Esther 9:31
To confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry.
To confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed,.... The fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar:
according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them; in the letters written and signed by them both:
and as they had decreed for themselves, and for their seed; see Esther 9:27,
the matters of their fastings and their cry; in commemoration of their deliverance from those distresses and calamities which occasioned fastings and prayers during the time of them; and to this sense is the former Targum; though it is certain the Jews observe the thirteenth day, the day before the two days, as a fast, and which they call the fast of Esther {y}, and have prayers on the festival days peculiar to them; but the sense Aben Ezra gives seems best, that as the Jews had decreed to keep the fasts, mentioned in Zechariah 7:5, so they now decreed to rejoice in the days of Purim.
{y} Lebush & Schulchan, ut supra, (par. 1.) c. 686. sect. 1.