¹⁷ This was ^(A)on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested and made that a day of feasting and gladness. ¹⁸ But the Jews who were in Susa gathered ^(B)on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested ^(C)on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness. ¹⁹ Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in ^(D)the rural towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, as ^(E)a holiday, and ^(F)as a day on which they send gifts of food to one another.

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 ^(G)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.