Translated by Mordecai Housman
© Copyright 2011
Chapter 3
Five years Later
1 After those events, King Achashvairosh raised the salary of Haman son of Hamdoso, a
descendant of Agag, and promoted him, raising his position above those of all the other ministers.
2 All the king’s servants in the king’s court would kneel and bow in religious worship to Haman, because the king had commanded it, but Mordechai would neither bow nor kneel.
3 The king’s servants in the king’s court asked Mordechai, «Why do you disobey the king?»
4 Day after day they would say this to him, and he wouldn’t listen, so they told Haman, to see if Mordechai would stick to his word, because he had explained to them that as a Jew he was forbidden to do it.
5 Haman saw that Mordechai would not kneel and bow to him, and he grew angry.
6 He was disdainful of killing only Mordechai, once they told him Mordechai’s nationality, so he resolved to destroy all the Jews, Mordechai’s nation, throughout Achashvairosh’s entire empire.
7 In the first month, Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Achashvairosh’s reign, Haman drew a pur, a lottery, which chose a day in the twelfth month, Adar.
The Plot to Kill the Jews
8 Haman said to King Achashvairosh, «There is a nation scattered and separated among the nations throughout your empire. Their laws are different than everyone else’s, they do not obey the king’s laws, and it does not pay for the king to tolerate their existence.
9 «If it pleases the king, let a law be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay to the executors ten thousand silver Kikar-coins for the king’s treasury.»
10 The king removed his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman son of Hamdoso the Agagite, persecutor of the Jews.
11 The king said to Haman, «Keep the money, and do whatever you want with that nation.»
12 On the thirteenth day of the first month, they convened the king’s scribes and had them write whatever Haman ordered, to the king’s officers and governors of each province, and to all the ministers of each nation; each province in its alphabet, and each nation in its language, and each letter was written and sealed with the king’s ring.
13 The letters were sent with runners to each province, stating clearly the decree to destroy, kill, and eradicate all the Jews, young and old, children and women, in one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, and to pillage their property.
14 The text of the letter also contained a public decree that was to be posted in each province, declaring simply that everyone should be ready to wage war on that day.
15 The runners left, rushed by the king’s command, and the public decree was posted in Shushan Capital. The king and Haman sat down to drink, and the Jews in the city of Shushan were unaware of what it meant.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10