Esther’s Plea

7 Now the king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther the queen. ² And the king said to Esther on the second day also ^[a]as they drank their wine at the banquet, “^(A)What is your request, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your wish? ^(B)Up to half of the kingdom it shall be done.” ³ Then Queen Esther replied, “^(C)If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my request, and my people as my wish; ⁴ for ^(D)we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, ^(E)killed, and eliminated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have kept silent, because the distress would not be sufficient reason to burden the king.” ⁵ Then King Ahasuerus ^[b]asked Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, ^[c]who would presume to do such a thing?” ⁶ And Esther said, “^(F)A foe and an enemy is this wicked Haman!” Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen.

⁹ Then Harbonah, one of the eunuchs who stood before the king, said, “Indeed, behold, ^(A)the wooden gallows standing at Haman’s house ^[a]fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai ^(B)who spoke good in behalf of the king!” And the king said, “Hang him on it.” ^10 (C)So they hanged Haman on the wooden gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, ^(D)and the king’s anger subsided.

The Feast of Purim Instituted

²⁰ Then Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, ²¹ obliging them to celebrate the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day ^[a]of the same month, annually, ²² because on those days the Jews ^[b]rid themselves of their enemies, and it was a month which was ^(A)turned for them from grief into joy, and from mourning into a ^[c]holiday; that they were to make them days of feasting and rejoicing, and ^(B)sending portions of food to one another, and gifts to the poor.