The Feast of Purim Inaugurated

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

²⁰ Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, ²¹ enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, ²² as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday, that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.^{(C) 23} So the Jews adopted as a custom what they had begun to do, as Mordecai had written to them.

²⁴ For Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast Pur—that is, “the lot”—to crush and to destroy them,^{(D) 25} but when Esther^[a] came before the king, he gave orders in writing that the wicked plot that he had devised against the Jews should come upon his own head and that he and his sons should be hung on the pole.^{(E) 26} Therefore these days are called Purim, from the word Pur. Thus because of all that was written in this letter and of what they had faced in this matter and of what had happened to them,^{(F) 27} the Jews established and accepted as a custom for themselves and their descendants and all who joined them that without fail they would continue to observe these two days every year, as it was written and at the time appointed.^{(G) 28} These days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, in every family, province, and city, and these days of Purim should never fall into disuse among the Jews, nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants.

²⁹ Queen Esther daughter of Abihail, along with Mordecai the Jew, gave full written authority confirming this second letter about Purim.^{(H) 30} Letters were sent wishing peace and security to all the Jews, to the one hundred twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus,^{(I) 31} and giving orders that these days of Purim should be observed at their appointed seasons, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther enjoined on the Jews, just as they had laid down for themselves and for their descendants regulations concerning their fasts and their lamentations.^{(J) 32} The command of Esther fixed these practices of Purim, and it was recorded in writing.^(K)