⁹ Jabez was ^(A)more honorable than his brothers; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”^{[a] 10} Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm^[b] so that it might not bring me pain!” And God granted what he asked.

⁵ Now there was a Jew in Susa the citadel whose name was ^(A)Mordecai, the son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjaminite, ^6 (B)who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away. ⁷ He was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, ^(C)the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.

¹² And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 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?”

¹⁰ The men did so, and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. ¹¹ And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. ¹² And the cows went straight in the direction of ^(A)Beth-shemesh along ^(B)one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of ^(C)Beth-shemesh.