the immediate death of Mordecai; he has a gallows made, fifty cubits high, on which he intends to hang Mordecai, and he goes to the king at once to get permission to do so. On entering into the king’s presence, Ahasuerus says to him: “What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?” Haman, thinking that the king has him in mind, says that such a man should have royal apparel, and the king’s horse to ride upon, and should ride through the city, attended by one of the great nobles, to receive the people’s homage. Thereupon the king orders Haman to attend upon Mordecai in such a procession; this he has perforce to do. The next day Esther gives her banquet; Ahasuerus and Haman hear for the first time that she is a Jewess. She then asks the king that Haman may be hanged on the gallows he has prepared for Mordecai; her request is granted, and Mordecai becomes the king’s chamberlain in his stead. The king issues another proclamation, at Esther’s request, in which power is granted to the Jews to pillage and slay their enemies. Finally the feast of Purim is instituted “because Haman ... the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them....” (ix. 24-32). It has been necessary to give this outline of the contents of the canonical Book of Esther in order to show the point of the additions in the Septuagint; for as found in the English Apocrypha the additions are taken together and treated as one whole; but by being thus separated from their contexts their _raison d’être_ is not seen. In the Septuagint the additions form elaborations of certain passages of the canonical Esther; so that in order to see the object of the additions each must be considered from the point of view of its original position.[425] (1) The first addition is given in the English Apocrypha as xi. 2-xii. 6; in the Septuagint it precedes chapter i., and takes the form of an introduction to the whole story. It tells of how Mordecai had a dream, which he interpreted as a revelation of the fact that an attempt was going to be made upon the king’s life (see ii. 21-23 in the canonical Esther). He tells the king of the threatened danger; he watches those whom the dream has revealed as the culprits, and overhears them while making their plans; he then denounces them to the king, and the conspirators, having confessed their guilt, are executed. Mordecai is promoted to a place of honour at court. The object of this addition is, therefore, to show how Mordecai first got advancement at the court of Artaxerxes (Ahasuerus).