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.

¹⁵ and this house was finished on the third day of the ^(A)month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.

²⁴ For Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, ^(A)the enemy of all the Jews, ^(B)had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and ^(C)had cast Pur (that is, cast lots), to crush and to destroy them. ²⁵ But when it came before the king, he gave orders in writing ^(D)that his evil plan that he had devised against the Jews ^(E)should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. ²⁶ Therefore they called these days Purim, after the term ^(F)Pur. Therefore, because of all that was written in ^(G)this letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them,

²¹ For the king of Babylon stands ^(A)at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination. He shakes the arrows; he consults ^(B)the teraphim;^[a] he looks at the liver. ²² Into his right hand comes the divination for Jerusalem, ^(C)to set battering rams, to open the mouth with murder, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, ^(D)to cast up mounds, to build siege towers.

³⁵ And when they had crucified him, ^(A)they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

²¹ obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year,

¹⁷ This was ^(A)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. ¹⁸ But the Jews who were in Susa gathered ^(B)on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested ^(C)on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness. ¹⁹ Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in ^(D)the rural towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, as ^(E)a holiday, and ^(F)as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another.

⁵ The Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and did as they pleased to those who hated them.

The Jews Destroy Their Enemies