Then all the men of Yehuḏah and Binyamin gathered at Yerushalayim within three days. It was the ninth new moon, on the twentieth of the new moon. And all the people sat in the open space of the House of Elohim, trembling because of the matter and because of showers of rain.
And some of the children of Yisra’ĕl, and the priests, and the Lĕwites, and the singers, and the gatekeepers, and the Nethinim came up to Yerushalayim in the seventh year of Sovereign Artaḥshashta.
And it came to be in the new moon of Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaḥshashta the sovereign, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the sovereign. And I had never been sad in his presence.
Also, from the day I was commanded to be their governor in the land of Yehuḏah, from the twentieth year until the thirty-second year of Sovereign Artaḥshashta, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the governor’s food.
The runners went out, hastened by the sovereign’s command, and the decree was given out in the citadel of Shushan. The sovereign and Haman then sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was in confusion.
And I looked in the vision, and it came to be while I was looking, that I was in the citadel of Shushan, which is in the province of Ěylam. And I looked in the vision, and I was by the River Ulai.