Esther 10

1 And King Ahasuerus put a tax on the land and on the islands of the sea.

King Xerxes required that all the people in his empire pay taxes. Even the people who lived on the islands [in the Mediterranean Sea] (OR, in coastal areas) were required to pay taxes.

2 And all his acts of power and his great strength and the full story of the high place which the king gave Mordecai, are they not recorded in the book of the history of the kings of Media and Persia?

And all the great and powerful things that Xerxes did were written in the scroll called/entitled ‘The record of the things done by the kings of Media and Persia’. In this book were also written [the things done] by Mordecai, the man whom the king had greatly honored.

3 For Mordecai the Jew was second only to King Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews and respected by the body of his countrymen; working for the good of his people, and saying words of peace to all his seed.

Mordecai, who was a Jew, became the king’s most important official, and [all] the Jews also considered him to be a very great man. They [all] respected him, because he did many good things for the Jews, and he often asked [the king] to do good things for them.