And Esther spoke before the king yet again, and fell at his feet and cried, and pleaded with him to avert the evil of Haman the Agagite, and the scheme that he had devised against the Jews. The king extended to Esther the gold scepter, and Esther rose and stood before the king.

She said: “If it please the king, and if I have found favor before him, and if the thing seems right to the king, and if I am worthy in his eyes, let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman, son of Hamedata the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king's provinces. For how can I bear to see the evil that will befall my people? And how can I bear to witness the destruction of my kindred?”

Ahashverosh the king said to Esther the queen and Mordechai the Jew: “Behold, I have given Haman's house to Esther, and he himself has been hanged on the gallows because he would lift a hand against the Jews. And you, write concerning the Jews as seems good in your eyes, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's ring. But an edict written in the king's name and sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked.”

The king's scribes were summoned there and then, on the 23rd day of the 3rd month, the month of Sivan, and it was written exactly as Mordechai instructed, to the Jews and to the satraps, and to the governors and the princes of the provinces from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces, to each province in its own script and to each people in its own tongue, and to the Jews in their own script and their own tongue.