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 4 about?

Israel, only lately returned from exile and with the temple newly reconsecrated, hears of Holofernes' approach and is seized with dread for Jerusalem and the sanctuary. Joakim the high priest orders the people to seize the mountain passes and fortify the hill towns, chief among them Bethulia, which guards the way south. Throughout the land the people humble themselves, fasting, wearing sackcloth, draping even the altar, and crying out to God to spare His people and His holy house. The chapter shows a nation that meets an overwhelming threat not first with arms but with prayer, and it records that the LORD heard their plea and looked upon their affliction.

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 4
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 4

Judith Chapter 4
4
← Chapter 3 Chapter 5 →
What is Judith 4 about?

Israel, only lately returned from exile and with the temple newly reconsecrated, hears of Holofernes' approach and is seized with dread for Jerusalem and the sanctuary. Joakim the high priest orders the people to seize the mountain passes and fortify the hill towns, chief among them Bethulia, which guards the way south. Throughout the land the people humble themselves, fasting, wearing sackcloth, draping even the altar, and crying out to God to spare His people and His holy house. The chapter shows a nation that meets an overwhelming threat not first with arms but with prayer, and it records that the LORD heard their plea and looked upon their affliction.