Home › The Bible › Judith
The book at a glance
Holofernes, general of Nebuchadnezzar, “who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh” (1:1), marches on the nations who refused to serve him, and lays siege to the Israelite town of Bethulia, which guards the way to Jerusalem (chapters 1–7). Judith, a devout widow, rebukes the elders for putting God to the test, prays, and goes into the enemy camp, where she beheads Holofernes as he lies drunk; the Assyrian army flees and Israel sings her praise (chapters 8–16). The book mixes names and eras freely (Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, not of Assyria, and Nineveh had fallen before his reign), and most scholars read it as a story written to teach and encourage, probably in the second or early first century before Christ. It survives in Greek. It is one of the deuterocanonical books, received in the Church's canon and confirmed by the Council of Trent, and the Church reads it as inspired Scripture, whatever its literary form.
Judith has no prophecy in the strict sense. It looks forward through type and image: the Fathers and the liturgy see in Judith, the woman who saves her people by striking the head of the enemy, a figure of Mary and of the Church, and the book's whole lesson, that God saves through the lowly, is fulfilled in the Gospel. Each card below names which, and says plainly where a reading is the Church's spiritual and liturgical sense rather than the text's first meaning.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 9:10–11 | God's power in weakness | Fulfilled |
| 13:6–10, 18 | The woman who strikes the head of the enemy | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 15:9–10 | “You are the glory of Jerusalem!” | Fulfilled |
The passages
“Your strength is not in numbers, nor does your might depend upon the powerful. You are God of the lowly, helper of those of little account, supporter of the weak” (9:11)
- Reading
- Before she goes out, Judith lies prostrate in sackcloth and prays. She asks God to “crush their arrogance by the hand of a female” (9:10). The NABRE's note points out that the Greek uses the word for “female” rather than the usual word for “woman,” to sharpen the contrast: the mightiest army of the age is to be undone by the one its soldiers would think least dangerous. God is “protector of those in despair, savior of those without hope” (9:11).
- Fulfilled
- Judith's prayer is the Magnificat in advance. Mary sings that God “has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). Paul makes it the pattern of the Gospel: “God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27), and he hears the Lord say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Catechism counts Judith among the holy women through whom God, against all human expectation, chose those considered powerless and weak to show his faithfulness to his promises (CCC 489).
“Strengthen me this day, Lord, God of Israel!” Then with all her might she struck his neck twice and cut off his head. (13:7–8)
- Reading
- Alone in the tent with the sleeping general, Judith takes down his own sword, prays, and strikes. She returns to Bethulia and shows the people: “Here is the head of Holofernes” (13:15). Uzziah, the town's leader, blesses her: “Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, who guided your blow at the head of the leader of our enemies” (13:18).
- Fulfilled
- The scene recalls the first promise of Scripture: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel” (Genesis 3:15). It also recalls Jael, who struck the head of Sisera (Judges 4:21; 5:24–27). Christian tradition has long read Judith as a figure of Mary, the New Eve, whose Son crushes the serpent's head, and the blessing of Uzziah is echoed in Elizabeth's greeting: “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). The Catechism names Judith among the holy women who kept alive the hope of Israel's salvation, and says that the purest figure among them is Mary (CCC 64). This is the Church's typological reading; the book itself speaks only of Judith and Bethulia.
- Unfolding
- The Fathers also saw in Judith the Church, which overcomes the enemy not by numbers but by prayer, fasting and purity. St. Jerome, in his preface to the book, holds up the widow Judith as an example of chastity. The battle goes on: in Revelation the woman is pursued by “a huge red dragon” (Revelation 12:3), who then goes “to wage war against the rest of her offspring” (12:17). See Revelation 12.
“You are the glory of Jerusalem! You are the great pride of Israel! You are the great boast of our nation!” (15:9)
- Reading
- The high priest Joakim and the senate of Jerusalem come to see the good things God has done, and they bless Judith with one voice. They add, “By your own hand you have done all this” (15:10), and Judith leads the people in a hymn to “a God who crushes wars” (16:2). The praise is for Judith, but the victory is God's: the book never lets her be more than his instrument.
- Fulfilled
- This is a liturgical reading, not the text's first meaning. The Church has long sung these words of Mary, above all in honor of her Immaculate Conception. The ancient antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria takes them up from the Latin Vulgate: Tu gloria Ierusalem, tu laetitia Israel, tu honorificentia populi nostri, “You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you are the honor of our people.” (The Vulgate numbers the verse 15:10.) Mary is the daughter of Zion through whom God gave the decisive victory, and like Judith she points away from herself: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5).
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: Judith's rebuke of the elders who set God a deadline (8:11–17), Achior, the Ammonite who tells Holofernes the story of Israel and later believes (5; 14:10), Judith's fasting and widowhood (8:4–8; compare
Luke 2:36–37), and her closing hymn on the day of judgment, when God “will send fire and worms into their flesh” (16:17; compare
Isaiah 66:24 and
Mark 9:48).
Continue