17
[This was done] 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.
18
But the Yehudim who were in Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth [day] of it, 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 do the Yehudim of the villages, who dwell in the unwalled towns, make 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
Mordekhai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Yehudim who were in all the provinces of the king Achashverosh, both near and far,
21
to enjoin those who 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 Yehudim had rest from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a good day; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the needy.
23
The Yehudim undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordekhai had written to them;
24
because Haman the son of Hammedata, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Yehudim, had plotted against the Yehudim to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them;
25
but when [the matter] came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he had devised against the Yehudim, should 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 name of Pur. Therefore because of all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and that which had come to them,
27
the Yehudim ordained, and took on them, and on their seed, and on all such as joined themselves to them, so that it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to the writing of it, and according to the appointed time of it, every year;