Esther 10–11

Chapter 10

⁴Then Mardocheus said, God hath done these things. ⁵For I remember a dream which I saw concerning these matters, and nothing thereof hath failed. ⁶A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water: this river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen: ⁷And the two dragons are I and Aman. ⁸And the nations were those that were assembled to destroy the name of the Jews: ⁹And my nation is this Israel, which cried to God, and were saved: for the Lord hath saved his people, and the Lord hath delivered us from all those evils, and God hath wrought signs and great wonders, which have not been done among the Gentiles. ¹⁰Therefore hath he made two lots, one for the people of God, and another for all the Gentiles. ¹¹And these two lots came at the hour, and time, and day of judgment, before God among all nations. ¹²So God remembered his people, and justified his inheritance. ¹³Therefore those days shall be unto them in the month Adar, the fourteenth and fifteenth day of the same month, with an assembly, and joy, and with gladness before God, according to the generations for ever among his people.

Chapter 11

¹In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemeus and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and Ptolemeus his son, brought this epistle of Phurim, which they said was the same, and that Lysimachus the son of Ptolemeus, that was in Jerusalem, had interpreted it. ²In the second year of the reign of Artaxerxes the great, in the first day of the month Nisan, Mardocheus the son of Jairus, the son of Semei, the son of Cisai, of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream; ³Who was a Jew, and dwelt in the city of Susa, a great man, being a servitor in the king’s court. ⁴He was also one of the captives, which Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon carried from Jerusalem with Jechonias king of Judea; and this was his dream: ⁵Behold a noise of a tumult, with thunder, and earthquakes, and uproar in the land: ⁶And, behold, two great dragons came forth ready to fight, and their cry was great. ⁷And at their cry all nations were prepared to battle, that they might fight against the righteous people. ⁸And lo a day of darkness and obscurity, tribulation and anguish, affliction and great uproar, upon the earth. ⁹And the whole righteous nation was troubled, fearing their own evils, and were ready to perish. ¹⁰Then they cried unto God, and upon their cry, as it were from a little fountain, was made a great flood, even much water. ¹¹The light and the sun rose up, and the lowly were exalted, and devoured the glorious.

¹²Now when Mardocheus, who had seen this dream, and what God had determined to do, was awake, he bare this dream in mind, and until night by all means was desirous to know it.