Deliverance and the Festival of Purim

In the month of Adar, on the day the king’s decree was to be carried out, the enemies of the Jews expected to overpower them. Instead, the opposite happened. The Jews gathered in their cities across the empire to defend themselves, and no one could stand against them. Officials also helped them, because fear of Mordecai had spread as he became great in the king’s house.

The fighting was severe. In Susa, the citadel, the Jews killed five hundred men, including the ten sons of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. Yet the passage repeats an important detail: they did not take the plunder. The number of those killed in Susa was then reported to the king.

The king spoke with Queen Esther again. At her request, the Jews in Susa were permitted to act on the next day as well, and Haman’s ten sons were hanged on the gallows. On that fourteenth day in Susa, three hundred more men were killed. Again, the Jews did not lay hands on the plunder.

In the other provinces, the Jews gathered, defended their lives, and gained rest from their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand who hated them, but taking no plunder. They rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and gladness. In Susa, because they assembled on both the thirteenth and fourteenth, they rested on the fifteenth. Jews in unwalled towns keep the fourteenth with feasting and gifts of food.

Mordecai wrote to the Jews throughout the kingdom, telling them to keep the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar each year. These were the days when sorrow turned to gladness and mourning into a holiday, marked by feasting, sharing food, and gifts to the needy. The name Purim came from “Pur”, the lot Haman had cast when he plotted to destroy the Jews.

Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai confirmed these days of Purim with full authority. Letters went to the Jews in the king’s one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, confirming the appointed days along with the matter of fastings and mourning. The command was written down. After this, King Ahasuerus laid tribute on the land and the islands, and Mordecai remained next to the king, great among the Jews, seeking his people’s good and speaking peace.