Note 1550 — Chapter XXXVII
Reading edition
The alleged discrepancies in this account have been already noticed. As the text stands the fast and mourning are proclaimed and actually begun before word reaches the king and his proclamation of fast and mourning goes forth. The discrepancies might be removed by transferring the words in ver. 6, and they cried a fast, and from the greatest of them, to the least they clothed themselves in sackcloth, to the end of ver. 8, with a לאמר or ויאמרו to introduce ver. 9. But, as said above (pp. 499, 510, n. 1499), it is more probable that the text as it stands was original, and that the inconsistencies in the order of the narrative are due to its being a tale or parable.