For now we have no helper, but God has sold us into their hands, so that we should be thrown down before them with thirst and great destruction.
Now therefore call them to you and deliver the whole city for a spoil to the people of Holofernes and to all his army.
For it is better for us to be made a spoil for them than to die of thirst;
for we will be his servants, so that our souls may live and we will not see the death of our infants before our eyes, nor the dying of our wives or our children.
We present as witness against you: the heaven and the earth, and our God and Lord of our fathers, who punishes us according to our sins and the sins of our fathers, so that he will not allow what we have described to happen on this day.