Esther 14

Brenton's English Septuagint

¹ And queen Esther betook herself for refuge to the Lord, being taken as it were in the agony of death. And having taken off her glorious apparel, she put on garments of distress and mourning; and instead of grand perfumes she filled her head with ashes and dung, and she greatly brought down her body, and she filled every place of her glad adorning with the torn curls of her hair. And she besought the Lord God of Israel, and said,

³ O my Lord, thou alone art our king: help me who am destitute, and have no helper but thee, for my danger is near at hand.

⁵ I have heard from my birth, in the tribe of my kindred, that thou, Lord, tookest Israel out of all the nations, and our fathers out of all their kindred for a perpetual inheritance, and hast wrought for them all that thou hast said.

⁶ And now we have sinned before thee, and thou hast delivered us into the hands of our enemies, because we honoured their gods: thou art righteous, O Lord.

⁸ But now they have not been contented with the bitterness of our slavery, but have laid their hands on the hands of their idols, in order to abolish the decree of thy mouth, and utterly to destroy thine inheritance, and to stop the mouth of them that praise thee, and to extinguish the glory of thine house and thine altar,

¹⁰ and to open the mouth of the Gentiles to speak the praises of vanities, and in order that a mortal king should be admired for ever.

¹¹ O Lord, do not resign thy sceptre to them that are not, and let them not laugh at our fall, but turn their counsel against themselves, and make an example of him who has begun to injure us.

¹² Remember us, O Lord, manifest thyself in the time of our affliction, and encourage me, O king of gods, and ruler of all dominion.

¹³ Put harmonious speech into my mouth before the lion, and turn his heart to hate him that fights against us, to the utter destruction of him and of them that consent with him.

¹⁴ But deliver us by thine hand, and help me who am destitute, and have none but thee, O Lord.

¹⁵ Thou knowest all things, and knowest that I hate the glory of transgressors, and that I abhor the couch of the uncircumcised, and of every stranger.

¹⁶ Thou knowest my necessity, for I abhor the symbol of my proud station, which is upon my head in the days of my splendour: I abhor it as a menstruous cloth, and I wear it not in the days of my tranquillity.

¹⁷ And thy handmaid has not eaten at the table of Aman, and I have not honoured the banquet of the king, neither have I drunk wine of libations.

¹⁸ Neither has thy handmaid rejoiced since the day of my promotion until now, except in thee, O Lord God of Abraam.

¹⁹ O God, who hast power over all, hearken to the voice of the desperate, and deliver us from the hand of them that devise mischief; and deliver me from my fear.