I find it ever amazing how often in the Holy Bible, ancient history pops up to inform events more current. This was a simple edict: Jews were allowed to defend themselves.

 

Mordecai and Queen Esther (Lilian Broca)

Esther and Mordecai were in Iran where all but a remnant of Jews had been exiled. An officer in the King’s court ordered all the Jews killed because Mordecai wouldn’t bow to him, and otherwise followed God’s law first, not the King’s. Events and Queen Esther intervene and suddenly Mordecai has power. 

 But you (Mordecai) may write as you please with regard to the Jews, in the name of the king, and seal it with the king's ring, for an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked.”

Esther 8:8 (ESV) Bible Gateway link 

And he (Mordecai) wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed it with the king's signet ring. Then he sent the letters by mounted couriers riding on swift horses that were used in the king's service, bred from the royal stud, saying that the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, children and women included, and to plunder their goods,

Esther 8:10-11 (ESV) Bible Gateway Link