3 After these things, King [a]Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite and advanced him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him.
2 And all the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and did reverence to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or do him reverence.
3 Then the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate said to Mordecai, Why do you transgress the king’s command?
4 Now when they spoke to him day after day and he paid no attention to them, they told Haman to see whether Mordecai’s conduct would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew.
5 And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or do him reverence, he was very angry.
6 But he scorned laying hands only on Mordecai. So since they had told him Mordecai’s nationality, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.
7 In the first month, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, Haman caused Pur, that is, lots, to be cast before him day after day [to find a lucky day for his venture], month after month, until the twelfth, the month of Adar.
8 Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from every other people, neither do they keep the king’s laws. Therefore it is not for the king’s profit to tolerate them.
9 If it pleases the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, that it may be brought into the king’s treasuries.
10 And the king took his signet ring from his hand [with which to seal his letters by the king’s authority] and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy.
11 And the king said to Haman, The silver is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you.
12 Then the king’s secretaries were called in on the thirteenth day of the first month, and all that Haman had commanded was written to the king’s chief rulers and to the governors who were over all the provinces and to the princes of each people, to every province in its own script and to each people in their own language; it was written in the name of King Ahasuerus and it was sealed with the king’s [signet] ring.
13 And letters were sent by special messengers to all the king’s provinces—to destroy, to slay, and to do away with all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to seize their belongings as spoil.
14 A copy of the writing was to be published and given out as a decree in every province to all the peoples to be ready for that day.
15 The special messengers went out in haste by order of the king, and the decree was given out in Shushan, the capital. And the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed [at the strange and alarming decree].
Footnotes
- Esther 3:1 There seems to be little doubt that King Ahasuerus is to be identified with the well-known Xerxes, who reigned from 486 to 465 b.c. The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary (Merrill C. Tenney, ed.) gives four close similarities between them which support this identification. Also, “the Ahasuerus of Ezra 4:6, to whom were written accusations against the Jews of Jerusalem, is in all probability the same Xerxes, although sometimes identified with Cambyses son of Cyrus.”