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Context No. 345 of 4322 · Judith

Context · Reflection

Judith 14:1-5: in context

1Judith said to them, “Hear me now, my kindred, and take this head, and hang it upon the battlement of your wall. 2It will be, so soon as the morning appears, and the sun comes up on the earth, you shall each take up his weapons of war, and every valiant man of you go out of the city. You shall set a captain over them, as though you would go down to the plain toward the watch of the children of Asshur; but you men shall not go down. 3These will take up their full armor, and shall go into their camp and rouse up the captains of the army of Asshur. They will run together to Holofernes’ tent. They won’t find him. Fear will fall upon them, and they will flee before your face. 4You men, and all that inhabit every border of Israel, shall pursue them and overthrow them as they go. 5But before you do these things, summon Achior the Ammonite to me, that he may see and know him that despised the house of Israel, and that sent him to us, as it were to death.

Judith has just done the almost unthinkable. A widow from a besieged town, she went into the enemy camp, got close to the general Holofernes, and cut off his head, and now she is back inside the walls of Bethulia giving instructions. What she describes is not a battle plan in the ordinary sense. It is a plan built entirely on one insight: that the enormous army outside owes all its strength to a single man.

Hang this head on the wall, she tells them. At first light, take up your weapons and march out as if you mean to attack, but do not actually go down to fight. The Assyrians will run to rouse their commander, and they will find Holofernes headless in his tent, and terror will fall on them, and they will flee, and then you can pursue them and cut them down. That is the whole strategy. Israel does not have to defeat that vast army in the field. They only have to reveal that its head is gone, and the body will collapse on its own in panic. A force that had made a whole region tremble turns out to be brittle at exactly one point, and once that point fails, all the numbers and weapons dissolve into a rout. She even sends for Achior, the man who had warned Holofernes that Israel's God defends his people and was scorned for it, so that he can see the head of the man who despised them.

The picture is worth holding onto when something looks overwhelming. Vast, intimidating strength often rests on a single point that is far less solid than the size of it suggests. What force in my life looks unbeatable by its sheer size, when its real strength may hang on one point that, seen clearly, is not nearly as secure as the fear of it makes me believe?

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