Esther 5 Bible study: All this avails me nothing

Esther had said what the law was: whoever "comes to the king into the inner court without being called" is to be put to death, "except those to whom the king might hold out the golden scepter, that he may live" (Esther 4:11). Now she goes. "Now on the third day, Esther put on her royal clothing and stood in the inner court of the king’s house, next to the king’s house" (5:1). "When the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, she obtained favor in his sight; and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. So Esther came near and touched the top of the scepter" (5:2) (tap scepter, favor, obtained). Beyond "she obtained favor in his sight", the chapter doesn't say what the king thought, or what Esther felt. It gives his words: "What would you like, queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given you even to the half of the kingdom" (5:3) (tap request).

Esther 5:13→leads toMark 8:36

"Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches, the multitude of his children, all the things in which the king had promoted him" (5:11), and then said, "Yet all this avails me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate" (5:13). Jesus "called the multitude to himself with his disciples" (Mark 8:34) and asked, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" (Mark 8:36). Jesus doesn't cite Esther, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, nor between the WEB's avails and profit, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: all that a man has gained, weighed and found worth nothing. Some hear Jesus' question beside Haman's words: a man who had riches, children, the king's promotion and the queen's invitation, and counted it all as nothing. Others read each in its own setting: Jesus asks what gaining the whole world is worth to one who forfeits his life, speaking of coming after him (Mark 8:34); Haman says his glory is nothing to him because of one man at the king's gate, and Esther 5 says nothing of his life or his soul; they draw no line between the two. Neither reading takes Jesus' words as saying what became of Haman, and neither makes anyone in Esther a picture of Jesus.

שָׁוָהshavahsay sha-VAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "agree with, be like, resemble". Strong's: "properly, to level, i.e. equalize; figuratively, to resemble". "Yet all this avails me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate" (5:13). The word comes three times in the Hebrew of Esther, each time with a word for not before it, and each time the WEB words it differently. Haman tells the king "it is not for the king’s profit to allow them to remain" (Esther 3:8). Here he says his glory "avails me nothing" (5:13). And Esther tells the king, "the adversary could not have compensated for the king’s loss" (Esther 7:4).