New English [1970], THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE) [word count] [B16000].
To look up a word in a dictionary, select the word with your mouse and press 'd' on your keyboard.
A plot against the Jews
1 After this King Artaxerxes promoted Haman son of Hamadathus
the Bugaean, advancing him and giving him precedence
above all the King's Friends.
2 So all who were at court did obeisance
to Haman, for so the king had commanded; but Mardochaeus did
not do obeisance.
3 Then the king's courtiers said to him, ‘Mardochaeus,
why do you flout the king's command?’
4 Day by day they
challenged him, but he refused to listen to them. Then they informed
Haman that Mardochaeus was resisting the king's command.
5 Mardochaeus had told them that he was a Jew. So when Haman
learnt that Mardochaeus was not doing obeisance to him, he was
6 infuriated and plotted to exterminate all the Jews under Artaxerxes’
rule.
7 In the twelfth year of King Artaxerxes he arrived at a decision by
casting lots, taking the days and the months one by one, to decide
on one day for the destruction of the whole race of Mardochaeus.
The lot fell on the thirteenth note day of the month Adar.
8 Then Haman said to King Artaxerxes: ‘There is a certain nation
-- --
A plot against the Jews
dispersed among the other nations of your empire. Their laws are
different from those of every other nation; they do not keep your
majesty's laws. It is not to your majesty's advantage to tolerate
them.
9 If it please your majesty, let an order be made for their
destruction; and I will contribute ten thousand talents of silver to
the royal treasury.’
10 So the king took off his signet-ring and gave it to
Haman to seal the decree against the Jews.
11 ‘Keep the money, and
deal with these people as you will’, he said.
12 On the thirteenth day of the first month the king's secretaries were
summoned, and in accordance with Haman's instructions, they wrote
in the name of King Artaxerxes to his army commanders and
governors in every province from India to Ethiopia. There were a
hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all, and each was addressed
in its own language.
13 Instructions were dispatched by courier to all
the empire of Artaxerxes to exterminate the Jewish race, on a given
day of the twelfth month, Adar, and to plunder their possessions.]
New English [1970], THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE) [word count] [B16000].
|
