13
Esther said, "If it pleases you, Your Majesty, allow the Jews in Susa to do tomorrow what was decreed for today. Let them hang Haman's ten sons on poles."
14
The king commanded this, issuing a decree in Susa. And so they hung Haman's ten sons [on poles].
15
The Jews in Susa also assembled on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and killed 300 men in Susa, but they did not seize any of their possessions.
16
The other Jews who were in the king's provinces had also assembled to defend and free themselves from their enemies. They killed 75,000 of those who hated them, but they did not seize any of their possessions.
17
This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. On the fourteenth they rested and made it a day of feasting and celebration.
18
But the Jews in Susa had assembled on the thirteenth and fourteenth. They rested on the fifteenth and made it a day of feasting and celebration.
19
That is why the Jews who live in the villages and in the unwalled towns make the fourteenth day of the month of Adar a holiday for feasting and celebration. They also send gifts of food to one another.
20
Now, Mordecai wrote these things down and sent official letters to all the Jews in all the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far.
21
He established the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as days they must observe every year.
22
They were to observe them just like the days when the Jews freed themselves from their enemies. In that month their grief turned to joy and their mourning into a holiday. He declared that these days are to be days for feasting and celebrating and for sending gifts of food to one another, especially gifts to the poor.
23
So the Jews accepted as tradition what they had begun, as Mordecai had written to them.