¹¹ and boasted to them about his great wealth and his many children. He bragged about the honors the king had given him and how he had been promoted over all the other nobles and officials.

⁷ They also killed Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, ⁸ Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, ⁹ Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vaizatha— ¹⁰ the ten sons of Haman son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews. But they did not take any plunder.

Haman’s Plot against the Jews

3 Some time later King Xerxes promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite over all the other nobles, making him the most powerful official in the empire.

¹⁹ And I’ll sit back and say to myself, “My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!”’

²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’

¹⁷ Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.

²⁴ This amazed them. But Jesus said again, “Dear children, it is very hard^[a] to enter the Kingdom of God.