17 In every province and every city where the king’s command and edict reached, gladness and joy took place among the Jews. There was a celebration and a holiday.[a](A) And many of the ethnic groups of the land professed themselves to be Jews because fear of the Jews(B) had overcome them.

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Footnotes

  1. 8:17 Lit good day

Will the fast I choose be like this:
A day for a person to deny himself,
to bow his head like a reed,
and to spread out sackcloth and ashes?(A)
Will you call this a fast
and a day acceptable to the Lord?

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So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.(A)

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Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast(A) and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.

When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth,(B) and sat in ashes.

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