7 So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. ² And on the second day, as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king again said to Esther, ^(A)“What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? ^(B)Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” ³ Then Queen Esther answered, ^(C)“If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request. ^4 (D)For we have been sold, I and my people, ^(E)to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king.” ⁵ Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has dared^[a] to do this?” ⁶ And Esther said, ^(F)“A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.

⁹ Then ^(A)Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Moreover, ^(B)the gallows^[a] that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, ^(C)whose word saved the king, is standing at Haman's house, fifty cubits^[b] high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” ^10 (D)So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. ^(E)Then the wrath of the king abated.

The Feast of Purim Inaugurated

²⁰ And Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, ²¹ obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year, ²² as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into ^(A)a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.