Esther 9: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

On the thirteenth day of Adar, the day set for their destruction, the Jews across the empire gather to defend themselves and kill those who sought to harm them, and the king's officials help them because they fear Mordecai. In Susa they kill five hundred men and Haman's ten sons, then, at Esther's request, three hundred more the next day and hang the bodies of Haman's sons; in the provinces they kill seventy-five thousand. In every case they take no plunder. Mordecai and Esther then write letters establishing the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar as the yearly feast of Purim, named after the lot Haman cast.

Claim by Claim

1. 9:1
   • In the twelfth month, that is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of that month, the king's command and his decree drew near to be carried out.
   • On that day the enemies of the Jews had hoped to gain power over the Jews.
   • The situation was reversed.
   • The Jews gained power over those who hated them.
2. 9:2
   • The Jews assembled in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus.
   • The Jews assembled to lay hands on those who sought their harm.
   • No one could stand before the Jews.
   • The fear of the Jews had fallen upon all the peoples.
3. 9:3
   • All the officials of the provinces helped the Jews.
   • The satraps helped the Jews.
   • The governors helped the Jews.
   • Those who did the king's business helped the Jews.
   • The fear of Mordecai had fallen upon them.
4. 9:4
   • Mordecai was great in the king's house.
   • Mordecai's fame went out through all the provinces.
   • Mordecai grew steadily greater.
5. 9:5
   • The Jews struck all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, with killing and destruction.
   • The Jews did as they pleased to those who hated them.
6. 9:6
   • In the citadel of Susa the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men.
7. 9:7
   • The Jews killed Parshandatha.
   • The Jews killed Dalphon.
   • The Jews killed Aspatha.
8. 9:8
   • The Jews killed Poratha.
   • The Jews killed Adalia.
   • The Jews killed Aridatha.
9. 9:9
   • The Jews killed Parmashta.
   • The Jews killed Arisai.
   • The Jews killed Aridai.
   • The Jews killed Vajezatha.
10. 9:10
    • These ten were the sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha.
    • Haman was the enemy of the Jews.
    • The Jews killed the ten sons of Haman.
    • The Jews did not lay their hand on the plunder.
11. 9:11
    • On that day the number of those killed in the citadel of Susa was brought before the king.
12. 9:12
    • The king said to Esther the queen that in the citadel of Susa the Jews had killed and destroyed five hundred men and the ten sons of Haman.
    • The king asked what the Jews had done in the rest of the king's provinces.
    • The king asked Esther what her petition was.
    • The king said her petition would be granted to her.
    • The king asked what her further request was.
    • The king said her request would be done.
13. 9:13
    • Esther said that if it pleased the king, let it be granted to the Jews in Susa to do tomorrow also according to this day's decree.
    • Esther said that let Haman's ten sons be hanged on the gallows.
14. 9:14
    • The king commanded that it be done so.
    • A decree was given in Susa.
    • They hanged Haman's ten sons.
15. 9:15
    • The Jews in Susa assembled also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar.
    • They killed three hundred men in Susa.
    • They did not lay their hand on the plunder.
16. 9:16
    • The rest of the Jews in the king's provinces assembled.
    • They stood for their lives.
    • They gained rest from their enemies.
    • They killed seventy-five thousand of those who hated them.
    • They did not lay their hands on the plunder.
17. 9:17
    • This was on the thirteenth day of the month Adar.
    • On the fourteenth day of that month they rested.
    • They made the fourteenth day a day of feasting and gladness.
18. 9:18
    • The Jews in Susa assembled on the thirteenth day of that month.
    • The Jews in Susa assembled on the fourteenth day of that month.
    • On the fifteenth day of that month they rested.
    • They made the fifteenth day a day of feasting and gladness.
19. 9:19
    • Therefore the rural Jews, who dwell in the unwalled towns, keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar as a day of gladness and feasting.
    • They keep it as a holiday.
    • They send portions of food to one another.
20. 9:20
    • Mordecai wrote these things.
    • Mordecai sent letters to all the Jews in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far.
21. 9:21
    • Mordecai wrote to establish among them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day of that month every year.
22. 9:22
    • These were the days on which the Jews gained rest from their enemies.
    • This was the month that was turned for them from sorrow to gladness and from mourning to a holiday.
    • They were to make them days of feasting and gladness.
    • They were to send portions of food to one another.
    • They were to give gifts to the poor.
23. 9:23
    • The Jews took upon themselves what they had begun to do.
    • The Jews took upon themselves what Mordecai had written to them.
24. 9:24
    • Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite was the enemy of all the Jews.
    • Haman had plotted against the Jews to destroy them.
    • Haman had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to crush them and to destroy them.
25. 9:25
    • When Esther came before the king, the king commanded by letters that Haman's wicked device against the Jews should return upon his own head.
    • The king commanded that Haman and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
    • The Hebrew is ambiguous as to whether the subject who came before the king was Esther or the matter itself.
26. 9:26
    • Therefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur.
    • This was done because of all the words of this letter.
    • This was done because of what they had seen concerning this matter.
    • This was done because of what had come upon them.
27. 9:27
    • The Jews ordained and took upon themselves, and upon their descendants, and upon all who joined themselves to them, that it should not fail.
    • They ordained that they would keep these two days according to their writing and according to their appointed time every year.
28. 9:28
    • These days were to be remembered and kept in every generation, every family, every province, and every city.
    • These days of Purim were not to fail from among the Jews.
    • The memory of these days was not to perish from their descendants.
29. 9:29
    • Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew wrote with all authority.
    • They wrote to confirm this second letter of Purim.
30. 9:30
    • He sent letters to all the Jews in the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus.
    • The letters contained words of peace and truth.
31. 9:31
    • The letters were sent to confirm these days of Purim at their appointed times.
    • Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined these days upon them.
    • They had decreed these days for themselves and for their descendants.
    • The decree included the matters of the fastings and their crying out.
32. 9:32
    • The decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim.
    • It was written in the book.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

