Esther 7:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, &c. By the cruelty of that man, who offered a great sum to purchase our destruction. We have not forfeited our lives by any offence against the government, but are sold to gratify the pride and revenge of one man. If we had been sold for bond-men and bond-women Sold merely into slavery; I had held my tongue I would not have complained, for in time we might have been ransomed and delivered. But it is not our liberty only, but our lives that are sold. Although the enemy could not countervail the king's damage His ten thousand talents would not repair the king's loss in the customs and tributes, which the king receives from the Jews within his dominions, nor the injury his kingdom would sustain, by the loss of so many industrious hands out of it. To persecute good people is as impolitic as it is impious, and a manifest wrong to the interests of princes and states, which are weakened and empoverished by it.