¹⁰ The people gathered at Jerusalem in late spring,^[a] during the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign.

⁹ So on June 25^[a] the king’s secretaries were summoned, and a decree was written exactly as Mordecai dictated. It was sent to the Jews and to the highest officers, the governors, and the nobles of all the 127 provinces stretching from India to Ethiopia.^[b] The decree was written in the scripts and languages of all the peoples of the empire, including that of the Jews.