Holofernes

In context

Judith is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles; most Protestant Bibles leave it out or print it apart as the Apocrypha. Its story is set after the return from exile, when the people have “newly come up from the captivity,” yet it calls Nebuchadnezzar king “over the Assyrians in Nineveh,” and readers have long read the book in different ways (Judith 1:1; 4:3).

Nebuchadnezzar sends his chief captain Holofernes west with 120,000 foot soldiers and 12,000 archers on horseback to punish the nations that would not help him, and to destroy their gods so that all would worship Nebuchadnezzar alone (2:4–15; 3:8). It is a hard reading, with war and a town left to thirst. The people of Judea hold the mountain passes, and everyone, even the little children, cries to God in sackcloth (4:5–13).

Achior, leader of the Ammonites, tells Holofernes Israel’s story, from their ancestors leaving the land of the Chaldeans to the return, and warns him, “lest their Lord defend them” (5:5–21). Holofernes has him left bound below the town of Bethulia. After thirty-four days, its springs seized, the town runs out of water, and Ozias, one of its rulers, asks the people to hold on five more days (7:7, 20–31).