Proverbs 12:6

³The fool’s talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.

²⁶For wicked men are found among my people. They watch, as fowlers lie in wait. They set a trap. They catch men.

⁷Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths.

¹¹If they say, “Come with us. Let’s lie in wait for blood. Let’s lurk secretly for the innocent without cause. ¹²Let’s swallow them up alive like Sheol,^[+] and whole, like those who go down into the pit. ¹³We’ll find all valuable wealth. We’ll fill our houses with plunder. ¹⁴You shall cast your lot among us. We’ll all have one purse”— ¹⁵my son, don’t walk on the path with them. Keep your foot from their path, ¹⁶for their feet run to evil. They hurry to shed blood. ¹⁷For the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird; ¹⁸but these lay in wait for their own blood. They lurk secretly for their own lives. ¹⁹So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain. It takes away the life of its owners.

¹Moreover Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Let me now choose twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David tonight. ²I will come on him while he is weary and exhausted, and will make him afraid. All the people who are with him will flee. I will strike the king only, ³and I will bring back all the people to you. The man whom you seek is as if all returned. All the people shall be in peace.”

⁴The saying pleased Absalom well, and all the elders of Israel.

¹⁵Now therefore, you with the council inform the commanding officer that he should bring him down to you tomorrow, as though you were going to judge his case more exactly. We are ready to kill him before he comes near.”

⁷Mordecai told him of all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. ⁸He also gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Susa to destroy them, to show it to Esther, and to declare it to her, and to urge her to go in to the king to make supplication to him, and to make request before him for her people.

⁹Hathach came and told Esther the words of Mordecai. ¹⁰Then Esther spoke to Hathach, and gave him a message to Mordecai: ¹¹“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that whoever, whether man or woman, comes to the king into the inner court without being called, there is one law for him, that he be put to death, except those to whom the king might hold out the golden scepter, that he may live. I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.”

¹²They told Esther’s words to Mordecai. ¹³Then Mordecai asked them to return this answer to Esther: “Don’t think to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house any more than all the Jews. ¹⁴For if you remain silent now, then relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Who knows if you haven’t come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

⁴For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for male and female slaves, I would have held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the king’s loss.”

⁵Then King Ahasuerus said to Esther the queen, “Who is he, and where is he who dared presume in his heart to do so?”

⁶Esther said, “An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.

¹²When it was day, some of the Jews banded together and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul.

³asking a favor against him, that he would summon him to Jerusalem, plotting to kill him on the way.