15. And the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the spoil they did not lay their hand.
16. And the other Jews that were in the king’s provinces also gathered themselves together and stood for their lives and had rest from their enemies and slew of their foes seventy-five thousand, but they did not lay their hands on the spoil,
17. on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same they rested and made it a day of banquet and gladness.
18. But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day thereof and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested and made it a day of banquet and gladness.
19. Therefore, the Jews of the villages that dwelt in the unwalled towns made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and banquet and a good day and of sending portions one to another.
20. And Mordecai wrote these things and sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21. to establish this among them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly,
22. as the days in which the Jews had rest from their enemies and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy and from mourning into a good day, that they should make them days of banquet and joy and of sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor.
23. And the Jews accepting this began to do as Mordecai had written unto them.
24. Because Haman, the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them and to destroy them,
25. but when she came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
26. Therefore, they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. Therefore, for all the words of this letter and of that which they had seen concerning this matter and which had come unto them,
27. the Jews ordained and took upon them and upon their seed and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing and according to their appointed time each year,