¹¹ Every day Mordecai paced back and forth near the courtyard of the harem to see if he could find out some news, any news, about Esther.

¹² Before going in to the king, each young woman went through 12 months of beauty treatments, as the harem’s rules prescribed. For the first 6 months the women were treated with the palace’s finest myrrh oil, and that was followed by 6 months in perfume and other women’s cosmetics. ¹³ This is how a young woman would go in to the king: each woman was allowed to take whatever she wanted or needed from the harem into the king’s rooms.