Esther 4:3
And in every province, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. And in every province, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
In every province, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, expressed in fasting and weeping and wailing, with many lying in sackcloth and ashes. The king who issued the commandment was Xerxes the Great, the Ahasuerus of Esther, ruling Medo-Persia, and his edict ordered the massacre of the Jews. The plot was to destroy all the Jews throughout the kingdom on an appointed day and to confiscate their property. The edict was procured by Haman the Agagite out of malice against Mordecai the Jew, who refused to give him the reverence that belongs to God alone, and that hatred grew into a plot against all the Jews.
Behind Haman stood Satan, seeking to rid the earth of those who preserved the knowledge of the true God. Those overtaken by this grief were those who had failed to heed God's warning to flee for their lives from Babylon and had remained in exile, and they were now brought face to face with death. Because a decree of the Medes and Persians could not be revoked, there appeared to be no hope and the Jews seemed doomed to destruction.