# Esther 4

> Lumin Translation

Source: https://www.lumin.faith/read/esther/4

Lumin’s own translation, drafted with AI from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, checked verse by verse against them, and approved by Lumin. Brackets mark verses not found in the earliest manuscripts.

How it was made: https://www.lumin.faith/lumin-translation.md

1. Mordecai found out everything that had been done, and he ripped his clothes, dressed in sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the heart of the city, wailing loudly and bitterly.
2. He came only as far as the area before the king’s gate, since no one wearing sackcloth could go through the king’s gate.
3. Throughout every province, in each place the king’s order and his law arrived, the Jews went into deep mourning, fasting, weeping, and wailing, and many made their beds on sackcloth and ashes.
4. Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her, and the queen was overcome with anguish. She sent clothing for Mordecai to put on so that he could remove his sackcloth, but he refused it.
5. Esther summoned Hathach, one of the royal eunuchs whom the king had assigned to serve her, and sent him to Mordecai with orders to find out what was going on and what the reason was.
6. Hathach went out to meet Mordecai in the town square before the king’s gate.
7. Mordecai reported to him everything that had happened to him, including the precise sum of silver Haman had pledged to weigh out into the royal treasury in return for wiping out the Jews.
8. He also handed him a copy of the written edict published in Susa ordering their annihilation, for him to show Esther and report to her, and to charge her to go in to the king to seek his favor and make a plea before him for her people.
9. Hathach came back and reported Mordecai’s words to Esther.
10. Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him this message for Mordecai:
11. “The king’s officials, every one of them, and the people of the king’s provinces are aware that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being called, there is a single law: death—unless the king extends the gold scepter to that person, and then he will live. As for me, I have not been summoned to go to the king for thirty days now.”
12. When they told Mordecai what Esther had said,
13. Mordecai had this answer taken back to Esther: “Do not tell yourself that being in the king’s house means you will escape when all the other Jews do not.
14. For if you insist on keeping silent at this time, relief and rescue will come for the Jews from somewhere else, but you and your father’s household will perish. And who knows whether it was for a time like this that you came into royal power?”
15. Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai,
16. “Go and bring together all the Jews who can be found in Susa, and fast on my behalf. Take no food or drink for three days, night and day. My maids and I will fast the same way. After that I will go in to the king, which is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
17. Mordecai left and carried out all of Esther’s instructions to him.

## Nearby chapters

[Esther 3](https://www.lumin.faith/read/esther/3.md)
[Esther 5](https://www.lumin.faith/read/esther/5.md)

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