14
And the king commanded it to be so done; and it was given as law at Shushan; and they hanged Haman’s ten sons.
15
And the Jews that
were in Shushan gathered themselves together also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the spoil they did not lay their hand.
16
And the other Jews that
were in the king’s provinces also gathered themselves together and stood for their lives and had rest from their enemies and slew of their foes seventy-five thousand, but they did not lay their hands on the spoil,
17
on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same they rested and made it a day of banquet and gladness.
18
But the Jews that
were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth
day thereof and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth
day of the same they rested and made it a day of banquet and gladness.
19
Therefore, the Jews of the villages that dwelt in the unwalled towns made the fourteenth day of the month Adar
a day of gladness and banquet and a good day and of sending portions one to another.
20
And Mordecai wrote these things and sent letters unto all the Jews that
were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus,
both near and far,
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 in which the Jews had rest from their enemies and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy and from mourning into a good day, that they should make them days of banquet and joy and of sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor.
23
And the Jews accepting this began to do as Mordecai had written unto them.
24
Because Haman, the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them and had cast Pur, that
is, the lot, to consume them and to destroy them,