Chapter 4

When the Jews learn of this plan, many put on sackcloth and ashes, and they lament, and they fast.    Esther gathers information from Mordecai.  vs 7 of this chapter still makes it look as if Haman is footing the bill for the slaughter.  Mordecai sends back word to Esther urging her to go in to the king and stop this.  She sends back that she has not been summoned, and to go to the king un-summoned is to risk death.  She doesn't want to take this risk, and sends word to Mordecai.  He answers like this:

13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" [Est 4:13-14 ESV]

First, to be silent only delays her death, since she will be found out.  Second, Mordecai firmly believes that the Jews will be saved from elsewhere, if not from the action that Esther takes.  And third, perhaps this is the explanation for her rise from "no one" to Queen of Persia.  Perhaps this is all God in the first place.

Esther agrees to go in, but ONLY if all the Jews will fast and pray for three days first, and she and her girls will do the same.  No food, no water, for three full days.  Mordecai gets the word out.