Ask your servants and they will tell you! Let the young men find favor in your eyes because we have come on a feast day. Please give {whatever you have on hand} for your servants and for your son David."

Blow [the] horn at new moon, at full moon, for our feast day,

You have summoned my horror from all around, as if for a feast day; no one on the day of Yahweh's anger [is] a fugitive and a survivor; whoever I have cared for and reared, my enemy has destroyed.

Is [the] fast I choose like this, a day for humankind to humiliate {himself}? To bow his head like a reed, and {make} his bed [on] sackcloth and ashes; you call this a fast and a day of pleasure to Yahweh?

"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.

'Why do we fast, and you do not see [it]? We humiliate our soul, and you do not notice [it]?' Look! You find delight on the day of your fast, and you oppress all your workers!

But hold fast to Yahweh your God, just as you have done up to this day.

So you must go and you shall read aloud from the scroll that you have written from my mouth the words of Yahweh in the hearing of the people [in] the temple of Yahweh on a day of fast, and also you shall read aloud in the hearing of all those of Judah who came from their towns.

But days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

holding fast to the word of life, for a source of pride to me in the day of Christ, that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.