Judith

No. 22 Judith 5:1-16
Judith is one of the books in the Catholic Bible that the Reformation set aside, a short story about a widow who saves her besieged town by beheading the enemy general. It reads like history but bends it on...
No. 39 Judith 8:1-8
Six chapters into the book of Judith, the town of Bethulia is under siege, the water has been cut off, and the elders have promised to surrender in five days if God does not act. This passage is where the book...
No. 163 Judith 4:9-15
The Assyrian army is coming, and Judea has no force able to meet it. This passage is what the people do instead, and the book takes several verses to describe it in detail.
No. 267 Judith 10:18-23
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...
No. 271 Judith 3:6-10
In the book of Judith, the emperor Nebuchadnezzar has sent his general Holofernes to bring the western nations to heel, and this passage shows the conquest rolling forward before it reaches Israel. One town...
No. 345 Judith 14:1-5
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...
No. 392 Judith 9:1-14
Before Judith walks into the enemy camp to do the dangerous thing that will save her city, she prays, and the prayer is worth listening to for its theology of power. She is a widow, which in her world meant...
No. 407 Judith 12:1-6
Judith is now deep inside the enemy camp, a guest at the table of the general Holofernes, who intends to seduce and use her, though she has come with a plan of her own. He offers her the finest of his own food...
No. 457 Judith 12:13-20
Judith is deep in the enemy camp, and this scene is the trap closing, though the man being trapped has no idea. Holofernes, the mighty Assyrian general, has invited her to a private banquet, and he is inflamed...
No. 511 Judith 2:21-28
This passage is a catalog of terror. Holofernes, the general of the great empire, marches out with a vast army and lays waste to everything in his path, burning fields at harvest time, slaughtering the young...
No. 525 Judith 6:10-21
To understand this scene you need to know who Achior is. He is not an Israelite; he is an Ammonite commander in the army of Holofernes, the general besieging God's people. But when Holofernes' war council was...
No. 731 Judith 6:1-9
The book of Judith sets up its drama with a confrontation in the enemy camp. Holofernes, the general leading Nebuchadnezzar's vast army west, has just heard a warning he did not want. Achior, an Ammonite, has...
No. 761 Judith 11:1-16
Judith has walked, alone, into the camp of the general besieging her town, posing as a defector. Holofernes, taken with her, reassures her that she will not be harmed, and she answers with a long, carefully...
No. 825 Judith 12:7-12
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...
No. 844 Judith 2:14-20
The book of Judith spends a whole passage simply counting up the enemy, and the counting is the point. Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar, musters his forces: a hundred and twenty thousand foot...
No. 966 Judith 7:16-22
In the book of Judith, the Assyrian general Holofernes has surrounded the Israelite town of Bethulia. On the advice of local allies, he does not storm it but simply seizes the springs and the water sources,...
No. 1105 Judith 15:1-7
Judith has slipped into the enemy camp and killed the Assyrian general Holofernes, carrying his head back to Bethulia. When the news breaks in the Assyrian camp, panic sweeps through it; the soldiers,...
No. 1133 Judith 16:17-25
After Judith's song of victory, the people go up to Jerusalem to worship, offer their sacrifices, and Judith dedicates the spoils of Holofernes to the Lord. They feast for three months. Then everyone returns...
No. 1136 Judith 14:11-19
At dawn the Israelites of Bethulia hang the head of Holofernes on the wall and march out as if to attack. The Assyrians, seeing them, go to rouse their general. Bagoas, his attendant, knocks at the tent,...
No. 1158 Judith 16:1-16
After the deliverance, Judith leads Israel in a song of thanksgiving. She calls for timbrels and cymbals, and sings of a God who crushes battles and delivered her from her persecutors. The great enemy,...
No. 1161 Judith 8:25-31
The town of Bethulia is dying of thirst under siege, and the elders have made a rash bargain: if God does not deliver in five days, they will surrender. Judith rebukes them, and here she reframes the whole...
No. 1404 Judith 7:23-32
The town of Bethulia has been under siege by the army of Holofernes, its water cut off, and the people are dying of thirst. Their strength and their faith broken, the whole population turns on their leaders,...
