Holofernes Marches on the Jews

So the Jews had returned to their homeland, as we told above. But before their affairs and their city were properly settled, the king of the Persians made war on the Medes. He fought a successful battle against their king, whose name was Arphaxad, and when that king had been killed he added the nation to his empire. He did the same to other nations. He sent Holofernes ahead of him, whom he had made commander of his army, with a hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers and twelve thousand cavalry. Holofernes laid waste Cilicia and Arabia in war, took many cities by force, and frightened others into surrendering. By now the army had moved on to Damascus, and it had struck great terror into the Jews. [a]

They were not able to resist. Yet at the same time they could not bring themselves to accept the thought of surrender, because they had already learned from experience the miseries of slavery. So they went in crowds to the temple. There, all groaning and wailing together, they begged God for help. They said that God had punished them enough for their sins and offenses, and they pleaded with him to spare the remnant of them who had only lately been set free from slavery.

Meanwhile Holofernes had accepted the surrender of the Moabites and taken them as allies in the war against the Jews. He asked their leading men what power the Hebrews were relying on, that they would not bring themselves to submit. A man named Achior answered him and laid out the facts. The Jews, he said, worshiped God and had been trained by their fathers in devout observances. Long ago they had been slaves in Egypt. God’s help had brought them out of that country; they had crossed on foot a sea that dried up in front of them, and in the end they had conquered every nation that stood against them and won back the land their ancestors had lived in. After that, he said, their fortunes had risen and fallen. They had prospered at some times and suffered at others, and when they did sink into trouble they had escaped from it again, because God was angry with them or reconciled to them by turns, as they deserved. When they sinned, they were punished by enemy attacks or by being carried into captivity; but as long as they had God’s favor they could never be conquered. So then, if at the present time they were free of guilt, there was no way to subdue them; but if they were not, they would easily be conquered.

At this Holofernes flew into a rage. He was flushed with many victories and thought that everything must give way before him, and here was his victory being made to depend mainly on whether the Jews had sinned. He ordered Achior to be driven out toward the camp of the Hebrews, so that he would die along with the people he had declared could not be conquered. The Jews had by then taken to the mountains. The men given the task went as far as the foot of the mountains and left Achior there in chains. When the Jews saw this, they freed him from his chains and brought him up the hill. They asked him why this had happened, and he explained. He was received in peace and waited to see how things would turn out. I may add that after the victory he was circumcised and became a Jew.

Holofernes, then, saw how hard the ground was, since he could not reach the heights. So he surrounded the mountains with soldiers and took the greatest pains to cut the Hebrews off from every source of water. Because of this they felt the misery of a siege all the sooner. Overcome by lack of water, they went together to Uzziah, their leader, all of them inclined to surrender. But he told them to wait a little and look for God’s help. So the time of surrender was set for the fifth day after that.