Haman Plots against the Jews

King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite and gave him a place higher than the other royal officials. The king had commanded his servants at the gate to bow down and pay homage to Haman, but Mordecai would not do it.

The king’s servants at the gate kept asking Mordecai why he disobeyed the king’s command. Day after day they spoke to him, but he would not listen. Then they told Haman, because Mordecai had said that he was a Jew.

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not bow down or pay him homage, he was full of anger. But he thought it was too small a thing to attack Mordecai alone. After learning who Mordecai’s people were, Haman looked for a way to destroy all the Jews throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus.

In the first month, Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, meaning the lot, before Haman. The chosen time came out in the twelfth month, Adar. Then Haman told the king there was a scattered people with different laws, and he urged that they be destroyed. He also offered a vast amount of silver for the royal treasuries.

The king took off his ring and gave it to Haman, called the Jews’ enemy. He told Haman that the silver and the people were given into his hand to deal with as he wished. On the thirteenth day of the first month, scribes wrote Haman’s command to every province and people in their own writing and language, in the king’s name and sealed with the king’s ring.

Letters were sent by couriers through all the king’s provinces. The decree ordered that all Jews, young and old, including children and women, were to be destroyed in one day, on the thirteenth day of Adar, and that their goods could be taken. The decree was published everywhere. The couriers hurried out, the king and Haman sat down to drink, and the city of Susa was perplexed.