Scripture Daily

Context No. 825 of 4322 · Judith

Context · Reflection

Judith 12:7-12: in context

7Holofernes commanded his guards that they should not stop her. She stayed in the camp three days, and went out every night into the valley of Bethulia and washed herself at the fountain of water in the camp. 8And when she came up, she implored the Lord God of Israel to direct her way to the triumph of the children of his people. 9She came in clean and remained in the tent until she ate her food toward evening. 10It came to pass on the fourth day, that Holofernes made a feast for his own servants only, and called none of the officers to the banquet. 11And he said to Bagoas the eunuch, who had charge over all that he had, “Go now, and persuade this Hebrew woman who is with you that she come to us, and eat and drink with us. 12For behold, it would be a disgrace if we shall let such a woman go, not having had her company; for if we don’t draw her to ourselves, she will laugh us to scorn.”

Judith is deep in the enemy camp now, having talked her way in, and she is waiting for her moment. What the passage records about those days of waiting is not her scheming but her routine. Holofernes has given orders that she may come and go freely, and every single night she walks out of the camp, down into the valley, and washes at the spring, and prays to the God of Israel to direct her way for the deliverance of his people. She keeps herself ritually clean. She eats only the food she brought with her, refusing to be defiled by the enemy's table. In the middle of a hostile army, surrounded by everything she has come to overthrow, she keeps praying, keeps clean, keeps her own provisions, and does not let the place she is in change who she is.

On the fourth day the trap begins to close, but from the other side than Holofernes imagines. He throws a private feast and sends his eunuch to bring Judith to it, and his motive is nakedly predatory: it would be a disgrace, he says, to let such a woman go without taking her; if we do not win her over, she will laugh at us. He means to use her; the feast he lays to get her into his power will be the feast where his own drunkenness delivers him into hers. But the detail that instructs is Judith's, not his. Embedded in the enemy's camp, on a mission that required deception, she still would not let her devotion lapse. She went out and prayed every night. The surroundings did not get to define her.

In the heart of the enemy camp, Judith still washed and prayed every night and would not defile herself. When I am embedded in an environment hostile or corrosive to my faith, do I let the place quietly reshape me, or do I keep my devotion intact within it?

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