ESTHER Chapter 4 (GNB)
SERAPHIM
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4:1 When 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, |
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4:2 until he came
to the entrance of the palace. He did not go in because no one wearing
sackcloth was allowed inside. |
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4:3 Throughout 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. |
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4:4 When 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. |
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4:5 Then 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. |
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4:6 Hathach went to Mordecai in the city square at the
entrance of the palace. |
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4:7 Mordecai 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. |
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4:8 He 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. |
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4:9 Hathach did this, |
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4:10 and Esther
gave him this message to take back to Mordecai: |
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4:11 "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." |
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4:12 When Mordecai
received Esther's message, |
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4:13 he sent her
this warning: "Don't imagine that you are safer than any other Jew just
because you are in the royal palace. |
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4:14 If 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!" |
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4:15 Esther sent
Mordecai this reply: |
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4:16 "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." |
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4:17 Mordecai then
left and did everything that Esther had told him to do. |
CHAPTER
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