Judith 9: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Judith throws herself face down, puts ashes on her head, and uncovers the rough cloth she is wearing, and at the hour when the evening incense is offered in Jerusalem she prays aloud. She calls on the God of her father Simeon, recalling how God gave Simeon a sword to avenge the defiling of a young woman, and how the rulers, their households, and their goods were handed over. She then describes the Assyrian army's trust in its weapons and asks God to break their strength, to give a widow the power she has conceived, and to make her deceitful words a wound to them, breaking their pride by the hand of a woman. She ends by asking that every nation and tribe come to know that God alone protects the people of Israel.

Claim by Claim

1. 9:1
   • Judith fell upon her face.
   • Judith put ashes upon her head.
   • Judith uncovered the sackcloth she was wearing.
   • At that time the evening incense was being offered in Jerusalem in the house of God.
   • Judith cried out to the Lord with a loud voice.
   • Judith spoke.
2. 9:2
   • Judith addressed the Lord as the God of her father Simeon.
   • God gave a sword into Simeon's hand.
   • The sword was given to take vengeance on foreigners.
   • Those foreigners loosed the womb of a virgin to defile her.
   • Those foreigners uncovered her thigh to her shame.
   • Those foreigners profaned her womb to her reproach.
   • God had said that it should not be so.
   • They did it anyway.
3. 9:3
   • Because of this God gave their rulers over to slaughter.
   • Their bed was dyed in blood.
   • The deceit that was worked was itself deceived.
   • God struck the servants together with their masters.
   • God struck the masters upon their thrones.
4. 9:4
   • God gave their wives over as plunder.
   • God gave their daughters over into captivity.
   • God gave all their spoils to be divided among the sons whom God loved.
   • Those sons were zealous with God's own zeal.
   • Those sons abhorred the pollution of their blood.
   • Those sons called upon God for help.
   • Judith addressed God as her own God.
   • Judith asked God to hear her, a widow.
5. 9:5
   • God did the things that came before those things.
   • God did those things themselves.
   • God did the things that came after.
   • God planned the things that are now.
   • God planned the things that are to come.
   • The things God planned came to pass.
6. 9:6
   • The things God determined stood ready.
   • Those things said, Behold, we are here.
   • All God's ways are prepared.
   • God's judgment is in foreknowledge.
7. 9:7
   • The Assyrians have multiplied in their power.
   • They are exalted with horse and rider.
   • They glory in the strength of their foot soldiers.
   • They trust in shield and spear and bow and sling.
   • They do not know that the Lord is the one who breaks battles.
   • The Lord is God's name.
8. 9:8
   • Judith asked God to shatter their strength by his power.
   • Judith asked God to bring down their might in his wrath.
   • They have purposed to profane God's sanctuary.
   • They have purposed to defile the tabernacle where God's glorious name rests.
   • They have purposed to cast down the horn of God's altar with iron.
9. 9:9
   • Judith asked God to look on their pride.
   • Judith asked God to send his wrath upon their heads.
   • Judith asked God to give into her hand the power she had conceived.
   • Judith is a widow.
10. 9:10
    • Judith asked God to strike the servant along with the prince by the deceit of her lips.
    • Judith asked God to strike the prince along with his servant.
    • Judith asked God to break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman.
11. 9:11
    • God's power does not stand in numbers.
    • God's might does not stand in strong men.
    • God is a God of the lowly.
    • God is a helper of the lesser.
    • God is an upholder of the weak.
    • God is a protector of the forsaken.
    • God is a savior of those without hope.
12. 9:12
    • Judith entreated God twice over.
    • God is the God of her father.
    • God is the God of the inheritance of Israel.
    • God is Lord of the heavens and the earth.
    • God is Creator of the waters.
    • God is king of all his creation.
    • Judith asked God to hear her prayer.
13. 9:13
    • Judith asked God to make her speech and deceit a wound and a stripe to them.
    • They have purposed cruel things against God's covenant.
    • They have purposed cruel things against God's hallowed house.
    • They have purposed cruel things against the top of Zion.
    • They have purposed cruel things against the house that God's children possess.
14. 9:14
    • Judith asked God to make every nation and tribe acknowledge that he is the God of all power and might.
    • Judith asked God to make them acknowledge that there is no other who protects the people of Israel but him.

