1 So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 2 And on the second day, as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king again said to Esther, c“What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? dEven to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” 3 Then Queen Esther answered, e“If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request. 4 fFor we have been sold, I and my people, gto be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king.” 5 Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has dared1 to do this?” 6 And Esther said, h“A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
9 Then kHarbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Moreover, lthe gallows1 that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, mwhose word saved the king, is standing at Haman’s house, fifty cubits2 high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” 10 nSo they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. oThen the wrath of the king abated.
The Feast of Purim Inaugurated
20 And 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 obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year, 22 as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into ja holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.
