Judith 16: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Judith leads Israel in a song of thanksgiving, and all the people sing it after her. The song tells how Assur came from the north with a huge army and boasted of what he would do, and how the Almighty Lord brought them to nothing by the hand of a woman, praising God as Creator and calling down woe on the nations that rise against her people. Afterward the people go up to Jerusalem to worship and offer sacrifices, Judith dedicates Holofernes' goods and the canopy from his bedchamber to the Lord, and the people feast three months before the sanctuary. The chapter closes with Judith's later life in Bethulia, her death at a hundred and five, her burial and mourning, and the note that no one frightened Israel in her days or for a long time after.

Claim by Claim

1. 16:1
   • Judith began to sing this thanksgiving in all Israel.
   • All the people sang this song of praise after her.
2. 16:2
   • Judith spoke.
   • Judith called for a beginning of song to her God with timbrels.
   • Judith called for singing to her Lord with cymbals.
   • Judith called for a new psalm to be tuned to him.
   • Judith called for him to be exalted.
   • Judith called for his name to be invoked.
3. 16:3
   • God breaks battles.
   • Among the camps in the midst of the people he delivered Judith out of the hands of those who persecuted her.
4. 16:4
   • Assur came out of the mountains from the north.
   • He came with ten thousands of his army.
   • The multitude of them stopped the torrents.
   • Their horsemen covered the hills.
5. 16:5
   • He boasted that he would burn up her mountains.
   • He said he would kill her young men with the sword.
   • He said he would dash her nursing children to the ground.
   • He said he would give her infants up as prey.
   • He said he would make her virgins a spoil.
6. 16:6
   • The Almighty Lord thwarted them.
   • He thwarted them by the hand of a woman.
7. 16:7
   • Their mighty one did not fall by young men.
   • The sons of the Titans did not smite him.
   • High giants did not set upon him.
   • Judith was the daughter of Merari.
   • Judith weakened him with the beauty of her countenance.
8. 16:8
   • She put off the garment of her widowhood.
   • She did this for the exaltation of those who were oppressed in Israel.
   • She anointed her face with ointment.
   • She bound her hair in a headband.
   • She took a linen garment.
   • She took the garment in order to deceive him.
9. 16:9
   • Her sandal ravished his eye.
   • Her beauty took his soul prisoner.
   • The sword passed through his neck.
10. 16:10
    • The Persians shuddered at her boldness.
    • The Medes were daunted at her daring.
11. 16:11
    • Then Judith's afflicted ones shouted.
    • Her weak ones cried out.
    • They were terrified.
    • They lifted up their voices.
    • They were overthrown, the verse leaving unclear whether the overthrown are the weak ones or the enemy.
12. 16:12
    • The sons of the young women pierced them through.
    • They wounded them as the children of deserters.
    • They perished by the battle line of her Lord.
13. 16:13
    • Judith said she would sing a new song to her God.
    • She said the Lord is great.
    • She said the Lord is glorious.
    • She said the Lord is wonderful in strength.
    • She said the Lord is invincible.
14. 16:14
    • Let all creation serve God.
    • God spoke and the creatures came to be.
    • God sent forth his spirit and it built them.
    • There is no one who can resist God's voice.
15. 16:15
    • The mountains will be shaken from their foundations along with the waters.
    • The rocks will melt like wax before God's presence.
    • God is merciful to those who fear him.
16. 16:16
    • All sacrifice is too little for a sweet savour to God.
    • All the fat is not sufficient for a burnt offering to God.
    • He who fears the Lord is great at all times.
17. 16:17
    • Woe is pronounced on the nations that rise up against Judith's kindred.
    • The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment.
    • He will put fire and worms in their flesh.
    • They will feel it and weep forever.
18. 16:18
    • When they entered Jerusalem they worshipped God.
    • When the people were purified, they offered their burnt offerings.
    • They offered their freewill offerings.
    • They offered their gifts.
19. 16:19
    • Judith dedicated all the goods of Holofernes.
    • The people had given those goods to her.
    • Judith gave the canopy as an offering to God.
    • She had taken the canopy out of his bedchamber for herself.
20. 16:20
    • The people continued feasting in Jerusalem before the sanctuary for three months.
    • Judith remained with them.
21. 16:21
    • After these days everyone returned to his own inheritance.
    • Judith went to Bethulia.
    • She remained on her own property.
    • She was honoured in all the land in her time.
22. 16:22
    • Many men desired her.
    • No man knew her all the days of her life.
    • This was so from the day Manasses her husband died.
    • Manasses was gathered to his people.
23. 16:23
    • She grew exceedingly great.
    • She grew old in her husband's house.
    • She reached a hundred and five years.
    • She set her maid free.
    • She died in Bethulia.
    • They buried her in the cave of her husband Manasses.
24. 16:24
    • The house of Israel mourned for her seven days.
    • Before she died she distributed her goods.
    • She gave to all those nearest of kin to Manasses her husband.
    • She gave to those nearest of her own kindred.
25. 16:25
    • No one made the children of Israel afraid any more in the days of Judith.
    • No one made them afraid for a long time after her death.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

16:1

The chapter turns from narrative to poetry here. A woman leading a victory song while the people answer her is a set pattern in Hebrew storytelling: Miriam does it in Exodus 15, Deborah in Judges 5.

