14. The king commanded that this be done. A decree was issued in Shushan and they hanged Haman’s 10 sons.
15. The Jews in Shushan gathered together on the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and they killed 300 men in Shushan, but they did not put their hands on the plunder.
16. Meanwhile the rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces gathered together to protect themselves and to get relief from their enemies. They killed 75,000 of their enemies, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder.
17. This happened on the thirteenth day of Adar and on the fourteenth day they rested, making it a day of feasting and gladness.
18. But the Jews that were in Shushan had assembled on the thirteenth and on the fourteenth and on the fifteenth they rested, making it a day of feasting and gladness.
19. That is why the rural Jews—those living in unwalled villages—make the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, a day of sending presents of food to one another.
20. Mordecai recorded these events and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21. urging them to celebrate the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar every year
22. as the days when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into celebration. These were to be days of feasting, celebration and sending presents of food to one another and giving gifts to the poor.
23. So the Jews agreed to continue the commemoration they had begun, and do what Mordecai had written to them.
24. For Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had schemed against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the pur—that is, the lot—to ruin and destroy them.
25. But when it came to the king’s attention, he issued a written edict that the wicked scheme Haman had devised against the Jews should come back on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. (
26. For this reason, these days were called Purim, from the word pur.) Therefore because of everything in this letter and because of what they had seen and what had happened to them,
27. the Jews established and took upon themselves, upon their descendants, and upon all who joined with them, that they would commemorate these two days in the way prescribed and at the appointed time every year.
28. These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family and in every province and every city. These days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor their remembrance perish from their descendants.
29. Then Queen Esther the daughter of Abihail, and also Mordecai the Jew, wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter of Purim.
30. He sent letters to all the Jews in the 127 provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of shalom and truth,
31. to establish these days of Purim at their designated times, just as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had decreed for them and just as they had established for themselves and their descendants, matters regarding their times of fasting and lamentations.