Now in the twelfth month, that [is,] the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day, [the time] came for the king's command and his decree to be executed. On the day that the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, the opposite occurred, in that the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them.
The Jews gathered together in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm. And no one could withstand them, because fear of them fell upon all people.
And all the officials of the provinces, the satraps, the governors, and all those doing the king's work, helped the Jews, because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them.
Thus the Jews defeated all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, with slaughter and destruction, and did what they pleased with those who hated them.
And the king said to Queen Esther, "The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the citadel, and the ten sons of Haman. What have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? Now what [is] your petition? It shall be granted to you. Or what [is] your further request? It shall be done."
Then Esther said, "If it pleases the king, let it be granted to the Jews who [are] in Shushan to do again tomorrow according to today's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged on the gallows."
And the Jews who [were] in Shushan gathered together again on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and killed three hundred men at Shushan; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.
The remainder of the Jews in the king's provinces gathered together and protected their lives, had rest from their enemies, and killed seventy-five thousand of their enemies; but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.
[This was] on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. And on the fourteenth day of [the month] they rested and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
But the Jews who [were] at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth [day,] as well as on the fourteenth; and on the fifteenth of [the month] they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
Therefore the Jews of the villages who dwelt in the unwalled towns celebrated the fourteenth day of the month of Adar [with] gladness and feasting, as a holiday, and for sending presents to one another.
as the days on which the Jews had rest from their enemies, as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.
because Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to annihilate them, and had cast Pur (that [is,] the lot), to consume them and destroy them;
but when [Esther] came before the king, he commanded by letter that this wicked plot which [Haman] had devised against the Jews should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
So they called these days Purim, after the name Pur. Therefore, because of all the words of this letter, what they had seen concerning this matter, and what had happened to them,
the Jews established and imposed it upon themselves and their descendants and all who would join them, that without fail they should celebrate these two days every year, according to the written [instructions] and according to the [prescribed] time,
[that] these days [should be] remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city, that these days of Purim should not fail [to be observed] among the Jews, and [that] the memory of them should not perish among their descendants.
And [Mordecai] sent letters to all the Jews, to the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, [with] words of peace and truth,
to confirm these days of Purim at their [appointed] time, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had prescribed for them, and as they had decreed for themselves and their descendants concerning matters of their fasting and lamenting.