Esther / The Victory Celebrated and Purim Instituted

The Victory Celebrated and Purim Instituted

Esther 9:18-32

Chapter 9

¹⁸ And the Jews who were in Susa assembled on the thirteenth of it and on the fourteenth of it and rested on the fifteenth of it and made it a day of feasting and joy. ¹⁹ Therefore the Jews of the countryside who dwell in the countryside cities make the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of joy and feasting and a good day and sending portions from man to his companion. ²⁰ And Mordecai wrote these words and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both the near ones and the far ones. ²¹ to establish upon them to be doing it on the day of the fourteenth of the month Adar and the day of the fifteenth in it every year and year. ²² as the days in which the Jews rested from their enemies and the month which was turned for them from grief to joy and from mourning to a good day, to make them days of feasting and joy and sending portions man to his neighbor and gifts to the needy. ²³ And the Jews accepted what they had begun to do and what Mordecai had written to them. ²⁴ For Haman son of Medatha the Agagite, opponent of all the Jews, devised against the Jews to destroy them, and he cast Pur, that is the Lot, to terrify them and to destroy them. ²⁵ And when she came before the king, he said, "With the book, his evil thought which he devised against the Judahites shall return upon his own head," and they hanged him and his sons on the tree. ²⁶ Therefore they called these days Purim on account of the name of the pur. Therefore, on account of all the words of this letter and what they saw on account of this and what reached them. ²⁷ The Jews established and accepted—on themselves and on their seed and on all those joined to them—that it shall not pass to do these two days according to their writing and according to their time every year and year. ²⁸ And these days are remembered and kept in every generation and generation, family and family, province and province, city and city. And these days of Purim will not pass from the midst of the Jews, and their remembrance will not cease from their seed. ²⁹ And Esther the betrothed, daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew wrote with full authority to establish this second letter of the Purim. ³⁰ And he sent letters to all the Jews in the one hundred twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, words of peace and truth. ³¹ to establish these days of the Purims in their times just as Mordecai the Jew established them and Queen Esther and just as they had established on their soul and on their seed the words of the fasts and their outcry. ³² And the word of Esther stood firm, the words of these Purim, and it was written in the book.