17
This was
1on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made that a day of feasting and gladness.
18
But the Jews who were in Susa gathered
2on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested
3on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness.
19
Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in
4the rural towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, as
5a holiday, and
6as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another.
The Feast of Purim Inaugurated
20 And Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21
obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year,
22
as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into
7a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.
23
So the Jews accepted what they had started to do, and what Mordecai had written to them.
24
For Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha,
8the enemy of all the Jews,
9had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and
10had cast Pur (that is, cast lots), to crush and to destroy them.
25
But when it came before the king, he gave orders in writing
11that his evil plan that he had devised against the Jews
12should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
26
Therefore they called these days Purim, after the term
13Pur. Therefore, because of all that was written in
14this letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them,
27
the Jews firmly obligated themselves and their offspring and
15all who joined them, that without fail they would keep
16these two days according to what was written and at the time appointed every year,