Esther 8:7-10

Living Bible

⁷Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther and Mordecai the Jew, “I have given Esther the palace of Haman, and he has been hanged upon the gallows because he tried to destroy you. ⁸Now go ahead and send a message to the Jews, telling them whatever you want to in the king’s name, and seal it with the king’s ring so that it can never be reversed.”^[a]

^9-10Immediately the king’s secretaries were called in—it was now the 23rd day of the month of July—and they wrote as Mordecai dictated—a decree to the Jews and to the officials, governors, and princes of all the provinces from India to Ethiopia, 127 in all: the decree was translated into the languages and dialects of all the people of the kingdom. Mordecai wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed the message with the king’s ring and sent the letters by swift carriers—riders on camels, mules, and young dromedaries used in the king’s service.

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Footnotes

Esther 8:8 so that it can never be reversed. Haman’s message, too, had been sealed with the king’s ring and could not be reversed, even by the king. This was part of the famed “law of the Medes and Persians.” Now the king is giving permission for whatever other decree Mordecai can devise that will offset the first without actually canceling it.