Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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Mordecai Asks for Esther's Help
1 When Mordecai learned of all
that had been done, he tore his
clothes in anguish. Then he dressed
in sackcloth, covered his head with
ashes, and walked through the city,
wailing loudly and bitterly,
2 until he
came to the entrance of the palace.
He did not go in because no one
wearing sackcloth was allowed inside.
3 Throughout all the provinces,
wherever the king's proclamation
was made known, there was loud
mourning among the Jews. They
fasted, wept, wailed, and most of
them put on sackcloth and lay in
ashes.
4 When Esther's servant girls and
eunuchs told her what Mordecai was
doing, she was deeply disturbed. She
sent Mordecai some clothes to put
on instead of the sackcloth, but he
would not accept them.
5 Then she
called Hathach, one of the palace eunuchs
appointed as her servant by
the king, and told him to go to Mordecai
and find out what was happening
and why.
6 Hathach went to Mordecai
in the city square at the
entrance of the palace.
7 Mordecai
told him everything that had happened
to him and just how much
money Haman had promised to put
into the royal treasury if all the Jews
were killed.
8 He gave Hathach a
copy of the proclamation that had
been issued in Susa, ordering the destruction
of the Jews. Mordecai
asked him to take it to Esther, explain
the situation to her, and have
her go and plead with the king and
beg him to have mercy on her people.
9 Hathach did this,
10 and Esther
gave him this message to take back
to Mordecai:
11 “If anyone, man or
woman, goes to the inner courtyard
-- --
and sees the king without being
summoned, that person must die.
That is the law; everyone, from the
king's advisers to the people in the
provinces, knows that. There is only
one way to get around this law: if
the king holds out his gold scepter to
someone, then that person's life is
spared. But it has been a month
since the king sent for me.”
12 When Mordecai received Esther's
message,
13 he sent her this
warning: “Don't imagine that you
are safer than any other Jew just because
you are in the royal palace.
14 If you keep quiet at a time like
this, help will come from heaven to
the Jews, and they will be saved, but
you will die and your father's family
will come to an end. Yet who
knows—maybe it was for a time like
this that you were made queen!”
15 Esther sent Mordecai this reply:
16 “Go and get all the Jews in Susa
together; hold a fast and pray for
me. Don't eat or drink anything for
three days and nights. My servant
girls and I will be doing the same.
After that, I will go to the king, even
though it is against the law. If I must
die for doing it, I will die.”
17 Mordecai then left and did
everything that Esther had told him
to do.
Good News [1976], GOOD NEWS BIBLE WITH DEUTEROCANONICALS / APOCRYPHA Today's English Version (AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, New York) [word count] [B15000].
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