The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such that joined themselves unto them,.... Who became proselytes to their religion; that is, they appointed the above two days as festivals, and engaged for themselves, for their children, and all proselytes, to observe them as such; and one of their canons (s) runs thus,"all are obliged to read the Megillah (the book of Esther, which they always read on those days), priests, Levites, Nethinims, Israelites, men, women, and proselytes, and servants made free, and they train up little ones to read it:" so as it should not fail; of being observed, so as no man should transgress it, or pass it over: that they should keep these two days; the fourteenth and fifteenth of the month Adar or February: according to their writing; in this book, the book of Esther, which was to be read, as Aben Ezra; written in the Hebrew character, as the Targum; that is, in the Assyrian character, as Jarchi; the square character, as they call it: and according to their appointed time every year; whether simple or intercalated, as Aben Ezra observes: in an intercalary year the Jews have two Adars, and, though they keep the feast of Purim on the fourteenth of the first Adar, yet not with so much mirth, and call it the lesser Purim; but in the second Adar they observe it with all its ceremonies (t); so, in their canon, they do not keep Purim but in Adar that is next to Nisan or March, that redemption might be near redemption; the redemption of Mordecai near the redemption of Moses (u). (s) Lebush & Schulchan, ib. (par. 1.) c. 689. sect. 1. (t) Vid. Buxtorf. Synagog. Jud. c. 29. p. 563. (u) Lebush, par. 1. c. 6, 7. sect. 1.