This was on the 13th day of the month of Adar, and they gained respite on the 14th day, making it a day of feasting and gladness. And the Jews of Susa assembled on the 13th and f14th, and they gained respite on the 15th, making it a day of feasting and gladness. That is why the Jews of the villages, who live in unwalled towns, celebrate the 14th day of the month of Adar as one of gladness and feasting, a holiday and one for sending foods to one another.

Mordechai recorded these events and sent letters to all the Jews in all the provinces of Ahashverosh the king, near and far – charging them that they should keep the 14th and 15th days of Adar every year as days on which the Jews gained respite from their enemies, and as a month that was transformed for them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to holiday, and to make them days of feasting and gladness, and for sending foods to one another, and for giving gifts to the poor.

The Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordechai had written to them.

For Haman, the son of Hamedata the Agagite, persecutor of all the Jews, had planned to destroy the Jews, and had cast a pur, that is a lot, to terrify and destroy them. But when she came before the king, he did decree in his letters that his evil plan, which he had intended against the Jews, should be turned on its head, and they hanged him and his sons on the gallows.

So they called these days Purim, after the pur, and because of all that was in this letter, and all they had seen in this regard, and what had happened to them. The Jews enacted and undertook, upon themselves and upon their descendants, and upon all those who might join them, that they should not fail to keep these two days, according to their writings and according to their season, each and every year. And these days are remembered and performed in each and every generation in every family, in every province, in every city. These days of Purim will not fail from among the Jews, nor will their memory perish from among their descendants.