When Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her, the queen was greatly distressed. She sent clothes for Mordecai to put on so he would remove his sackcloth, but he refused.
All his sons got up along with all his daughters to console him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, “For I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” So his father kept weeping for him.
In each and every province where the king’s edict and law came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping and wailing. Many put on sackcloth and ashes.
So Esther summoned Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs whom he had appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to find the cause and reason for this.
Do not let a son of a foreigner who has joined himself to Adonai say, ‘Adonai will surely exclude me from His people.” Nor let the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’”
Thus says Adonai: “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears. For your work will be rewarded” —it is declaration of Adonai— “when they will return from the land of the enemy.
So he got up and went. And behold, an Ethiopian eunuch—an official who was responsible for all the treasure of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians—had traveled to Jerusalem to worship