1 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes ^oand put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2 He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3 And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, ^pwith fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them ^qlay in sackcloth and ashes.