²⁰ Rejoice over her, O heaven, you saints and apostles and prophets! For God has condemned her condemnation of you.^(A)

⁸ And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters.^(A)

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.^{(A) 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,^{(B) 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.^(C)