What Does the Bible Say?

For the conduct of the queen will become known to all women, causing them to despise their husbands and say, ‘King Xerxes ordered Queen Vashti to be brought before him, but she did not come.’

In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who guarded the entrance, grew angry and conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.

Day after day they warned him, but he would not comply. So they reported it to Haman to see whether Mordecai’s behavior would be tolerated, since he had told them he was a Jew.

And the letters were sent by couriers to each of the royal provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—and to plunder their possessions on a single day, the thirteenth day of Adar, the twelfth month.

And there it was found recorded that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh, two of the eunuchs who guarded the king’s entrance, when they had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.

Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened. His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him, “Since Mordecai, before whom your downfall has begun, is Jewish, you will not prevail against him—for surely you will fall before him.”

“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if I have found favor in his sight, and the matter seems proper to the king, and I am pleasing in his sight, may an order be written to revoke the letters that the scheming Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces.

The single day appointed throughout all the provinces of King Xerxes was the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar.

And when the days of feasting were over, Job would send for his children to purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.

In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.

“You speak as a foolish woman speaks,” he told her. “Should we accept from God only good and not adversity?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

but ceasing in the dry season and vanishing from their channels in the heat.

If I have sinned, what have I done to You, O watcher of mankind? Why have You made me Your target, so that I am a burden to You?

When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.

Since I am already found guilty, why should I labor in vain?

that You should seek my iniquity and search out my sin—

You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.

If I sinned, You would take note, and would not acquit me of my iniquity.

How many are my iniquities and sins? Reveal to me my transgression and sin.

Since his days are determined and the number of his months is with You, and since You have set limits that he cannot exceed,

For then You would count my steps, but would not keep track of my sin.

If you say, ‘Let us persecute him, since the root of the matter lies with him,’

Do you not know that from antiquity, since man was placed on the earth,

Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?

singing to the tambourine and lyre and making merry at the sound of the flute.