So his wife and all his friends suggested, "Why don't you have a gallows built, seventy-five feet tall? Tomorrow morning you can ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it, and then you can go to the banquet happy." Haman thought this was a good idea, so he had the gallows built.

So Haman was hanged on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai. Then the king's anger cooled down.

In three days the king will release you---and have your head cut off! Then he will hang your body on a pole, and the birds will eat your flesh."

but he executed the chief baker. It all happened just as Joseph had said.

"If someone has been put to death for a crime and the body is hung on a post,

it is not to remain there overnight. It must be buried the same day, because a dead body hanging on a post brings God's curse on the land. Bury the body, so that you will not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

He hanged the king of Ai from a tree and left his body there until evening. At sundown Joshua gave orders for the body to be removed, and it was thrown down at the entrance to the city gate. They covered it with a huge pile of stones, which is still there today.

That same night the king could not get to sleep, so he had the official records of the empire brought and read to him.

The part they read included the account of how Mordecai had uncovered a plot to assassinate the king---the plot made by Bigthana and Teresh, the two palace eunuchs who had guarded the king's rooms.

Then the people who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD listened and heard what they said. In his presence, there was written down in a book a record of those who feared the LORD and respected him.