Ezra Reads the Law to the People

¹By the seventh month the people of Israel were all settled in their towns. On the first day of that month they all assembled in Jerusalem, in the square just inside the Water Gate. They asked Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law which the Lord had given Israel through Moses, to get the book of the Law.

²So Ezra brought it to the place where the people had gathered—men, women, and the children who were old enough to understand.

³There in the square by the gate he read the Law to them from dawn until noon, and they all listened attentively.

⁴Ezra was standing on a wooden platform that had been built for the occasion. The following men stood at his right: Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah; and the following stood at his left: Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam.

⁵As Ezra stood there on the platform high above the people, they all kept their eyes fixed on him. As soon as he opened the book, they all stood up.

⁶Ezra said, “Praise the Lord, the great God!” All the people raised their arms in the air and answered, “Amen! Amen!” They knelt in worship, with their faces to the ground.

⁷Then they rose and stood in their places, and the following Levites explained the Law to them: Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah.

⁸They gave an oral translation of God's Law and explained it so that the people could understand it.

⁹When the people heard what the Law required, they were so moved that they began to cry. So Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law, and the Levites who were explaining the Law told all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God, so you are not to mourn or cry.

¹⁰Now go home and have a feast. Share your food and wine with those who don't have enough. Today is holy to our Lord, so don't be sad. The joy that the Lord gives you will make you strong.”

¹¹The Levites went around calming the people and telling them not to be sad on such a holy day.

¹²So all the people went home and ate and drank joyfully and shared what they had with others, because they understood what had been read to them.

The Festival of Shelters

¹³The next day the heads of the clans, together with the priests and the Levites, went to Ezra to study the teachings of the Law.

¹⁴They discovered that the Law, which the Lord gave through Moses, ordered the people of Israel to live in temporary shelters during the Festival of Shelters.

¹⁵So they gave the following instructions and sent them all through Jerusalem and the other cities and towns: “Go out to the hills and get branches from pines, olives, myrtles, palms, and other trees to make shelters according to the instructions written in the Law.”

¹⁶So the people got branches and built shelters on the flat roofs of their houses, in their yards, in the Temple courtyard, and in the public squares by the Water Gate and by the Ephraim Gate.

¹⁷All the people who had come back from captivity built shelters and lived in them. This was the first time it had been done since the days of Joshua son of Nun, and everybody was excited and happy.

¹⁸From the first day of the festival to the last they read a part of God's Law every day. They celebrated for seven days, and on the eighth day there was a closing ceremony, as required in the Law.

Mordecai Asks for Esther's Help

¹When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes in anguish. Then he dressed in sackcloth, covered his head with ashes, and walked through the city, wailing loudly and bitterly,

²until he came to the entrance of the palace. He did not go in because no one wearing sackcloth was allowed inside.

³Throughout all the provinces, wherever the king's proclamation was made known, there was loud mourning among the Jews. They fasted, wept, wailed, and most of them put on sackcloth and lay in ashes.

⁴When Esther's servant women and eunuchs told her what Mordecai was doing, she was deeply disturbed. She sent Mordecai some clothes to put on instead of the sackcloth, but he would not accept them.

⁵Then she called Hathach, one of the palace eunuchs appointed as her servant by the king, and told him to go to Mordecai and find out what was happening and why.

⁶Hathach went to Mordecai in the city square at the entrance of the palace.

⁷Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him and just how much money Haman had promised to put into the royal treasury if all the Jews were killed.

⁸He gave Hathach a copy of the proclamation that had been issued in Susa, ordering the destruction of the Jews. Mordecai asked him to take it to Esther, explain the situation to her, and have her go and plead with the king and beg him to have mercy on her people.

⁹Hathach did this,

¹⁰and Esther gave him this message to take back to Mordecai:

¹¹“If anyone, man or woman, goes to the inner courtyard and sees the king without being summoned, that person must die. That is the law; everyone, from the king's advisers to the people in the provinces, knows that. There is only one way to get around this law: if the king holds out his gold scepter to someone, then that person's life is spared. But it has been a month since the king sent for me.”

¹²When Mordecai received Esther's message,

¹³he sent her this warning: “Don't imagine that you are safer than any other Jew just because you are in the royal palace.

¹⁴If you keep quiet at a time like this, help will come from heaven to the Jews, and they will be saved, but you will die and your father's family will come to an end. Yet who knows—maybe it was for a time like this that you were made queen!”

¹⁵Esther sent Mordecai this reply:

¹⁶“Go and get all the Jews in Susa together; hold a fast and pray for me. Don't eat or drink anything for three days and nights. My servant women and I will be doing the same. After that, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. If I must die for doing it, I will die.”

¹⁷Mordecai then left and did everything that Esther had told him to do.

⁵Plan carefully and you will have plenty; if you act too quickly, you will never have enough.

⁶The riches you get by dishonesty soon disappear, but not before they lead you into the jaws of death.

⁷The wicked are doomed by their own violence; they refuse to do what is right.

⁸Guilty people walk a crooked path; the innocent do what is right.