And after these things King Artaxerxes glorified Haman son of Hamadathos, a Bougaean, and exalted him, and gave him the first seat above all his friends.
Every day they spoke to him, and he did not listen to them. And they pointed out to Haman that Mardochaeus was setting himself against the words of the king; and Mardochaeus had shown them that he was a Jew.
And he made a decree in the twelfth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, and cast lots day by day and month by month, so as to destroy in one day the race of Mardochaeus; and the lot fell on the fourteenth of the month, which is Adar.
And he spoke to King Artaxerxes, saying: There exists a nation scattered among the nations throughout all your kingdom, and their laws are different from those of all the nations, and they disregard the laws of the king; and it is not expedient for the king to let them be.
And the king's scribes were called in the first month, on the thirteenth, and they wrote as Haman ordered, to the generals and to the rulers throughout every province from India to Ethiopia, to the hundred and twenty-seven provinces, and also to the rulers of the nations according to their own language, by King Artaxerxes.
And it was sent by couriers into the kingdom of Artaxerxes, to destroy the race of the Jews on one day of the twelfth month, which is Adar, and to plunder their goods. And of the letter this is the copy: The great king Artaxerxes writes thus to the rulers of the hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia, and to the local governors subordinate to them: Having ruled over many nations and having gained mastery over the whole inhabited world, I purposed — not lifted up by the boldness of power, but always conducting myself with greater fairness and with gentleness — to establish for ever the lives of my subjects free from every wave, and, rendering the kingdom civilized and passable to its uttermost bounds, to renew the peace longed for by all people. And when I inquired of my counsellors how this might be brought to its end, Haman — who excels among us in sound judgement, and has been proved unchanging in goodwill and of steadfast fidelity, and has carried off the second honour of the kingdom — pointed out to us that there is mingled among all the tribes throughout the inhabited world a certain ill-disposed people, opposed in its laws to every nation, continually setting aside the decrees of the kings, so as not to submit to the joint government blamelessly directed by us. Having therefore understood that this nation alone stands perpetually in opposition to every man, following a strange manner of life by its laws, and ill-disposed toward our affairs, bringing to pass the worst of evils, so that the kingdom does not attain stability, we have therefore commanded that those indicated to you in the writings of Haman, who is set over affairs and is our second father, all of them, together with wives and children, be destroyed root and branch by the swords of their enemies, without any pity or sparing, on the fourteenth of the twelfth month, Adar, of the present year; so that those who of old and now are ill-disposed to us, having in one day gone down violently into Hades, may for the time to come afford us stable and untroubled affairs to the end.