Mordecai's Greatness and the Ending

"And the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea."

"And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?"

"For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed."

In the Greek, Mordecai then says: "God hath done these things." He remembers his dream: the little spring that became a river is Esther; the two dragons are himself and Haman; the nations gathered to destroy the name of the Jews; and "my nation is this Israel, which cried to God, and were saved." God made two lots, one for his people and one for the nations. A note follows: in the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought this letter of Purim, translated by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, of Jerusalem.

"The isles of the sea"

Xerxes lost the Aegean after Salamis and Mycale (479 BC); "tribute… upon the isles" may reflect imperial claims rather than control. The verse closes the book where it began, with the empire's reach.

"Written in the chronicles"

The formula imitates Kings ("are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?"). No Persian chronicle of this kind survives; Persian royal inscriptions record building and conquest, not court officials' careers. The verse claims a source the reader cannot check.

Mordecai's last description

Seeking his people's good (tov) and speaking peace (shalom) to all his descendants: after chapter 9's violence, the book ends with welfare and peace.

Greek Addition F and the colophon

Addition F (library's Greek at its 10:4–13; Vulgate and KJV Apocrypha 10:4–11:1) interprets the dream of Addition A, framing the whole story as God's plan and Purim as a festival of the two lots. The colophon dates the Greek translation's arrival in Egypt to "the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra." Several Ptolemies reigned with a Cleopatra; the most common proposals are 114/113 BC (Ptolemy IX), 78/77 BC (Ptolemy XII) or 48 BC (Ptolemy XIII). The colophon is an ancient claim about the book's transmission, not proof of the whole history it implies.