Judith 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Holofernes moves his whole army against Bethulia, and his horsemen seize the springs the city drinks from. The chief men of Esau, the leaders of Moab, and the captains of the sea coast advise him not to meet Israel in open battle but to hold the water and let thirst do the work, and he agrees. After thirty-four days the city's water is gone, and the people gather to Ozias and the rulers, call God to judge between them, and tell them to hand the city over. Ozias asks them to hold out five more days, and says that if no help comes by then he will do what they say.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The next day Holofernes gave a command to all his army and to all his people who had come to be his allies.
   • Holofernes commanded them to move their camp against Bethulia.
   • Holofernes commanded them to seize the ascents of the hill country in advance.
   • Holofernes commanded them to make war against the children of Israel.
2. 7:2
   • All their strong men moved their camp that day.
   • The army of their men of war numbered a hundred and seventy thousand footmen.
   • The army included twelve thousand horsemen.
   • These numbers did not include the baggage or the other men who were on foot among them.
   • They were a very great multitude.
3. 7:3
   • They camped in the valley near Bethulia.
   • They camped by the fountain.
   • They spread themselves in breadth from Dothaim to Belmaim.
   • They spread themselves in length from Bethulia to Cynamon.
   • Cynamon is opposite Esdraelon.
4. 7:4
   • The children of Israel saw the multitude of their enemies.
   • The children of Israel were greatly troubled.
   • Each man said to his neighbor that these men would now lick up the face of the whole earth.
   • They said that neither the high mountains nor the valleys nor the hills could bear the weight of these men.
5. 7:5
   • Every man took up his weapons of war.
   • They kindled fires upon their towers.
   • They remained and kept watch all that night.
6. 7:6
   • On the second day Holofernes brought out all his horsemen.
   • He brought them out in the sight of the children of Israel who were in Bethulia.
7. 7:7
   • Holofernes viewed the ascents up to their city.
   • Holofernes went to the fountains of their waters.
   • Holofernes seized the fountains of their waters.
   • Holofernes set garrisons of men of war over the fountains.
   • Holofernes himself went back to his people.
8. 7:8
   • All the chief men of the children of Esau came to Holofernes.
   • All the governors of the people of Moab came to him.
   • All the captains of the sea coast came to him.
   • They spoke to him.
9. 7:9
   • They asked their lord to hear a word.
   • They said this was so that there would be no overthrow in his army.
10. 7:10
    • They said the people of the children of Israel do not trust in their spears.
    • They said the people of Israel trust in the height of the mountains in which they dwell.
    • They said it is not easy to come up to the tops of their mountains.
11. 7:11
    • They told their lord not to fight against Israel in battle array.
    • They said that then not even one man of his people would perish.
12. 7:12
    • They told him to remain in his camp.
    • They told him to keep every man of his army safe.
    • They told him to let his servants take possession of the spring of water.
    • They said the spring issues from the foot of the mountain.
13. 7:13
    • They said all the inhabitants of Bethulia get their water from that spring.
    • They said thirst would kill the inhabitants.
    • They said the inhabitants would give up their city.
    • They said that they and their people would go up to the tops of the nearby mountains.
    • They said they would camp upon those tops as a watch.
    • They said this was so that not one man would go out of the city.
14. 7:14
    • They said the people of Bethulia, their wives, and their children would be consumed with fire.
    • They said that before the sword came against them they would be laid low in the streets where they dwell.
15. 7:15
