Esther 9:20-30

20Mordecai wrote down all these events. He sent letters to all the Jews who were living in all the regions where King Xerxes ruled.

21He told them that they should have a holiday on the 14th and 15th days of Adar every year.

22They should do that to remember the time when they became safe from their enemies. That was the month when they became happy and they were no longer sad. They should eat a feast and they should send gifts of food to each other to show their joy. They should also give gifts to poor people.

23The Jews agreed to do everything that Mordecai had written in the letters. They had a feast every year to remember what had happened.

24They remembered what Hammedatha's son, Haman, the descendant of Agag, had done. He had been the enemy of the Jews and he had tried to destroy them all. He had thrown dice, called Purim, to choose the day when he would attack them and kill them.

25But Esther went to tell the king what Haman was doing. Then the king stopped the evil thing that Haman wanted to do against the Jews. The king wrote a command to say that Haman should die. The same thing that Haman wanted to do to the Jews should happen to him instead. The bodies of Haman and his sons hung on the wooden tower that his men had built.

26So the Jews call the days of their feast ‘Purim’. That was the name of the dice that Haman used. They did this because of what Mordecai wrote in his letter. They wanted to remember everything that had happened to them.

27They made a rule for all the Jews, their descendants, and any other people who came to join them. The rule said that they must all have a holiday on those two days every year. They must do what Mordecai had written in his letter to them.

28From that time, every Jew must remember to keep the days of Purim as a holiday. Every Jewish family and their children must continue to do this. They must do it in all the cities and all the regions, wherever they lived. And their descendants must continue to do it every year, to remember what happened.

29Then Abihail's daughter, Queen Esther, and Mordecai wrote another letter. Esther used her authority to say that what Mordecai had written about the feast of Purim was true.

30So they sent letters to all the Jews who lived in the 127 regions of Xerxes' kingdom. The message was to help them live safely in peace.