18The Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth day of it and on the fourteenth day of it, and they rested on the fifteenth day of it and made it a day of feasting and joy.19Therefore the Jews, the villagers who dwell in the villages of the open country, make the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of joy and feasting and a pleasant day, sending portions each to his neighbor.20Mordecai recorded these words and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far.21To establish for themselves that they would observe the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day of it every year.22Like the days on which the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month that was changed for them from sorrow into joy and from mourning into a pleasant day, to make them days of feasting and joy and sending portions each to his neighbor and gifts to the needy.23The Jews accepted what they had begun to do and what Mordecai had written to them.24For Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the vexer of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur—that is, the lot—to confuse them and to destroy them.25When it came before the king, he said with the letter that his evil plot which he had devised against the Jews should return upon his own head, and that they should hang him and his sons upon the tree.26Therefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur; therefore, because of all the words of this letter, what they had seen concerning this matter, and what had come upon them,27the Jews established and accepted upon themselves and upon their seed and upon all who joined themselves to them that they would not pass over the observance of these two days according to their writing and according to their appointed time every year and year.28These days are remembered and observed in every generation and generation, family and family, province and province, and city and city; and these days of Purim shall not pass from the midst of the Jews, nor shall their memorial cease from their seed.29Queen Esther daughter of Abihail and Mordecai the Jew wrote with all authority to establish this second letter of Purim.30He sent letters to all the Jews in the one hundred twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, words of peace and truth.31To establish these days of Purim at their appointed times, just as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had established them upon themselves and upon their seed, and just as they had established the words of their fasts and their outcry.32The command of Esther established the words of these Purim, and they were written in the book.