1 Queen Esther also, being seized as it were with the agony of death, resorted to the Lord: 2 and laid away her glorious apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and mourning: and instead of the most excellent ointments, she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of the ornaments of her joy she covered with her tangled hair. 3 And she prayed to the Lord, the God of Israel, saying, O my Lord, you only are our King: help me that am desolate and have no other helper but you: 4 for my danger is in mine hand. 5 From my youth up I have heard in the tribe of my family, that you, O Lord, took Israel from among all the nations, and our fathers from all their progenitors, for a perpetual inheritance, and did perform for them whatever you did promise. 6 And now we have sinned before you, and you have given us into the hands of our enemies, 7 because we glorified their gods: O Lord, you are righteous. 8 Nevertheless it satisfies them not, that we are in bitter captivity: but they have stricken hands with their idols, 9 that they will abolish the thing that you with your mouth have ordained, and destroy your inheritance, and stop the mouth of them that praise you, and quench the glory of your house, and your altar, 10 and open the mouths of the heathen to set forth the virtues of * Gr. vain things. idols, and that a fleshly king shall be magnified for ever. 11 O Lord, give not your sceptre to them that be nothing, and let them not laugh at our fall; but turn their device upon themselves, and make him an example, that has begun this against us. 12 Remember, O Lord, make yourself known in the time of our affliction, and give me boldness, O King of the gods, and holder of all dominion. 13 Give me eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion: and turn his heart to hate him that fights against us, that there may be an end of him, and of them that are like-minded with him: 14 but deliver us with your hand, and help me that am desolate and have no other helper but you, O Lord. 15 You have knowledge of all things; and you know that I hate the glory of the wicked, and abhor the bed of the uncircumcised, and of every alien. 16 You know my necessity: that I abhor the sign of my high estate, which is upon mine head in the days wherein I show myself. I abhor it as a menstruous rag, and I wear it not when I am private by myself. 17 And your handmaid has not eaten at Aman’s table, neither have I honored the king’s feast, nor drunk the wine of the drink offerings. 18 Neither had your handmaid any joy since the day that I was brought hither to this present, but in you, O Lord, you God of Abraham. 19 O God, that are mighty above all, hear the voice of the forlorn, and deliver us out of the hands of the mischievous, and deliver me out of my fear.