Esther 4

¹ When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and bitter cry; ² and he went up to the king’s gate, for no man might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth.

³ In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and lamenting; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

⁴ When Esther’s maidens and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was greatly distressed; and she sent garments to clothe Mordecai, that he might take off his sackcloth; but he would not accept them. ⁵ Then Esther called Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, whom he had appointed to attend her, and commanded him to go to Mordecai, to know what this was, and why it was.

⁶ Hathach went out to Mordecai to the city in the open place of the king’s gate. ⁷ Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the sum of money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews, ⁸ and gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Shushan for their destruction, to show to Esther, and to make her understand, and to command her to go in to the king, to make supplication to him, and to plead before him for her people.

⁹ Hathach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai. ¹⁰ Then Esther spoke to Hathach, and gave him a command to return to Mordecai, ¹¹ saying, “All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the king, who has not been called, he has but one law; that he shall surely be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter, that he may live. Yet I have not been called to go in to the king these thirty days.”

¹² Hathach told Esther’s words to Mordecai. ¹³ Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, “Don’t think within yourself that you shall escape in the king’s palace any more than all the Jews. ¹⁴ For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

¹⁵ Then Esther commanded to answer Mordecai, ¹⁶ “Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and don’t eat or drink three days, night or day; I and my maidens will also fast in the same way. And so I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.”

¹⁷ So Mordecai went his way, and did according to all that Esther commanded him.