Esther 3

1 After these things King Artaxerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Bugaean: he raised him high, and gave him the first seat above all his friends. [a] 2 And everyone in the court bowed down to Haman, for so the king had ordered it done. But Mordecai did not bow down to him.

3 And the people of the king’s court said to Mordecai, “Mordecai, why do you refuse to listen to what the king has said?” 4 Day after day they spoke to him, and he would not listen to them. So they reported to Haman that Mordecai was setting himself against the king’s words — for Mordecai had let them know that he was a Jew.

5 And when Haman learned that Mordecai was not bowing down to him, he was filled with rage, 6 and he set his mind on wiping out all the Jews under the rule of Artaxerxes.

7 In the twelfth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, Haman drew up a decree. He cast lots day by day and month by month, to destroy the race of Mordecai in a single day; and the lot fell on the fourteenth of the month which is Adar. [b]

8 Then he spoke to King Artaxerxes: “There is a certain nation scattered among the nations through all your kingdom. Their laws are unlike those of every other nation, and they refuse to listen to the laws of the king, and it does not pay the king to let them be. 9 If it seems good to the king, let him decree that they be destroyed — and I will pay about 375 tons of silver into the king’s treasury.” [c]

10 So the king took off his ring and put it into Haman’s hands, to seal what would be written against the Jews. 11 And the king said to Haman, “Keep the silver — and do with the nation whatever you please.”

12 So the king’s scribes were called in on the thirteenth day of the first month, and they wrote, as Haman directed, to the commanders and the governors of every province from India to Ethiopia — a hundred and twenty-seven provinces — and to the rulers of the nations, each in its own language, in the name of King Artaxerxes. [d] 13 And the order went out by courier through the kingdom of Artaxerxes: to wipe out the race of the Jews in a single day of the twelfth month, which is Adar, and to plunder their goods. [e]

This is a copy of the letter: “The great king Artaxerxes writes as follows to the rulers of the hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia, and to the local governors under them: Ruling as I do over many nations, and master of the whole inhabited world, I have wished — never carried away by the boldness that power gives, but always governing with fairness and gentleness — to keep the lives of my subjects untroubled at all times, to keep the kingdom civilized and safe to travel to its farthest borders, and to restore the peace that all mankind longs for. When I asked my counselors how this could be brought about, Haman — who stands out among us for sound judgment, whose good will has proved constant and whose loyalty is beyond shaking, and who has won the second rank in the kingdom — pointed out to us that one hostile people is mixed in among all the tribes of the world, a people set against every nation by its laws, forever brushing aside the edicts of kings, so that the one rule we administer blamelessly can never be made firm. We have concluded, then, that this nation stands utterly alone in its constant opposition to all mankind, that it follows a strange and foreign way of life by its laws, and that, hostile to our interests, it works the worst of harms, so that the kingdom can never reach a settled state. We have therefore ordered that the people pointed out to you in the letters of Haman — who is set over our affairs and is a second father to us — are all to be destroyed, root and branch, wives and children with them, by the swords of their enemies, without pity and without sparing, on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, of the present year, so that these people, hostile to us of old and hostile to us now, may go down violently to Hades in a single day, and leave our affairs settled and untroubled from now on to the end.”

14 Copies of the letter were posted in every province, and all the nations were ordered to be ready for that day. 15 The matter was pressed forward with speed, at Susa too. And the king and Haman sat drinking deep together — but the city was in turmoil.