9:1

Adar is the twelfth and last month of the Hebrew year, falling in late February and March. Two royal orders are in play, both issued earlier in the book: Haman's decree fixing this day for the destruction of the Jews, and a second decree, issued after Haman's fall, allowing the Jews to arm and defend themselves. Persian law treated a sealed royal edict as irrevocable, so the first order could not simply be canceled: it had to be countered by a second.

9:2

The Persian empire was divided into 127 large regions called provinces. Jewish families lived scattered across many of them, far from one another.

9:3

This is the Persian chain of command from the top down: the provincial officials, the satraps who governed the large territorial units, the lesser governors under them, and the royal administrators who handled taxes, records and correspondence.

9:4

A palace is the very large house where a king lives and rules. Being important there meant Mordecai worked close to the king.

9:6

Susa was one of the Persian royal capitals. The 'fortress' or 'citadel' was the fortified upper city holding the palace, treasury and government buildings, distinct from the ordinary town spread out below it.

9:7

The ten names are Persian rather than Hebrew, and several are otherwise unknown. In Hebrew manuscripts and printed Bibles they are traditionally laid out in a single narrow column, one name to a line.

9:10

The second decree had expressly permitted the Jews to seize the goods of those who attacked them. The narrator states three times (here and in verses 15 and 16) that they took nothing, marking a deliberate refusal of a right they had been granted.

9:13

The Hebrew word means a stake, pole or tree, not a gallows for hanging by the neck. Persian practice was to fasten or impale the bodies of executed enemies on such poles for public display. Haman's sons were already dead (verse 10); what is asked for is the public exposure of their corpses.

9:16

The Hebrew text reads seventy-five thousand; the ancient Greek translation reads fifteen thousand. Large round figures of this kind often differ between manuscript traditions.

9:18

This explains why Purim ends up on two different days. Jews outside the capital fought one day and rested the next. Jews in Shushan fought two days, so their rest day came one day later.

9:19

Ancient settlements were either walled or unwalled, and that difference decided the date. Country people had fought on the thirteenth and rested on the fourteenth, while the fortified capital fought two days and rested on the fifteenth. The split survives in Jewish practice, where cities walled in antiquity, Jerusalem above all, keep Purim a day later than everywhere else. 'Sending portions' means sending shares of the festival food to neighbors.

9:20

Sending out a letter to establish a fixed annual observance was a recognized official form. The book presents Purim as founded by written authority in the Persian period rather than by ancient law: it appears nowhere in the laws of Moses.

9:22

Two customs are being fixed here, and both are still kept: sending prepared food to friends and neighbors, and giving money or goods to the poor.

9:24

Agag was the king of the Amalekites, the people who attacked Israel after the exodus and whom Saul was ordered to destroy (1 Samuel 15). Calling Haman 'the Agagite' places him in an old hostility, especially since Mordecai was introduced earlier as a descendant of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin, Saul's own family line. 'Pur' is not a Hebrew word; it is borrowed from Akkadian puru, a lot or die, a small marked object thrown to let chance settle a decision. Haman used it to pick the date for the killing, and the text has to explain the word because its readers would not have known it.

9:25

The Hebrew here says only 'when she/it came before the king', without naming the subject, so it can be read either as Esther coming before the king or as the matter coming before him. The verse also compresses events told separately: Haman was executed back in chapter 7, and his sons' bodies were displayed only in verse 14.

9:26

Purim is simply the Hebrew plural of pur: 'lots'. The festival is named for the lot Haman cast to choose the day.

9:27

'Everyone who joined them' means outsiders who attached themselves to the Jewish community; chapter 8 describes people in the provinces declaring themselves Jews after Mordecai's rise.

9:29

Abihail was Esther's father, named earlier at 2:15; identifying a person by parentage was standard in formal documents. What exactly distinguishes this 'second letter' from Mordecai's letter in verse 20 is disputed, and the Hebrew of these closing verses is unusually difficult.

9:30

The 127 provinces are the administrative districts described at the opening of the book as stretching from India to Cush (Nubia). They are smaller units than the twenty or so satrapies known from Persian records.

9:31

Alongside the feasting, the observance preserved a memory of fasting and lamentation, in the story, the fast Esther called for in chapter 4. Later Jewish practice keeps a fast on the day before Purim.

9:32

The book or record is not identified. It may mean the Persian royal annals mentioned earlier in the story, a separate written record of the festival's rules, or the book of Esther itself.