LAW, decree, edict — a PERSIAN loanword (data), and the key word of Esther, where it occurs about twenty times, more than in all the rest of the Bible together. ⚠ Watch its career across the book: its FIRST appearance is a courtesy about wine ('the drinking was according to the dat: no one compelling,' 1:8); by chapter 3 the same word carries an edict for the extermination of a people; and because a dat of the Medes and Persians cannot be revoked, chapter 8 can only answer it with another one. It is also the word behind 'the laws of the king' that Haman claims the Jews do not keep. → first discussed at Esther 1:8