1 And the king levied [a tax] upon [his] kingdom both by land and sea.
2 And [as for] his strength and valour, and the wealth and glory of his kingdom, behold, they are written in the book of the Persians and Medes, for a memorial.
3 And Mardochæus was viceroy to king Artaxerxes, and was a great man in the kingdom, and honoured by the Jews, and passed his life beloved of all his nation.
3 [And Mardochæus said, These things have been done of God.
3 For I remember the dream which I had concerning these matters: for not one particular of them has failed.
3 [There was] the little fountain, which became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water. The river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen.
3 And the two serpents are I and Aman.
3 And the nations are those [nations] that combined to destroy the name of the Jews.
3 But [as for] my nation, this is Israel, [even] they that cried to God, and were delivered: for the Lord delivered his people, and the Lord rescued us out of all these calamities; and God wrought such signs and great wonders as have not been done among the nations.
3 Therefore did he ordain two lots, one for the people of God, and one for all the [other] nations.
3 And these two lots came for an appointed season, and for a day of judgment, before God, and for all the nations.
3 And God remembered his people, and vindicated his inheritance.
3 And they shall observe these days, in the month Adar, on the fourteenth and on the fifteenth [day] of the month, with an assembly, and joy and gladness before God, throughout the generations for ever among his people Israel.
3 In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said that he was a priest and a Levite, and Ptolemy his son, brought in the published letter of Phruræ, which they said existed, and [which] Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy, who was in Jerusalem, had interpreted.]