Esther 4 - Hebrew Names version (HNV)

¹ Now when Mordekhai found out all that was done, Mordekhai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and wailed loudly and a bitterly.

² He came even before the king's gate, for no one is allowed inside the king's gate clothed with sackcloth.

³ In every province, wherever the king's mitzvah and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

⁴ Ester's maidens and her eunuchs came and told her this, and the queen was exceedingly grieved. She sent clothing to Mordekhai, to replace his sackcloth; but he didn't receive it.

⁵ Then Ester called for Hatakh, one of the king's eunuchs, whom he had appointed to attend her, and commanded him to go to Mordekhai, to find out what this was, and why it was.

⁶ So Hatakh went out to Mordekhai, to city square which was before the king's gate.

⁷ Mordekhai told him of all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king's treasuries for the destruction of the Jews.

⁸ He also gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Shushan to destroy them, to show it to Ester, and to declare it to her, and to urge her to go in to the king, to make supplication to him, and to make request before him, for her people.

⁹ Hatakh came and told Ester the words of Mordekhai.

¹⁰ Then Ester spoke to Hatakh, and gave him a message to Mordekhai:

¹¹ *All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, know, that whoever, whether man or woman, comes to the king into the inner court without being called, there is one law for him, that he be put to death, except those to whom the king might hold out the golden scepter, that he may live. I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.*

¹² They told to Mordekhai Ester's words.

¹³ Then Mordekhai asked them return answer to Ester, *Don't think to yourself that you will escape in the king's house any more than all the Jews.

¹⁴ For if you remain silent now, then relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Who knows if you haven't come to the kingdom for such a time as this?*

¹⁵ Then Ester asked them to answer Mordekhai,

¹⁶ *Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.*

¹⁷ So Mordekhai went his way, and did according to all that Ester had commanded him.