16:2

A "timbrel" is a small hand drum, a hoop with a skin stretched over it, the instrument women carried in victory processions. "A new psalm" does not mean a fashionable one; in the Psalms the phrase marks a song composed for a fresh act of rescue.

16:3

"Breaketh the battles" is not English idiom but a close copy of the Greek, which says God shatters wars. The picture is of an army being smashed, not of a battle being interrupted.

16:4

"Assur" is Asshur, that is Assyria. The poem names the invaders by the old northern empire, the standard byword for a terrifying foreign army, rather than by Holofernes' own name.

16:5

This list of threats is the conventional language for total conquest, and the same items appear in the prophets and psalms. It describes what any captured town expected, not an unusual cruelty invented for this enemy.

16:6

"Disappointed" in 1611 meant thwarted or brought to nothing, not let down. The line says the Lord wrecked the Assyrian plan.

16:7

The "sons of the Titans" and the "high giants" are the legendary giant warriors of ancient story; the Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures used "Titans", a word out of Greek myth, for such figures. The force of the line is the contrast: no monstrous champion brought Holofernes down.

16:8

A widow wore distinctive clothing that marked her status and kept her apart from ordinary social life, so taking it off was a public act, not just a change of dress. A "tire" is a headdress or band for binding up the hair, from the same root as the word "attire".

16:9

The sandals are singled out because they were part of the finery Judith put on before going to the enemy camp. "Ravished his eyes" uses the older sense of the word: seized or carried away. A "fauchion" (falchion) is a short curved sword with a broad, heavy blade.

16:10

Persia and Media were the great powers east of Assyria. The book handles history freely, and here the names stand for the most formidable armies its audience could name.

16:11

This verse is obscure in the Greek, and the King James wording makes it harder to follow. The sense is probably that the Israelites shouted while the enemy was struck with terror, so that the ones "astonished" and "overthrown" are the invaders rather than the weak ones who cried out. The rendering leaves the ambiguity in place.

16:12

"The sons of the damsels" means the children of slave women, the lowest-ranking men in the community and the least likely soldiers; that is the sting of the line. Being wounded "as fugatives' children" (fugitives' children) means being cut down like the offspring of deserters, people with no one to defend them.

16:14

In the old language, "spirit" is the same word as breath and wind. God breathes out, and the world is made.

16:15

"Fear" here carries the older, wider sense of awe and reverence toward God, not fright.

16:16

Under the sacrificial law the fat was the portion burned for God, and the smoke going up from an offering was described as a "sweet savour", a pleasing smell. A burnt offering was one burned up whole rather than shared out as a meal. The line says no quantity of either could ever be enough.

16:17

Fire and worms in the flesh is borrowed imagery from Isaiah 66:24, where the bodies of the defeated lie unburied. "Take vengeance of them" is simply older English for take vengeance on them.

16:18

Contact with the dead and with a battlefield made a person ritually unclean, unable to take part in worship until a set process of washing and waiting was complete. A "free offering" is a freewill offering, one given voluntarily rather than required by law.

16:19

The "canopy" is the netted curtain hung over Holofernes' bed, which Judith carried away with his head. Handing captured enemy goods over to the sanctuary instead of keeping them was the customary way of disposing of spoil taken in a war fought as a holy war. "Stuff" in 1611 means goods or belongings generally, with no dismissive tone.

16:20

The "sanctuary" is the temple in Jerusalem. Three months is an extraordinarily long festival; the length is the measure of how large a deliverance the story claims.

16:21

An "inheritance" is the plot of family land each household held and handed down. Israelite land was not thought of as property freely bought and sold but as an allotment permanently attached to a family line.

16:22

"Knew her" is the standard King James way of referring to sexual relations. "Gathered to his people" is an old idiom for dying and being laid in the family tomb alongside ancestors who had died before.

16:23

Freeing a servant was an act of honor and reward; a slave had no automatic right to release, so this was Judith's gift to her. Burial "in the cave" means the family tomb, a rock chamber in which the dead of one household were laid together over generations.

16:24

Seven days was the full formal mourning period for a person of standing. A widow with no children had no heir of her own, so her property went back to her husband's nearest relatives and to her own kin; dividing it herself before she died let her decide the shares.

16:25

The closing line echoes the formula that ends each episode in the book of Judges, where the land "had rest" for a stated stretch of years after a rescuer's victory.