, for
so the king had commanded. But Mordecai did not bow down before Haman.

Then the king's servants, who were in the king's gate, said to Mordecai,
"Why do you disobey the king's command?" When they had spoken to him day
after day without his listening to them, they told Haman, so as to find
out whether Mordecai's acts would be permitted, for he had told them
that he was a Jew. When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down before
him, he was very angry; but as they had told him that Mordecai was a
Jew, he decided not to lay hands on him alone but to plot to destroy
all the Jews in the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

So Haman said to King Xerxes, "There is a certain people scattered among
the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, whose laws differ from
those of every other and who do not keep the king's laws. Therefore it
is not right for the king to leave them alone. If it seems best to the
king, let an order be given to destroy them, and I will pay ten thousand
silver talents into the royal treasury."

So the king took off his ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, "The
money is yours and the people also to do with them as you wish." So
messages were sent by men on horses to all the king's provinces, to
destroy, to kill, and to put an end to all the Jews, young and old,
little children and women, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month,
and to rob them of all that they had. Then the king and Haman sat down
to drink, but the people of Susa were troubled.

When Mordecai learned all that had been done, he tore his clothes and
put on sackcloth and put ashes on his head, and went out into the city
and raised a loud and bitter cry of sorrow. And he went as far as the
king's gate, for no one could enter the gate clothed with sackcloth. In
every province, wherever the king's command went, there was great
mourning, fasting, weeping, and wailing among the Jews; and many of them
sat in sackcloth and ashes.

When Esther's maids and servants told her about it, she was greatly
troubled. She sent garments for Mordecai to put on, that he might take
off his sackcloth; but he would not accept them. So Esther called
Hathach, one of the king's servants whom he had appointed to wait on
her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this meant and how
it had happened.

So Hathach went to Mordecai at the city square in front of the king's
gate. And Mordecai told him all that had happened to him and the exact
sum of mon