10. the ten sons of Haman, son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jewish people. But the Jewish people did not take their belongings.
11. On that day the number killed in the palace at Susa was reported to the king.
12. The king said to Queen Esther, “The Jewish people have killed and destroyed five hundred people in the palace at Susa, and they have also killed Haman’s ten sons. What have they done in the rest of the king’s empire! Now what else are you asking? I will do it! What else do you want? It will be done!”
13. Esther answered, “If it pleases the king, give the Jewish people who are in Susa permission to do again tomorrow what the king ordered for today. And let the bodies of Haman’s ten sons be hanged on the platform.”
14. So the king ordered that it be done. A law was given in Susa, and the bodies of the ten sons of Haman were hanged.
15. The Jewish people in Susa came together on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar. They killed three hundred people in Susa, but they did not take their belongings.
16. At that same time, all the Jewish people in the king’s empire also met to protect themselves and get rid of their enemies. They killed seventy-five thousand of those who hated them, but they did not take their belongings.
17. This happened on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. On the fourteenth day they rested and made it a day of joyful feasting.
18. But the Jewish people in Susa met on the thirteenth and fourteenth days of the month of Adar. Then they rested on the fifteenth day and made it a day of joyful feasting.
19. This is why the Jewish people who live in the country and small villages celebrate on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar. It is a day of joyful feasting and a day for exchanging gifts.
20. Mordecai wrote down everything that had happened. Then he sent letters to all the Jewish people in all the empire of King Xerxes, far and near.
21. He told them to celebrate every year on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar,
22. because that was when the Jewish people got rid of their enemies. They were also to celebrate it as the month their sadness was turned to joy and their crying for the dead was turned into celebration. He told them to celebrate those days as days of joyful feasting and as a time for giving food to each other and presents to the poor.
23. So the Jewish people agreed to do what Mordecai had written to them, and they agreed to hold the celebration every year.