⁵ and said, “If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight and the thing seems right to the king and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to revoke the ^(A)letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to annihilate the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces.

⁷ Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and Mordecai the Jew, “Indeed, ^(A)I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have hanged him on the gallows because he tried to lay his hand on the Jews. ⁸ You yourselves write a decree concerning the Jews, ^[a]as you please, in the king’s name, and seal it with the king’s signet ring; for whatever is written in the king’s name and sealed with the king’s signet ring ^(B)no one can revoke.”

^9 (C)So the king’s scribes were called at that time, in the third month, which is the month of Sivan, on the twenty-third day; and it was written, according to all that Mordecai commanded, to the Jews, the satraps, the governors, and the princes of the provinces ^(D)from India to Ethiopia, one hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all, to every province ^(E)in its own script, to every people in their own language, and to the Jews in their own script and language. ^10 (F)And he wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, sealed it with the king’s signet ring, and sent letters by couriers on horseback, riding on royal horses ^[b]bred from swift steeds.

¹¹ By these letters the king permitted the Jews who were in every city to ^(G)gather together and protect their lives—to ^(H)destroy, kill, and annihilate all the forces of any people or province that would assault them, both little children and women, and to plunder their possessions,