Ester 9

20 Mordecai wrote down all the things that had happened. Then he sent letters to the Jews who lived throughout the empire of King Xerxes. 21 He told them that every year they should celebrate on the 8th and 9th of March, 22 because those were the days when the Jews got rid of their enemies. He also told them that they should celebrate on those days by feasting and giving gifts of food to each other and to poor people. They would remember it as the month in which they changed from being very sorrowful to being very joyful, from crying to celebrating. 23 So the Jews agreed to do what Mordecai wrote. They agreed to celebrate on those days every year. 24 They would remember how Haman, son of Hammedatha, a descendant of King Agag, became an enemy of all the Jews. They would remember how he had made an evil plan to kill the Jews, and that he had ◄cast lots/thrown small marked stones► to choose the day to kill [DOU] them. 25 They would remember that when Esther told the king about Haman’s plan, the king arranged that the evil plan that Haman had made to kill the Jews would fail, and that he would be killed instead of the Jews, and that Haman and that his sons were hanged. 26 Because the ◄lot/small marked stone► that Haman threw was called Pur, the Jews called these days Purim. And, because of everything that ◄Mordecai wrote/was written► in that letter, and because of all that happened to them, 27 the Jews throughout the empire agreed to celebrate in that manner on those two days every year. They said that they would tell their descendants and those people who became Jews to be certain to celebrate this festival every year. They should celebrate just as Mordecai told them to do in the letter that he wrote. 28 They said that they would remember and celebrate on those two days every year, in each family, in every city, and in every province. They solemnly declared that they and their descendants would never stop remembering and celebrating those days called Purim. 29 Then Mordecai and Queen Esther, who was the daughter of Abihail, wrote a second letter about the Purim feast. Esther used the authority that she had because of being the queen to confirm that what Mordecai had written in the first letter was true. 30,31 What they wrote in the second letter was, "We wish that all of you will be living peacefully and safely/righteously. We want you and your descendants to celebrate Purim each year on the days that we two established, and to do the things that we two told you to do." In that letter, Queen Esther and Mordecai also gave them instructions about ◄fasting/abstaining from eating food► and being sorrowful. Then copies of that letter were sent to all the Jews who were living in the 127 provinces of the empire. 32 The letter that Esther wrote about the manner in which they should celebrate the Purim feast was also written in an official record.