Esther 9:18-32 - The Origins Of The Feast Of Purim

¹⁸ The Jews in Shushan came together on the thirteenth and on the fourteenth day of the month. On the fifteenth day they took their rest, and made it a day of feasting and joy. ¹⁹ So the Jews of the country places living in unwalled towns make the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of feasting and joy and a good day, a day for sending offerings one to another.

²⁰ Mordecai sent letters to all the Jews in every division of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, near and far. ²¹ He ordered them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day of the same month, every year. ²² As days on which the Jews had rest from their haters, and the month which for them was turned from sorrow to joy, and from weeping to a good day: and that they were to keep them as days of feasting and joy, of sending offerings to one another and good things to the poor.

²³ The Jews gave their word to go on as they had been doing and as Mordecai had given them orders in writing. ²⁴ Because Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the hater of all the Jews, conspired for their destruction, attempting to get a decision by Pur that is, chance with a view to putting an end to them and cutting them off. ²⁵ But when the business was put before the king, he gave orders by letters that the evil design that he had made against the Jews was to be turned against him. That he and his sons were to be put to death by hanging. ²⁶ So these days were named Purim, after the name of Pur. And so, because of the words of this letter, and of what they had seen in connection with this business, and what had come to them, ²⁷ The Jews made a rule and established a custom that all their descendents should observe two days every year as ordered in the letter, at the fixed time every year. ²⁸ Those days were to be kept in memory through every generation and every family, in every division of the kingdom and every town, that there might never be a time when these days of Purim would not be kept among the Jews, or when the memory of them would go from the minds of their descendents.

²⁹ Esther the queen, daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, sent a second letter giving the force of their authority to the order about the Purim. ³⁰ He sent letters to all the Jews in the hundred and twenty-seven divisions of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with true words of peace, ³¹ Giving the force of law to these days of Purim at their fixed times, as they had been ordered by Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen. This was in keeping with the rules they had made for themselves and their descendents, in connection with their time of going without food and their cry for help. ³² The order given by Esther gave the force of law to the rules about the Purim. It was recorded in the book.