What Does Esther 6:10 Mean in the King James?
Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king’s gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Haman’s own words become the royal order that makes him honor the man he meant to surpass.
THE MEANING
The words you speak can become the very shape of what you must enact, returning in a form opposite to your intention. Here Haman must carry out for Mordecai the public honors he has just described as though they were for himself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that you can design a future for someone else while remaining untouched by the design you set in motion.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dābār
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak or declare; the noun also means a matter or thing.
Dābār (דָּבָר, “word” or “matter”) holds speech and the matter spoken together; the repeated forms of “spoken” in this verse come from the same root. Haman’s words are treated as a thing to be done, not as disposable talk.
ALSO GROWS
dibbarta: You spoke.
דִּבַּרְתָּ
This form appears in the king’s reminder, “as thou hast said,” and again in “all that thou hast spoken”; Haman’s speech supplies the details of the command.
dābār: A word, matter, or affair.
דָּבָר
The final clause calls the spoken proposal a “word,” binding what Haman said to the matter the king orders him to carry out.
תַּפֵּל
tappēl
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־ל
n-p-l
To fall or drop down; in this form, to cause something to fall.
The Hebrew phrase says, in effect, “do not let any word fall.” The image behind “fail” is that none of Haman’s spoken details may drop away before they become action.
ALSO GROWS
nāphal: To fall.
נָפַל
This is the root verb behind the king’s command not to let anything fall away.
mappālāh: A downfall or overthrow.
מַפָּלָה
The same root can name a downfall, echoing the reversal that begins when Haman’s own proposal is carried out for Mordecai.
THE PATTERN
What a person sets in motion can return through its own mechanism and shape that person’s outcome.
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.Esther’s תַּפֵּל (tappēl, “cause to fall”) and Proverbs’ יִפּוֹל (yippōl, “he will fall”) share נ־פ־ל (n-p-l, “fall”). One verse says no part of the spoken plan is to fall away; the other shows the planner falling into what he prepared.
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