The Widow Who Went Out to the Camp

There was a small town on a hill, and a widow nobody expected anything of. Nebuchadnezzar ruled the Assyrians from Nineveh. He told every country west of him to come and fight for him, and they all said no. So he sent his commander Holofernes west with a hundred and twenty thousand men on foot and twelve thousand on horses. Holofernes burned the fields at harvest time and pulled down the temple of every god he came to. He had one job besides the fighting: to leave one god standing in the world, and it was to be Nebuchadnezzar.

The people of Judah had only just come home from being carried away, and the house of the Lord had only lately been made holy again. Now they heard what was coming. Joakim the great priest sent word into the hills to hold the passes: the roads up from the plain were narrow, and a few men at the top could stop an army. The whole country put on sackcloth and prayed. The town above the chief pass was called Bethulia.

One man in Holofernes’ camp knew who these people were: Achior, who led the Ammonites. He was asked, and he told the truth. “As long as they do not sin against their God, good things go with them. When they turn away from him, they lose. So find out, my lord. If there is nothing wrong among them, pass them by — or their Lord will hold his shield over them.” The men round the tent said he should be cut in pieces. Holofernes asked who God was besides Nebuchadnezzar, and had him dragged up the mountain and left tied at its foot, to be destroyed with the people he had spoken well of. The men of Bethulia untied him and carried him in.

The next day the army came, and it filled the valley. Holofernes’ chiefs told him not to fight at all. There is one spring at the foot of their hill, they said, and everyone in that town drinks from it. Take it and sit still: thirst will do the fighting for you. So he took the spring, and sat still. It went on for thirty-four days. The water jars went empty, house after house. What was left was handed round by measure, a cupful each. The children went quiet. Women and young men fainted in the streets. Then the whole town came up against Uzziah, the chief man of the place, and the elders. “There is nobody to help us now. Hand the town over. We would rather be their slaves and live than watch our little children die of thirst.” And in the middle of the weeping Uzziah said: “Be brave. Five days more. In five days the Lord our God will turn and be kind to us. But if the five days go by and no help comes, I will do what you say.”

In that town there lived a widow named Judith. Her husband Manasseh had died three years before, out in the barley harvest: he was standing over the men tying the sheaves when the heat came down on his head, and he went home and lay on his bed and died. She had stayed on his property and lived in a little tent on the roof, in her widow’s clothes. She heard what Uzziah had promised, and sent for him and two of the elders; and this small woman stood in front of the three rulers of the town and told them they had no business doing it. “You have put God under an oath. You have said that if he has not helped us inside five days you will hand the town over. Who are you, to put God to the test? Who are you, to stand in God’s place among men? You cannot find the bottom of a man’s heart. How will you search out God, who made all of it? If he will not help us inside your five days, he can shelter us on whatever day he likes. God is not a man, to be threatened.” And Uzziah said nobody would argue with her; but the people were thirsty, and the oath could not be taken back. So pray for us, he said. And Judith said: “Stand at the gate tonight. I am going out, and my servant with me. Before your five days are up, the Lord will visit Israel by my hand. Only do not ask me what I am doing. I will not tell you until it is finished.”

Then Judith went down on her face and put ashes on her head, at the hour when the evening incense was burned in Jerusalem. “Look at the Assyrians, Lord. Their hope is in shield and spear and bow and sling, and they do not know that you are the Lord who breaks wars to pieces. Put the strength I have been thinking of into my hand — a widow’s hand. You are the God of the low ones. Hear me. I am a widow.”

Then she got up off the floor, took off the sackcloth and washed, rubbed sweet oil into her skin, combed out her hair and bound it in a turban, and put on the good clothes she used to wear while Manasseh was alive. She filled a bag with barley meal, pressed figs and bread, because she would not eat one crumb of Assyrian food. Her servant carried the food bag. The gate was opened, and the two women walked down the mountain and across the valley, and the men on the wall watched until they could not see them.

