Esther 9:27

27 The Jews made a rule and gave an undertaking, causing their seed and all those who were joined to them to do the same, so that it might be in force for ever, that they would keep those two days, as ordered in the letter, at the fixed time every year;

Esther 9:27 Meaning and Commentary

Esther 9:27

The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed,
and upon all such that joined themselves unto them
Who became proselytes to their religion; that is, they appointed the above two days as festivals, and engaged for themselves, for their children, and all proselytes, to observe them as such; and one of their canons ^F19 runs thus,

``all are obliged to read the Megillah (the book of Esther, which they always read on those days), priests, Levites, Nethinims, Israelites, men, women, and proselytes, and servants made free, and they train up little ones to read it:''

so as it should not fail;
of being observed, so as no man should transgress it, or pass it over:

that they should keep these two days;
the fourteenth and fifteenth of the month Adar or February:

according to their writing;
in this book, the book of Esther, which was to be read, as Aben Ezra; written in the Hebrew character, as the Targum; that is, in the Assyrian character, as Jarchi; the square character, as they call it:

and according to their appointed time every year;
whether simple or intercalated, as Aben Ezra observes: in an intercalary year the Jews have two Adars, and, though they keep the feast of Purim on the fourteenth of the first Adar, yet not with so much mirth, and call it the lesser Purim; but in the second Adar they observe it with all its ceremonies ^F20; so, in their canon, they do not keep Purim but in Adar that is next to Nisan or March, that redemption might be near redemption; the redemption of Mordecai near the redemption of Moses {u}.

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FOOTNOTES:

F19 Lebush & Schulchan, ib. (par. 1.) c. 689. sect. 1.
F20 Vid. Buxtorf. Synagog. Jud. c. 29. p. 563.
F21 Lebush, par. 1. c. 6, 7. sect. 1.

Esther 9:27 In-Context

25 But when the business was put before the king, he gave orders by letters that the evil design which he had made against the Jews was to be turned against himself; and that he and his sons were to be put to death by hanging.

26 So these days were named Purim, after the name of Pur. And so, because of the words of this letter, and of what they had seen in connection with this business, and what had come to them,

27 The Jews made a rule and gave an undertaking, causing their seed and all those who were joined to them to do the same, so that it might be in force for ever, that they would keep those two days, as ordered in the letter, at the fixed time every year;

28 And that those days were to be kept in memory through every generation and every family, in every division of the kingdom and every town, that there might never be a time when these days of Purim would not be kept among the Jews, or when the memory of them would go from the minds of their seed.

29 Then Esther the queen, daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, sent a second letter giving the force of their authority to the order about the Purim.