To set up these days of Purim in their times, as Mordecai the Jew set up to them, and Esther the queen, and as they set up for their souls and for their seed, the words of fastings and their cry:

Will this be the fast I shall choose? a day for a man to humble his soul? to bend his head as a bulrush, and he will place sackcloth and ashes? wilt thou call this a fast and a day of acceptance to Jehovah.

Is not this the fast I shall choose? to loose the bands of injustice, to shake off the bundles of the yoke, and to send away the broken free, and ye shall break every yoke?

And I, in their being sick, my clothing sackcloth: I humbled my soul in fasting, and my prayer shall be turned back upon my bosom.

And when ye fast, be not, as hypocrites, of gloomy aspect: for they conceal their faces that they might appear to men fasting. Verily I say to you, That they have their reward.

And thou fasting, anoint thy head, and wash thy face;

That thou mightest not appear to men fasting, but to thy Father which in secret; and thy Father which in secret, will give back to thee openly.

For what did we fast, and thou sawest not? we humbled our soul and thou wilt not know? Behold, in the day of your fasting ye will find desire, and ye will exact all your labors.

Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh, and this seventy years, fasting, fasted ye to me, me?

behold, for contention and strife ye will fast, and to strike with the fist of injustice: ye shall not fast as today to cause your voice to be heard on high.