{If it pleases} the king, let {a royal edict} go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of Persia and Media so that it will not be altered, that Vashti cannot come before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal position to her neighbor who [is] better than she.

When the turn came for each girl to go to King Ahasuerus, after the end of twelve months of being under the regulations of the women--for the days of their beauty treatments had to be filled, six months with the oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and women's cosmetics--

In the evening she would go and in the morning she would return to the {second harem} {under the care of} Shaashgaz, the king's eunuch in charge of the concubines. She would not go back to the king unless the king delighted in her and she was called by name.

When the turn came near for Esther daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken [her] as a daughter, to go to the king, she did not ask anything except what Hegai the eunuch of the king who was in charge of the women, advised. And Esther carried favor in the eyes of everyone that saw her.

he went up to the entrance of the gate of the king, for he could not go to the gate of the king in sackcloth.

Then Esther called Hathach from the king's eunuchs {who regularly attended to her}, and she ordered him [to go] to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why.

And he gave him a copy of the edict of the law that had been issued in Susa for their destruction to show Esther, and to inform her, and to charge her to go to the king and make supplication to him and entreat before him for her people.

"Go, gather all the Jews that are found in Susa and fast for me; do not eat or drink [for] three days, both night and day. I and my young girls will fast likewise, and then I will go to the king, which [is] not according to the law; if I perish, I perish.

And Zeresh his wife and all of his friends said to him, "Let them make a gallows fifty cubits high, and in the morning tell the king, "Let them hang Mordecai on it; then go with the king to the banquet happily." The advice pleased Haman, so he had the gallows made.