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Mordecai Refuses to Do Obeisance

3After these events King Artaxerxes promoted Haman son of Hammedatha, a Bougean, advancing him and granting him precedence over all the king’s^* Friends. ²So all who were at court used to do obeisance to Haman,^* for so the king had commanded to be done. Mordecai, however, did not do obeisance. ³Then the king’s courtiers said to Mordecai, ‘Mordecai, why do you disobey the king’s command?’ ⁴Day after day they spoke to him, but he would not listen to them. Then they informed Haman that Mordecai was resisting the king’s command. Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew. ⁵So when Haman learned that Mordecai was not doing obeisance to him, he became furiously angry, ⁶and plotted to destroy all the Jews under Artaxerxes’ rule.

7 In the twelfth year of King Artaxerxes Haman^* came to a decision by casting lots, taking the days and the months one by one, to fix on one day to destroy the whole race of Mordecai. The lot fell on the fourteenth^* day of the month of Adar.

Decree against the Jews

8 Then Haman^* said to King Artaxerxes, ‘There is a certain nation scattered among the other nations in all your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other nation, and they do not keep the laws of the king. It is not expedient for the king to tolerate them. ⁹If it pleases the king, let it be decreed that they are to be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the king’s treasury.’ ¹⁰So the king took off his signet ring and gave it to Haman to seal the decree^* that was to be written against the Jews. ¹¹The king told Haman, ‘Keep the money, and do whatever you want with that nation.’

12 So on the thirteenth day of the first month the king’s secretaries were summoned, and in accordance with Haman’s instructions they wrote in the name of King Artaxerxes to the magistrates and the governors in every province from India to Ethiopia. There were one hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all, and the governors were addressed each in his own language. ¹³Instructions were sent by couriers throughout all the empire of Artaxerxes to destroy the Jewish people on a given day of the twelfth month, which is Adar, and to plunder their goods.

3¹⁴Copies of the document were posted in every province, and all the nations were ordered to be prepared for that day. ¹⁵The matter was expedited also in Susa. And while the king and Haman caroused together, the city of Susa^* was thrown into confusion.