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There was once a king named
Ahasuerus with a very large kingdom who had a big party for all of his
servants. After that, the king had another big party for all the common
folk. During this party, the king called for his queen, to show off her
beauty to all his subjects ... But the queen refused to obey the king. This
angered the king terribly, so he decided to give her royal position to
another woman because she was a poor example to all the women of the
kingdom.
There was a search made among
all the beautiful young maidens in the kingdom and Esther was chosen to be
the new queen. But one thing nobody knew, except for Esther and her cousin
Mordecai, was that Esther was Jewish. Mordecai advised Ester to keep it a
secret or she would never be allowed to be queen.
In the meantime, Mordecai
overheard two of the king's guards plotting to kill the king, so he told
Esther, and she informed the king. The two guards were hung and Mordecai's
loyalty was recorded in the official records, though the king didn't know
who Mordecai was.
Next, the king made a man
named Haman top prince in the kingdom. Everyone bowed to him, but Mordecai
would not ... A Jewish man bows to nobody but God. This made Haman very mad
and when he discovered that Mordecai was a Jew, Haman planned to destroy
ALL the Jews in the entire kingdom! He told the king that there were
people in the kingdom with different laws than the king, so he suggested
that a law be written to destroy them on a certain day. The king, who
didn't know the whole story, agreed to Haman's plan, and the law was
written.
When Mordecai heard about
Haman's plan, he sent a message to Esther to ask the king to stop this
plan. So Esther invited the king and Haman to a banquet and she told the
king all about Haman's plan, right in front of Haman himself.
Haman was hung on the same
gallows that he had planned to hang Mordecai on, and Haman's plan never
came to pass. Now the Jewish people have a celebration every year in
memory of what happened in this story about Esther.
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Spirit of Truth
