Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Judith 11 about?

Brought before Holofernes, Judith addresses him with words carefully framed to deceive, promising to tell her lord no lie and flattering his power. She claims that her people are about to sin by eating consecrated food and firstfruits reserved for the priests, and that once they do their God will give them over to him; she offers to remain in the camp, go out nightly to pray, and reveal the moment their guilt makes them ripe for conquest, then lead him to Jerusalem. Holofernes and his officers are delighted, marveling at her wisdom no less than her beauty. The scene turns the pagan boast against itself, as the general's confidence in his own triumph is drawn from the mouth of the woman who will undo him.

Historical backdrop

The book was written in the second century BC, in the years when a small Judea faced the vast machinery of a Hellenistic empire and remembered older deliverances. Its named enemy is deliberately composite: a Nebuchadnezzar who reigns from Assyrian Nineveh, generals with Persian names, an empire assembled from every oppressor Israel had known. The setting is not sober chronicle but a portrait of the one perennial danger, the great power that demands worship and marches on the weak.

The Church Fathers on Judith 11
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Judith 11

Judith Chapter 11
11
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What is Judith 11 about?

Brought before Holofernes, Judith addresses him with words carefully framed to deceive, promising to tell her lord no lie and flattering his power. She claims that her people are about to sin by eating consecrated food and firstfruits reserved for the priests, and that once they do their God will give them over to him; she offers to remain in the camp, go out nightly to pray, and reveal the moment their guilt makes them ripe for conquest, then lead him to Jerusalem. Holofernes and his officers are delighted, marveling at her wisdom no less than her beauty. The scene turns the pagan boast against itself, as the general's confidence in his own triumph is drawn from the mouth of the woman who will undo him.