¹⁵ The Jews who were in Susa gathered also on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and they killed three hundred persons in Susa, but they did not touch the plunder.^(A)

¹⁶ Now the other Jews who were in the king’s provinces also gathered to defend their lives and gained relief from their enemies and killed seventy-five thousand of those who hated them, but they laid no hands on the plunder.^{(B) 17} This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made that a day of feasting and gladness.^(C)

The Feast of Purim Inaugurated

¹⁸ But the Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth and rested on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness.^(D)

¹¹ By these letters the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, their children, and their women, and to plunder their goods^(A)

¹⁷ In every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict came, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a festival and a holiday. Furthermore, many of the peoples of the country professed to be Jews because the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.^(A)