10. and they plundered their houses. These were the ten sons of Haman the enemy of the Jews, the son of Hammedatha, a Bougaean.
11. That same day, a report concerning the number killed in Susa reached the king that it was five hundred people.
12. So the king said to Esther in the city of Susa, "The Jews have killed five hundred people in Susa as well as the ten sons of Haman. What have they done in the rest of the royal provinces? What more do you wish now? I’ll give it to you."
13. Esther said to the king, "Give the Jews leave to do likewise tomorrow so that they may hang Haman’s ten sons."
14. The king ordered that this be done, and he allowed the Jews in the city to hang the bodies of Haman’s ten sons.
15. The Jews in Susa joined together again on the fourteenth day of Adar. They killed three hundred people, but they didn’t take anything the people owned.
16. The rest of the Jews throughout the kingdom also came together and helped each other. They found rest from their enemies, for they had destroyed fifteen thousand of them on the thirteenth of Adar, and they didn’t take anything their enemies owned.
17. They rested on the fourteenth day of the same month. They spent it as a day of rest, with joy and celebration.
18. The Jews in Susa joined together for self-defense on the fourteenth day and did not rest. But they rested on the fifteenth day with joy and celebration.
19. This is why Jews out in the country celebrate the fourteenth of Adar as a holiday, sending gifts of food to their neighbors, but those who live in the big cities celebrate the fifteenth of Adar as a holiday, sending gifts of food to their neighbors.
20. Mordecai wrote these things down in a scroll and sent copies to the Jews throughout Artaxerxes’ kingdom, both near and far away.
21. He made it a rule that Jews keep the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar as special days each and every year.
22. They are the days on which the Jews found rest from their enemies. The whole of Adar, the month in which sadness was turned into joy and mournful weeping into a holiday, was to be celebrated as a special time for weddings, for parties, and for sending gifts of food to friends and to the poor.
23. The Jews accepted what Mordecai had written to them—
24. how Haman, Hammedatha’s son, the Macedonian, declared war on the Jews, how he made an edict and cast lots to destroy them,