1And the king levied a tax upon his kingdom both by land and sea.2And as for his strength and valour, and the wealth and glory of his kingdom, behold, they are written in the book of the Persians and Medes, for a memorial.3And Mardochæus was viceroy to king Artaxerxes, and was a great man in the kingdom, and honoured by the Jews, and passed his life beloved of all his nation.4And Mardochæus said, These things have been done of God.5For I remember the dream which I had concerning these matters: for not one particular of them has failed.6There was the little fountain, which became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water. The river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen.7And the two serpents are I and Aman.8And the nations are those nations that combined to destroy the name of the Jews.9But as for my nation, this is Israel, even they that cried to God, and were delivered: for the Lord delivered his people, and the Lord rescued us out of all these calamities; and God wrought such signs and great wonders as have not been done among the nations.10Therefore did he ordain two lots, one for the people of God, and one for all the other nations.11And these two lots came for an appointed season, and for a day of judgment, before God, and for all the nations.12And God remembered his people, and vindicated his inheritance.13And they shall observe these days, in the month Adar, on the fourteenth and on the fifteenth day of the month, with an assembly, and joy and gladness before God, throughout the generations for ever among his people Israel.14In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said that he was a priest and a Levite, and Ptolemy his son, brought in the published letter of Phruræ, which they said existed, and which Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy, who was in Jerusalem, had interpreted.
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