When the report about the queen goes out to all the women, it will cause them to despise their husbands. They'll say, "King Ahasuerus ordered Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she wouldn't come.'

Every day Mordecai would walk back and forth in front of the court of the harem to find out about Esther's well-being and what was happening to her.

After that the young woman would go in to the king, and whatever she asked for would be given to her to take with her from the harem to the palace.

In the evening she would go into the palace and in the morning she would return to the second harem, into the care of Shaashgaz, the king's eunuch who was in charge of the mistresses. She would not go again to the king unless the king wanted her and she was called for by name.

All the king's ministers who were in the king's gate would kneel and bow down to Haman, because the king had commanded that Haman be honored in this way. Mordecai, however, would not kneel and would not bow down.

They asked him this day after day, and he would not listen to them, so they told Haman to see whether or not Mordecai would get away with his disobedience, since he also had told them that he was Jewish.

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel and bow down to him, he flew into a rage.

When Esther's young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was greatly distressed. She sent clothes for Mordecai to put on so he could take off the sackcloth that he had on, but he would not take them.

Mordecai told him everything that had happened and the exact amount of money that Haman had said he would pay into the king's treasury in order to destroy the Jewish people.

Haman told himself, "Whom would the king desire to honor more than me?" Haman answered the king, "For a man whom the king desires to honor,

Indeed, I and my people have been sold to be annihilated, killed, and destroyed. If we had just been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because the trouble wouldn't have been sufficient to bother the king."

Then King Ahasuerus asked Queen Esther, "Who is this, and where is the person who would dare do this?"