Esther 9:31

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 F25 Lebush & Schulchan, ut supra, (par. 1.) c. 686. sect. 1. , 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.