Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Judith 14 about?

Judith directs the townsmen to hang Holofernes' head upon the wall and, at daybreak, to arm and make as if to charge from the gate, so that the Assyrians will run to rouse their general and find him slain. Achior the Ammonite is summoned, and at the sight of the head he faints, then rises and believes in the God of Israel, submitting to circumcision and joining the people. At dawn Bagoas the eunuch goes to wake his master and, drawing back the curtain, finds the headless corpse and cries out in horror. The scene turns the enemy's own routine of confidence into the moment of his ruin, as a foreigner is drawn to Israel's God by what that God has done.

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 14
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 14

Judith Chapter 14
14
← Chapter 13 Chapter 15 →
What is Judith 14 about?

Judith directs the townsmen to hang Holofernes' head upon the wall and, at daybreak, to arm and make as if to charge from the gate, so that the Assyrians will run to rouse their general and find him slain. Achior the Ammonite is summoned, and at the sight of the head he faints, then rises and believes in the God of Israel, submitting to circumcision and joining the people. At dawn Bagoas the eunuch goes to wake his master and, drawing back the curtain, finds the headless corpse and cries out in horror. The scene turns the enemy's own routine of confidence into the moment of his ruin, as a foreigner is drawn to Israel's God by what that God has done.