King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, above all the other officials. The king’s servants at the royal gate bowed down and did obeisance to Haman, as the king had commanded. Mordecai, however, would not bow down or do obeisance. When the servants asked him why, he told them that he was a Jew.
Haman became furious when he saw that Mordecai would not bow down. Killing Mordecai alone seemed too small a response. Haman sought a way to destroy all the Jews scattered throughout Ahasuerus’s kingdom. In the first month he cast pur, that is, lots, to select the time, and the lot fell on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar.
Haman told the king that a people scattered among the provinces had laws different from those of every other people and did not obey the king’s laws. It was not in the king’s interest to tolerate them, he said. If the king approved, a decree should be written to destroy them, and Haman would pay ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasuries. The king gave Haman his signet ring and told him to do as he thought best with the money and the people.
On the thirteenth day of the first month, the royal scribes wrote Haman’s order to officials in every province and to leaders of every people, in each province’s script and each people’s language. The decree ordered that every Jew, young and old, children and women, be destroyed, killed, and annihilated on one day, the thirteenth of Adar, and that their goods be plundered. The order was proclaimed in the citadel of Susa. The king and Haman sat down to drink, while the city was thrown into confusion.
Mordecai learned all that had happened. He tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city crying with a loud and bitter cry. In every province where the king’s decree arrived, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and lamenting. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
When Esther’s attendants and eunuchs told her about Mordecai, she was deeply distressed. She sent clothes for him, but he would not accept them. Esther sent the eunuch Hathach to find out what had happened. Mordecai gave Hathach the amount of silver Haman had promised and a copy of the decree, telling him to urge Esther to go to the king and plead for her people.
Esther answered that anyone, man or woman, who went unbidden into the inner court faced death unless the king held out the golden scepter. She had not been called to the king for thirty days. Mordecai told her not to think that she alone would escape because she was in the king’s house. If she kept silent, relief and deliverance would arise for the Jews from another place, but she and her father’s house would perish. Perhaps, he said, she had come to royal position for such a time as this.
Esther told Mordecai to gather all the Jews in Susa and fast for her for three days, night and day, without food or drink. She and her attendants would fast in the same way. After that she would go to the king, though it was against the law. If she perished, she said, she would perish. Mordecai did as Esther had instructed.
On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace. The king saw her and received her favorably, holding out the golden scepter. Esther approached and touched its tip. When the king asked her request and offered up to half his kingdom, Esther invited him and Haman to a banquet she had prepared.
At the first banquet the king again asked Esther what she desired. She asked that the king and Haman come to another banquet the next day. Haman left happy, but his anger returned when Mordecai at the royal gate did not rise or tremble before him. At home he told his wife and friends of his wealth and honor, yet said none of it satisfied him while Mordecai remained at the gate. His wife and friends urged him to build a gallows fifty cubits high and ask the king to hang Mordecai on it. Haman approved and had it built.
That night the king could not sleep and ordered the book of records read to him. The account was found of Mordecai exposing the plot of the gatekeepers Bigthana and Teresh to kill the king. The king learned that Mordecai had received no reward. At that moment Haman entered the outer court to ask that Mordecai be hanged.
The king asked Haman what should be done for the man whom the king wished to honor. Thinking that he himself was the man, Haman suggested royal robes, the king’s horse, and a public proclamation through the city square. The king ordered Haman to do all of this for Mordecai the Jew. Haman dressed Mordecai and led him through the square, then returned home mourning with his head covered.
At the second banquet the king again asked Esther to name her request. Esther asked for her own life and for the life of her people. She said that she and her people had been sold to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated. When the king asked who had dared to do this, Esther named Haman as the enemy. The king went out to the garden. Haman fell before the couch where Esther was reclining to plead for his life. When the king returned, he was enraged. The eunuch Harbona told him of the gallows Haman had prepared for Mordecai, and the king ordered Haman hanged on it.
The king gave Haman’s house to Esther and gave Mordecai the signet ring taken from Haman. Esther again fell before the king, pleading that Haman’s plan to destroy the Jews be stopped. The king said that a document written in the king’s name and sealed with the royal ring could not be revoked, but he told them to write another decree for the Jews and seal it with the ring. On the twenty-third day of the third month, Sivan, Mordecai’s new order was written for every province and people in its own script and language.
The new decree allowed the Jews in every city to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy the armed force of any people or province that attacked them, and to take the attackers’ goods as plunder. Its date was also the thirteenth day of Adar. Mordecai left the king wearing blue and white robes, a great gold crown, and a robe of fine linen and purple. The city of Susa shouted and rejoiced, and the Jews had light, gladness, joy, and honor.
On the thirteenth day of Adar, the Jews gathered to defend themselves against those who sought to harm them. In Susa alone they killed five hundred men, including Haman’s ten sons. The Jews in the other provinces also assembled and defended themselves from their enemies. They did not lay hands on the plunder. With the king’s permission, the Jews in Susa fought on the next day as well, and the bodies of Haman’s ten sons were hanged on the gallows.
The Jews in the provinces fought on the thirteenth of Adar and rested on the fourteenth, making it a day of feasting and gladness. The Jews in Susa fought through the fourteenth and rested on the fifteenth, making that day one of feasting and gladness. Mordecai recorded these events and sent letters to all the Jews in every province, requiring them to observe the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar each year. These were the days when the Jews gained rest from their enemies and their mourning was turned into joy and their sorrow into a holiday.
The Jews accepted what Mordecai had written. Haman had cast pur, the lot, to destroy and kill the Jews. But after Esther went before the king, Haman’s evil plan returned upon his own head, and he and his sons were hanged on the gallows. The Jews called these days Purim after the lot. Queen Esther and Mordecai confirmed by letter that these days were to be kept each year at their appointed time, and Purim was established for their descendants and for all who joined them.