15For the Jews who were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and killed three hundred men at Shushan; but on the plunder they did not lay their hands.
16But the other Jews who were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and killed seventy-five thousand of their foes, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder,
17On the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
18But the Jews who were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth day; and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
19Therefore the Jews of the villages, who dwelt in the unwalled towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.
20And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews that were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far,
21To establish among them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly,
22As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned for them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.
23And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written to them;
24Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them;
25But when Esther came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he had devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
26Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. Therefore, for all the words of this letter, and what they had seen concerning this matter, and which had come to them,
27The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their descendants, and upon all such as joined themselves to them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year;