The Assyrian scouts stopped them, and Judith said: “I am a daughter of the Hebrews, running away from them, because they are about to be handed over to you. I am going to Holofernes to show him a road he can take the whole hill country by, without losing one man.” They could not stop looking at her face, and a hundred of them walked her to the tent. Holofernes lay on his bed under a canopy of purple and gold, with silver lamps carried before him. And he said: “Take courage, woman. Do not be afraid. I have never harmed anybody who chose to serve Nebuchadnezzar, the king of all the earth.” Then she told him what she had come to say. Her people would never be beaten, she said, unless they sinned against their God — and they were about to: the town was starving, and meant to eat the food set apart for the priests in Jerusalem. On the day they ate it, they would be his. None of it was true; it was the thing she had asked God for the words to say. Holofernes was delighted, and said there was no woman like her in all the earth. He offered her his own food; she said no, she had brought her own. For three nights she and her servant walked out of the camp to pray and came back before light, until nobody turned his head when they went past.

On the fourth day Holofernes made a feast for his own household and sent for her. She came in and lay down on the fleeces opposite him, and he could not take his eyes off her. He told her to drink with them. “I will drink, my lord. Today my life has been made greater in me than in all the days since I was born.” She ate what her own servant had prepared; and he was so pleased with her that he drank more wine than on any one day of his life.

When it got late the servants hurried off to their beds. Bagoas, his chief servant, shut the tent from the outside and went away. Holofernes lay face down on the bed, and the wine had washed over him. Judith was left alone in the tent; her servant waited outside, as she had every night. Judith stood by the bed and said, inside herself: “Lord, God of all power, look this hour at the work of my hands. Make me strong, Lord, God of Israel, this day.” There was a sword hanging on the rail at the head of the bed. She took it down. She took hold of the hair of his head. She struck his neck twice, with all the strength she had, and took his head off him. Then she rolled the body off the bedding and pulled down the canopy. She gave the head to her servant, and her servant put it in the food bag. And the two women walked out through the camp as they had the three nights before, and nobody stopped them.

Judith called up out of the dark to the men keeping watch: “Open the gate! Open, open the gate! God is with us — our God — and he has shown his strength in Israel tonight.” They came running down, from the least to the greatest, and lit a fire to see by. And Judith reached into the food bag and lifted out the head and showed it to them. “Look. Holofernes, the commander of the army of Assyria. The Lord struck him down by the hand of a woman. And as the Lord lives: it was my face that deceived him, and he did me no harm.” Nobody could speak. Then the whole town bowed down to God, and Uzziah blessed her above all the women on the earth, because she had not spared her own life when her people were brought low.

Then they sent for Achior; and when he came in and saw the head of Holofernes held up in the crowd, he fell on his face. And from that day he believed the God of Israel, and joined himself to his people.

Judith had already told them what to do next. “Hang this head on the wall. When the light comes, take your weapons and go out as though you were going down to fight — but do not go down.” So at first light the head hung over the wall of Bethulia, and every man in the town went out to the tops of the paths. The Assyrians ran to wake their commander. Bagoas knocked at the curtain, got no answer, went in, and found him dead with his head gone. He tore his clothes and ran out shouting: “One woman of the Hebrews has brought shame on the house of King Nebuchadnezzar! Look — Holofernes on the ground, and his head is not on him!” And the army came apart. No man would stand and look his neighbor in the face. They poured out of the tents and ran; and Israel came down after them and cut them down along the roads, and did not stop until they had been driven past Damascus.

Then Bethulia plundered the camp for thirty days, and a poor hill country was suddenly rich. They gave Judith the tent of Holofernes and his silver. And every woman in the country came running to see her, and they made a dance for her; and she went out in front with the women behind her and the men walking after in their armor, singing what she sang: “Strike up for my God with hand-drums. Sing to the Lord with cymbals. The Lord is a God who breaks wars to pieces. Their mighty man did not go down in front of young men. Judith the daughter of Merari undid him with the beauty of her face. Lord, you are great and full of glory. The mountains will be shaken off their foundations and the rocks will melt like wax in front of you — but to the people who fear you, you will still be kind.” Then they went up to Jerusalem and gave their offerings, and Judith gave God everything of Holofernes’ that the people had given her.

Then everybody went home. Judith went back to Bethulia and lived on her own farm, honored in that country all her life. Many men wanted to marry her, and she married none of them. She set her servant free — the one who had carried the bag — and she grew old and died at a hundred and five. They buried her beside Manasseh, and Israel mourned for her seven days. And there was nobody left to frighten Israel while Judith lived, or for a long time after she died.