    • They said Holofernes would render them an evil reward.
    • They said this was because Israel had rebelled.
    • They said this was because Israel had not met his person peaceably.
16. 7:16
    • Their words pleased Holofernes.
    • Their words pleased all his servants.
    • Holofernes gave orders to do as they had spoken.
17. 7:17
    • The camp of the children of Ammon departed.
    • Five thousand of the Assyrians went with them.
    • They pitched camp in the valley.
    • They seized the waters and the fountains of the waters of the children of Israel.
18. 7:18
    • The children of Esau went up with the children of Ammon.
    • They camped in the hill country opposite Dothaim.
    • They sent some of their men toward the south and toward the east, opposite Ekrebel.
    • Ekrebel is near Chusi.
    • Chusi is upon the brook Mochmur.
    • The rest of the army of the Assyrians camped in the plain.
    • They covered the face of the whole land.
    • Their tents and carriages were pitched as a great crowd.
    • They were a very great multitude.
19. 7:19
    • The children of Israel cried out to the Lord their God.
    • Their heart failed them.
    • All their enemies had surrounded them.
    • There was no way to escape from among them.
20. 7:20
    • The whole camp of Assur remained around them for thirty-four days.
    • The camp included their footmen, chariots, and horsemen.
    • All the vessels of water of the inhabitants of Bethulia failed.
21. 7:21
    • The cisterns were emptied.
    • They did not have water to drink their fill for one day.
    • They were given drink by measure.
22. 7:22
    • Their young children were out of heart.
    • Their women and young men fainted from thirst.
    • They fell down in the streets of the city and in the passages of the gates.
    • There was no longer any strength in them.
23. 7:23
    • All the people gathered against Ozias and the chief men of the city.
    • The gathering included the young men, the women, and the children.
    • They cried out with a loud voice.
    • They spoke before the elders.
24. 7:24
    • They said, Let God judge between us and you.
    • They said the rulers had done them a great injury.
    • They said the injury was that the rulers had not sought peace with the children of Assur.
25. 7:25
    • They said they now have no helper.
    • They said God has sold them into the hands of the Assyrians.
    • They said this was so that they should be thrown down before them with thirst and great destruction.
26. 7:26
    • They told the rulers to call the Assyrians to them.
    • They told the rulers to deliver the whole city as spoil to the people of Holofernes and to all his army.
27. 7:27
    • They said it is better for them to be made a spoil to the Assyrians than to die of thirst.
    • They said they would be servants.
    • They said their souls would live.
    • They said they would not see the death of their infants before their eyes.
    • They said they would not see their wives and their children die.
28. 7:28
    • They called heaven and earth to witness against the rulers.
    • They called their God and the Lord of their fathers to witness against the rulers.
    • They said God punishes them according to their sins and the sins of their fathers.
    • They said this so that God would not do according to these words this day.
29. 7:29
    • There was great weeping with one consent in the midst of the assembly.
    • They cried out to the Lord God with a loud voice.
30. 7:30
    • Ozias said to them, Brethren, be of good courage.
    • Ozias told them to endure five more days.
    • Ozias said that in those days the Lord their God would turn his mercy toward them.
    • Ozias said God will not forsake them utterly.
31. 7:31
    • Ozias said that if those days pass and no help comes to them, he will do according to their word.
32. 7:32
    • Ozias dispersed the people, each to his own charge.
    • They went to the walls and towers of their city.
    • He sent the women and children into their houses.
    • They were brought very low in the city.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