No. 1472 Judith 8:32-36
The town of Bethulia, besieged and dying of thirst, has all but given up; its leaders had set God a deadline of five days before they would surrender. Judith, a devout widow, has already rebuked them for...
No. 1489 Judith 15:8-13
After Judith's daring act has delivered the city and routed the enemy, the high priest and the elders come from Jerusalem to see the good things the Lord has done and to bless Judith. You are the exaltation of...
No. 1716 Judith 2:1-13
The book of Judith opens with the rage of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, resolved to take vengeance on all the lands that would not submit to him. He summons Holofernes, his chief captain, and...
No. 1771 Judith 7:1-5
Holofernes moves his vast army against the little town of Bethulia, seizing the mountain passes. The force is enormous, a huge host of footmen and horsemen spreading across the valley. And when the people of...
No. 2591 Judith 3:1-5
As the army of Holofernes advances, the terrified nations send messengers of surrender. We are the servants of the great king, they say; before you lie our land, our fields, our flocks, our cities and the...
No. 2752 Judith 13:1-10
This is the turning point of the book of Judith. Left alone in the tent with the enemy general Holofernes, who has drunk himself into a stupor, the widow Judith prays, takes down his own sword, seizes him by...
No. 2771 Judith 1:12-16
The book of Judith opens by building up the menace of Nebuchadnezzar. Enraged that the western nations would not join his war, he swears by his throne and his kingdom to take vengeance on them all. He crushes...
No. 2863 Judith 8:9-24
Bethulia is dying of thirst under siege, and its elders, worn down, have sworn to surrender the city to the Assyrians in five days if God has not rescued them by then. Judith, a devout widow, summons the...
No. 2874 Judith 10:11-17
Judith, having prayed and prepared, leaves the besieged city and is stopped by an Assyrian patrol. She tells them she is a Hebrew fleeing her doomed people, coming to show Holofernes a way to take the whole...
No. 2987 Judith 11:17-23
Judith stands before Holofernes and tells him she serves the God of heaven day and night, offering to slip out at night to learn when her people have sinned, so that he can conquer them and be led in triumph...
No. 3068 Judith 1:7-11
The book of Judith opens with Nebuchadnezzar summoning all the western nations to join his war, from Persia to the sea coast, from Damascus to Egypt. But the nations refuse. They make light of his command, not...
No. 3187 Judith 14:6-10
Achior the Ammonite is brought before the people, and when he sees the head of Holofernes and hears everything Judith has done, he faints, then falls at her feet in blessing. And when he grasps all that the...
No. 3823 Judith 10:6-10
Judith, having resolved on a dangerous course to save her besieged city, comes to the city gate, and the elders, struck by her resolve, bless her: may the God of our fathers give you favor and fulfill your...
No. 3941 Judith 10:1-5
When Judith has finished pouring out her prayer to God, she rises from where she has fallen in supplication and begins to act. She rises, takes off her widow's mourning garments, prepares herself, gathers...
No. 3951 Judith 4:1-8
Word reaches the people of Judea that the conqueror Holofernes is approaching, destroying nations and their sanctuaries as he comes, and they are seized with fear, above all for Jerusalem and the temple, which...
No. 3954 Judith 5:17-24
Achior, an Ammonite leader, stands before the conqueror Holofernes and tells him the plain truth about the people of Israel: as long as they were faithful to their God, they prospered and could not be...
No. 4061 Judith 1:1-6
The book of Judith opens by describing the power and grandeur of a great king, Nebuchadnezzar, ruling from Nineveh, and the immense fortifications of a rival kingdom, walls of hewn stone, towers a hundred...
No. 4086 Judith 13:11-20
Judith returns to her besieged city with news of an astonishing deliverance: the enemy commander who had threatened them has been struck down, and their salvation has come, not through a great army, but by the...
No. 4108 Judith 7:6-15
The enemy commander Holofernes, unable to overcome the fortified town of Bethulia by direct assault, adopts a crueler strategy: he seizes the springs that supply the town's water, planning to starve and parch...