Esther Intervenes for the Jews

8 That same day King Ahasuerus awarded Queen Esther the estate^(A) of Haman, the enemy of the Jews.^(B) Mordecai entered the king’s presence because Esther had revealed her relationship to Mordecai.^{(C) 2} The king removed his signet ring he had recovered from Haman^(D) and gave it to Mordecai, and Esther put him in charge of Haman’s estate.

³ Then Esther addressed the king again.^(E) She fell at his feet, wept, and begged^(F) him to revoke the evil of Haman the Agagite^(G) and his plot he had devised against the Jews.^{(H) 4} The king extended the gold scepter^(I) toward Esther, so she got up and stood before the king.

⁵ She said, “If it pleases the king and I have found favor with him, if the matter seems right to the king and I am pleasing in his eyes,^(J) let a royal edict be written. Let it revoke the documents the scheming Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces.^{(K) 6} For how could I bear to see the disaster that would come on my people?^(L) How could I bear to see the destruction of my relatives?” ^(M)

⁷ King Ahasuerus said to Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, “Look, I have given Haman’s estate to Esther,^(N) and he was hanged on the gallows because he attacked^[a] the Jews.^{(O) 8} Write in the king’s name whatever pleases you^(P) concerning the Jews, and seal it with the royal signet ring.^(Q) A document written in the king’s name and sealed with the royal signet ring cannot be revoked.”^(R)

¹⁸ But the Jews in Susa had assembled on the thirteenth and the fourteenth days of the month. They rested on the fifteenth day of the month, and it became a day of feasting and rejoicing.^{(A) 19} This explains why the rural Jews who live in villages observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a time of rejoicing and feasting. It is a holiday when they send gifts to one another.^(B)

²⁰ Mordecai^(C) recorded these events and sent letters to all the Jews in all of King Ahasuerus’s provinces, both near and far. ²¹ He ordered^(D) them to celebrate the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar every year ²² because during those days the Jews gained relief from^(E) their enemies. That was the month when their sorrow was turned into rejoicing and their mourning into a holiday.^(F) They were to be days of feasting,^(G) rejoicing, and of sending gifts to one another and to the poor.