be granted thee: or what is thy request further? and it shall be done.
13 Then said Esther, If it shall please the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do to morrow also according to this day’s decree, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged upon the gallows. [1]
14 And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they hanged Haman’s ten sons.
15 For the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the spoil they laid not their hand.
16 But the other Jews that were in the king’s provinces gathered themselves together, and defended their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but they laid not their hands on the spoil,
17 On the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness. [2]
18 But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day of the month, and on the fourteenth of it; and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
19 Therefore the Jews of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.
20 And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21 To establish this among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly,
22 As the days in which the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.
23 And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written to them;
24 Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them; [3]
25 But when Esther came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked plot, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. [4]
26 Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. Therefore for all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and which had come to them, [5]
27 The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves to them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year; [6]
28 And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail to be observed among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. [7] [8]
29 Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority, to confirm this second letter of Purim. [9]
30 And he sent the letters to all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth,
31 To confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had established for them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their lamentations. [10]
32 And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book.
CHAP. 10.
And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea.
2 And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? [11]
3 For Mordecai the Jew was next to king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted by the multitude of his brethren, seeking the welfare of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.
