⁷ In the first month, which is the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, ^(A)they cast Pur (that is, they cast lots) before Haman day after day; and they cast it month after month till the twelfth month, which is ^(B)the month of Adar. ⁸ Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. ^(C)Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not to the king's profit to tolerate them. ⁹ If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents^[a] of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries.” ^10 (D)So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman ^(E)the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, ^(F)the enemy of the Jews. ¹¹ And the king said to Haman, “The money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you.”

¹³ Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. ¹⁴ For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” ¹⁵ Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, ¹⁶ “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for ^(A)three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, ^(B)and if I perish, I perish.”^{[a] 17} Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.