16. The rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces gathered and defended their lives and found repose from their enemies. And they killed seventy-five thousand of those that hated them, but they did not touch the plunder.
17. This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. They rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and joy.
18. But the Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth and on the fourteenth day, and rested on the fifteenth day. And they made it a day of feasting and joy.
19. Therefore the Jews in the rural areas, living in the rural towns, made the fourteenth month of Adar a day of joy and feasting, a festive day of giving gifts to each other.
20. Mordecai wrote down these things and he sent letters to all the Jews who were in all of the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21. to impose on them to keep the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and the fifteenth day, every year,
22. as the day that the Jews found relief from their enemies, and the month which changed for them from sorrow to joy, and from a mourning ceremony to a festive day; to make them days of feasting and joy, and giving gifts to each other and to the poor.
23. And the Jews adopted what they had begun to do and what Mordecai had written to them.
24. For Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and he had cast pur, that is the lot, to rout them out and destroy them.
25. But when it came to the attention of the king, he gave orders in writing that his evil plot that he had devised against the Jews should return on his head, and they hung him and his sons on the gallows.
26. Therefore they called these days Purim, because of the name Pur. Thus because of all the words of this letter, and of what they faced concerning this, and of what had happened to them,
27. the Jews established and adopted it for themselves and for their offspring, and for all who joined them. They did not neglect to observe these two days every year as it was written and appointed to them.