15. For the Jews that were in Shushan assembled on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the prey they laid not their hand.
16. But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces assembled, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, (but they laid not their hands on the prey.)
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 feasting and gladness.
18. But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled on the thirteenth day of the month, and on the fourteenth of it: and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting 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 feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.
20. And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh 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 rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day, that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.
23. And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written to them;
24. Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all 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;