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And the Jews at Shushan assembled on the thirteenth day of it, and on the fourteenth day of it, and to rest on the fifteenth of the same, and to make it a day of feasting and gladness.

On account of this the Jews of the villages who lived in the unwalled villages made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and a day of sending portions to one another.

And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, near and far,

to cause to rise among them to make a feast the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly;

as the days in which the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day, to make them days of feasting and joy, and ofsending portions to one another, and gifts tothe poor.

And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written to them,

because Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the one distressing all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to torment them and to destroy them.

But when Esther came to the king, he commanded by the letter, Let this evil plot which he plotted against the Jews return on his own head; and they hanged him and his sons on the wooden gallows .

On account of this they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur. For on account of this all the words of this letter, and what they saw concerning this matter, and what had touched them,

the Jews rose up and took on themselves and on their seed, and on all joining themselves to them, even not to pass, to be keeping those two days according to their writing, and according to their time every year;

and that these days should be remembered and acted upon in generation and generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not pass from among the Jews, and their memory not perish from their seed.

And Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority to confirm this second letter of Purim.

And he sent the letters to all the Jews, to the hundred and twenty seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus words of peace and truth,

in order to confirm these days of Purim in their set times, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had caused to rise up on them, and as they caused to rise up on themselves and on their seed, the matters of the fastings and of their cry.

And the decree of Esther made rise these matters of Purim. And it was written in the book.