1 Now when Mordecai found out all that
was done, Mordecai tore his clothes and
put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out
into the middle of the city, and wailed
loudly and bitterly.

2 He came even before the king’s gate,
for no one is allowed inside the king’s gate
clothed with sackcloth.

3 In every province, wherever the king’s
commandment and his decree came, there
was great mourning among the Jews, and
fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and
many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4 Esther’s maidens and her eunuchs
came and told her this, and the queen was
exceedingly grieved. She sent clothing to
Mordecai, to replace his sackcloth, but he
didn’t receive it.

5 Then Esther called for Hathach, one
of the king’s eunuchs, whom he had appointed to attend her, and commanded
him to go to Mordecai, to find out what this
was, and why it was.

6 So Hathach went out to Mordecai, to
the city square which was before the king’s
gate.

7 Mordecai told him of all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of the
money that Haman had promised to pay to
the king’s treasuries for the destruction of
the Jews.

8 He also gavehim the copy ofthe writing
of the decree that was given out in Susa to
destroy them, to show it to Esther, and to
declare it to her, and to urge her to go in to
the king to make supplication to him, and
to make request before him for her people.