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 ran through the city crying
loudly, “An innocent nation is
being destroyed!”
2 When he came
to the entrance of the palace, he
stopped. He did not go in because no
one in sackcloth and ashes was allowed
inside.
3 Throughout all the
provinces, wherever the king's proclamation
was made known, there
was loud mourning among the Jews.
They wept, wailed, and put on sackcloth
and 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, and
told him to go to Mordecai and get
the details of what was happening. note
7 Mordecai told him everything that
had happened and how Haman had
promised to put 375 tons of silver
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 so that
she might go and plead with the king
and beg him to have mercy on her
people. “Tell her,” he said, “to remember
the days when she was just
an ordinary person being brought up
under my care. Now, since Haman,
the king's prime minister, has spoken
against us and demands our
death, she must pray to the Lord and
then speak to the king about us. She
must save us from death.”
9 So 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 will be sentenced
to death. Everyone in the empire
knows that. Only if the king
holds out his gold scepter to him can
his life be spared. But it has been a
month now since the king has sent
for me.”
12 When Mordecai received Esther's
message,
13 he sent her this
warning: “Esther, don't imagine that
you are safer than any of the other
Jews in the empire.
14 If you keep
quiet at a time like this, help will
come to the Jews in some other way
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 gather 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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