Scripture Daily

Context No. 267 of 4322 · Judith

Context · Reflection

Judith 10:18-23: in context

18And there was great excitement throughout all the camp, for her coming was reported among the tents. They came and surrounded her as she stood outside Holofernes’ tent, until they told him about her. 19They marveled at her beauty, and marveled at the children of Israel because of her. Each one said to his neighbor, “Who would despise these people, who have among them such women? For it is not good that one man of them be left, seeing that, if they are let go, they will be able to deceive the whole earth. 20Then the guards of Holofernes and all his servants came out and brought her into the tent. 21And Holofernes was resting upon his bed under the canopy, which was woven with purple, gold, emeralds, and precious stones. 22And they told him about her; and he came out into the space before his tent, with silver lamps going before him. 23But when Judith had come before him and his servants, they all marveled at the beauty of her countenance. She fell down upon her face and bowed down to him, but his servants raised her up.

Judith is a wealthy and devout widow from an Israelite town that the Assyrian army has under siege. This passage catches her at the most dangerous moment of her plan. She has made herself beautiful, and she has walked out of her own town and straight into the enemy camp, alone and unarmed, carrying a scheme she has told no one, to save her people. Now she has reached the general's tent.

The scene is all about how the men read her, and how completely they read her wrong. Word of her arrival runs through the whole camp, and soldiers crowd around to stare. They marvel at her beauty, and then they say a revealing thing to each other: who could look down on a people that has women like this? They take her appearance as proof of Israel's strength, which is exactly the misreading she is counting on. She is brought into Holofernes' tent, a place dripping with purple and gold and precious stones, and when she comes before the most feared man in the region, she falls on her face and bows to the ground, and his servants lift her back up. Everything visible says she is helpless: one woman, no weapon, deep in an army, on her knees before its commander.

And everything visible is wrong. Her power in this scene is that she looks like she has none, and a camp full of hardened soldiers cannot see past her face to what she has actually come to do. Whom have I sized up by their surface, their beauty or their deference or their seeming weakness, and gotten completely wrong?

Sources