Esther 2:2-16

CLV^{(i) 2} So the king's retainers who were ministering to him said:``Let them seek out maidens for the king, virgins and good-looking in appearance. ³ May the king look after supervisors in all provinces of his kingdom, and let them convene every maiden virgin, good-looking in appearance, at the castle of Susa at the house of women under the hand of Hegai, the king's eunuch who is in charge of the women; and let them be provided with their beauty-treatments. ⁴ Then let the maiden who is well-pleasing in the king's eyes be queen instead of Vashti.'' The proposal was good in the king's eyes, and he did so. ⁵ There was in the castle of Susa a Jewish man. His name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjaminite man, ⁶ whose family had been carried away from Jerusalem with the deportation that had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had deported. ⁷ And Mordecai had become foster-father to Hadassah, that is Esther, his uncle's daughter, for she had no father or mother. The maiden had a lovely shape and was good-looking in appearance. At the death of her father and her mother Mordecai took her to himself as a daughter. ⁸ Now it came to be, when the king's decree and his edict was announced and when many maidens were brought together at the castle of Susa under the hand of Hegai, then Esther was also taken to the king's house under the hand of Hegai who was in charge of the women. ⁹ The maiden was well-pleasing in his eyes, and she obtained kindness before him, so that he speeded up her beauty-treatments and her assigned rations, and he provided her with the seven selected maidens, assigned to her from the king's house. Then he let her and her maidens occupy the best quarters in the house of the women. ¹⁰ Esther had not told about her people or her kindred, for Mordecai had enjoined on her that she should not tell. ¹¹ Every day Mordecai was walking about before the court of the house of the women so as to know of Esther's welfare and what was being done with her. ¹² When a maiden's turn was attained and the maiden had to come to king Xerxes at the end of the women's twelve months' regimen prescribed for her, since in this way the days of her beauty-treatments were fulfilled:six months with oil of myrrh and six months with aromatics and with beauty-treatments of the women-. ¹³ when after this the maiden was coming to the king, then anything she asked for was given to her to come with her from the house of the women to the king's house. ¹⁴ She would be entering in the evening, and she would be returning in the morning to the second house of the women under the hand of Shaashgaz the king's eunuch, the guardian of the concubines. She would not come again to the king unless the king had taken delight in her and she had been called by name. ¹⁵ When the turn was attained for Esther (whom Mordecai had taken to himself as a daughter--she was the daughter of his uncle Abihail) to come to the king, she did not request permission for anything save what Hegai the king's eunuch, the guardian of the women, had advised. Esther had been attaining favor in the eyes of all those seeing her;" ¹⁶ so when Esther was taken to king Xerxes at his royal house in the tenth month (that is, the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign),