¹⁷ the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set ^(A)the royal crown^[a] on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

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?”

¹¹ saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city ^(A)to gather and defend their lives, ^(B)to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, ^(C)and to plunder their goods,