12
And the king said to Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the fortress, and the ten sons of Haman; what have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? And what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee; and what is thy request further? and it shall be done.
13
And Esther said, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews that 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.
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
And 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 they laid not their hand on the prey.
16
And the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their life, and had rest from their enemies; and they slew of them that hated them seventy-five thousand (but they laid not their hand on the prey),
17
on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and joy.
18
But the Jews that were at Shushan gathered themselves together on the thirteenth [day] thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and joy.
19
Therefore the Jews of the villages that dwell in the country towns make the fourteenth of the month Adar a day of joy and feasting, and a good day, and on which they send portions one to another.
20
And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews near and far that were in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus,
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 on which the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month that 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.