greek Esther (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Que l'on te fasse une potence de cinquante coudées
Old Greek via Giguet's French (its own verse numbers); not checked against Hanhart's Göttingen edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
Jube parari excelsam trabem… et jussit excelsam parari crucem
have a high beam prepared… and he ordered a high cross to be prepared
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
יַעֲשׂוּ־עֵץ גָּבֹהַּ חֲמִשִּׁים אַמָּה… וְיִתְלוּ אֶת־מָרְדֳּכַי עָלָיו
let them make a tree/pole fifty cubits high… and let them hang Mordecai on it
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high
What changed, and why
Darius' Behistun inscription describes rebels impaled at Ecbatana; Herodotus (3.159) says Darius impaled 3,000 Babylonians. Talah ("hang") can mean to suspend or impale a body. A noose gallows is a later image. Fifty cubits (about 23 m) is deliberately excessive, meant to be seen across the city.
What the evidence shows
- Persian kings impaled enemies.
- Haman's 'ets was a noose gallows.
Sources
Related lessons
- Two Banquets and a Deadly Structure →On the third day Esther, in royal robes, stands in the inner court. The king holds out the golden sceptre and offers her up to half the kingdom. She invites him and Haman to a banquet, and there, asked again, invites them to a second banquet. Haman goes out joyful, sees Mordecai who will not rise or move, and goes home to boast to his wife Zeresh and his friends. Zeresh advises: make a structure fifty cubits high and have Mordecai hanged on it in the morning.
- Disclosure and the Downfall of Haman →At the second banquet Esther asks for her life and her people's: "we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed." The king asks who dared; she names Haman. The king leaves in wrath for the garden. Haman throws himself on Esther's couch to beg for his life; the king returns and accuses him of assaulting the queen. Harbona points out the stake Haman built for Mordecai; Haman is hanged on it, and the king's wrath subsides.