Bethulia is the town at the center of this story. No place of that name is known outside the book of Judith, and its position here, holding a pass in the hills above the open plain, is what makes it the gate to the rest of the country. The "ascents of the hill country" are the narrow climbing roads an army had to use to get up out of the plain.

7:2

"Footmen" are soldiers who fight on foot. "Horsemen" ride into battle on horses. The "baggage" is everything an army drags along: food, tents, tools, carts and pack animals.

7:3

Dothaim (Dothan), Belmaim and Cynamon are towns in the hill country. Esdraelon is the Greek form of Jezreel, the broad plain that cuts across the north of the country. Naming these places draws the line of the camp along the edge of the open ground below the hills.

7:4

"Lick up the face of the earth" is a stock image for an army so large that it strips bare everything it crosses, the way fire or a swarm of locusts does.

7:5

Fires on the towers were watch fires and signal fires at once: they lit the wall for the sentries through the night and told the surrounding country that the town was under alarm.

7:7

The springs were outside the city walls, down the hill. "Garrisons" are groups of soldiers left behind to hold a place and keep everyone else away from it.

7:8

"The children of Esau" are the Edomites, reckoned as descendants of Jacob's brother Esau and living to the south and east. Moab lay east of the Dead Sea. "The captains of the sea coast" are the leaders of the coastal cities. All three are subject peoples serving alongside the invading army rather than troops of its own homeland.

7:9

"Let our lord now hear a word" is court speech. Subordinates address a commander in the third person instead of saying "you", and ask leave before offering advice, so that a suggestion cannot be taken as a challenge.

7:11

"Battle array" means rows of soldiers lined up facing each other for a straight fight. The advice is to skip the fight altogether.

7:12

A hill town's water usually came from a spring at the foot of the slope, outside the walls, because springs rise where the rock meets lower ground. Seizing the spring was the standard way to take a strong position without the cost of storming it.

7:14

The King James "consumed with fire" differs from the Greek, which says they will be consumed by hunger and thirst, the sense the rendering follows. The King James translators were working here from a text that read differently.

7:15

Custom in ancient warfare gave a town the chance to come out and accept terms before fighting began. A town that refused was counted as having rebelled, and whatever was then done to it was treated as a just payment rather than an atrocity.

7:17

"The children of Ammon" are the Ammonites, from east of the Jordan. Assur, used later in the chapter, is the old name of the Assyrian homeland and of its chief city, and the book uses it for the empire Holofernes serves.

7:18

Ekrebel, Chusi and the brook Mochmur are places in the hills south of Dothan; most cannot be identified today. "Carriages" in 1611 English meant the things that are carried, that is an army's baggage and gear, not wheeled vehicles.

7:19

"Compassed them round about" means surrounded them on every side, with no gap to slip through.

7:20

"Four and thirty" is the older way of saying thirty-four. The "vessels of water" are the jars and skins each household kept filled.

7:21

Cisterns were plastered pits cut into the rock under houses and courtyards. Winter rain running off the roofs filled them, and a town drew on them through the dry summer. Once the spring outside the walls was taken, the cisterns were all Bethulia had. "They gave them drink by measure" means water was rationed out in fixed amounts.

7:22

"Out of heart" means worn down and discouraged. "The passages of the gates" are the roofed passageways cut through the thickness of the city wall, where people gathered for shade and for public business.

7:23

Ozias is the chief magistrate of Bethulia, named earlier in the book as one of three rulers of the town. "The elders" are the senior heads of families, who governed the town together and settled its disputes.

7:24

"God be judge between us and you" is the opening of a formal accusation, calling God in as judge of a dispute between two parties. "Required peace" means asked for terms of surrender.

7:25

"God hath sold us into their hands" is an idiom for handing a person over into another's power, the way an owner transfers a slave. It carries no suggestion that anything was paid.

7:26

To "deliver the city for a spoil" is to hand it over to be plundered. The people are asking to become property rather than corpses: the usual alternative to death in a captured city was slavery, which is what "we will be his servants" means in the next verse.

7:27

"Servants" here means slaves. A city that gave in was often taken away to work for the conquerors instead of being killed.

7:28

"We take to witness against you the heaven and the earth" is an oath formula. The speakers summon things that outlast everyone present, so that the charge stands whatever becomes of the people making it. The clause that follows is difficult in the Greek and has been read two ways: as a plea that God not do to them what they have just described, or as a demand that the rulers do exactly what the people have said. The rendering follows the first.

7:30

Here "brothers" means everyone in his town, not just his family. Mercy means being kind to someone who is in trouble.

7:32

"Every one to their own charge" means each man back to the post on the wall he was responsible for. "They were very low brought" is older word order for "they were brought very low", that is worn down to the end of their strength.