Words Worth Explaining

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

9:1

Ashes on the head and sackcloth, a coarse cloth of goat hair worn next to the skin, were the standard public signs of mourning or of an urgent appeal for help. Judith has the sackcloth on under her clothes and uncovers it as she begins to pray. In the Jerusalem temple incense was burned twice daily, at the morning and the evening sacrifice. Judith is far from Jerusalem, shut up in Bethulia, and times her prayer to match the hour of the offering there.

9:2

Simeon was the second son of Jacob and the ancestor of Judith's own tribe. The story she recalls is Genesis 34: Shechem, a foreigner, raped Jacob's daughter Dinah, and her brothers Simeon and Levi took revenge by killing the men of his city. "Loosened the girdle" means untied the belt, and "discovered the thigh" means uncovered it; both are indirect ways of describing the stripping and rape. The KJV's "strangers" means foreigners, people outside Israel, not people she did not know.

9:3

Who exactly was deceived is unclear in the Greek, and translations divide over it. It can be read of Dinah, tricked by Shechem, or of the men of the city, who were talked into being circumcised by Jacob's sons and then attacked while they were still in pain from it (Genesis 34:13-29).

9:4

"Thy dear children" are the Israelites, here Jacob's sons. "The pollution of their blood" means the defiling of their own kin, the attack on a woman of their family line. Taking captives and dividing the goods of a defeated town was the normal outcome of ancient warfare, and the account in Genesis 34 describes it without comment.

9:6

The decisions God has made are pictured as servants standing ready and reporting for duty: "Lo, we are here." The point of the image is that what God has determined is already waiting to happen.

9:7

In the book of Judith the "Assyrians" stand for the great empire of the east; the setting mixes Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian details and does not line up with any one period of history. Being "exalted with horse and man" refers to cavalry and chariots, the expensive arm of an ancient army, and "footmen" are the infantry. The sling was a serious military weapon, a leather strap that threw a stone hard enough to kill. "Thou art the Lord that breakest the battles" echoes the wording of the Greek version of Exodus 15:3, where the Lord is the one who shatters wars.

9:8

"Sanctuary" and "tabernacle" here both mean the one temple in Jerusalem; the tent language is inherited from the portable shrine Israel carried in the wilderness and stuck to the temple afterward. The altar had four projecting corners called horns. A person in danger of death could grab hold of them and claim protection there (1 Kings 1:50), so cutting them off with a sword stands for stripping the holy place of everything that made it a refuge.

9:9

A widow had no husband to speak or act for her, and that made her one of the legally weakest people in this society; Judith names her own status deliberately, and does so again in verse 10 when she asks to act "by the hand of a woman." "The power that I have conceived" uses the language of pregnancy for the plan she has already formed and is about to carry out.

9:10

"The servant with the prince, and the prince with the servant" is a way of saying everyone from the bottom to the top, the whole army together with its command. "By the hand of a woman" picks up the phrase used in Judges 4:9 of Jael, who killed the enemy commander Sisera in her own tent.

9:12

"The inheritance of Israel" is the land assigned to Israel. The word is the ordinary term for a portion of property handed down within a family, and it was used of the territory each tribe received.

9:13

A "stripe" in the KJV is the welt or bruise left by a blow. "Thy covenant" is the binding agreement between God and Israel, with obligations on both sides. "Thy hallowed house" is the temple, "the top of Sion" is the temple hill in Jerusalem (Sion is the older English spelling of Zion), and "the house of the possession of thy children" is the land Israel holds.

9:14

A tribe is a big group of families who all came from one grandfather long ago.