1. NOW WHEN Mordecai learned all that was done, [he] rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes and went out into the midst of the city and cried with a loud and bitter cry.
2. He came and stood before the king's gate, for no one might enter the king's gate clothed with sackcloth.
3. And in every province, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
4. When Esther's maids and her attendants came and told it to her, the queen was exceedingly grieved and distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, with orders to take his sackcloth from off him, but he would not receive them.
5. Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king's attendants whom he had appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was.