Judith, remember, is the brave and beautiful widow who's infiltrated the enemy camp of Holofernes, the Assyrian general laying siege to her city, Bethulia. She's pretending to be a traitor, offering him inside information. It’s a dangerous game, but she’s playing it with incredible cunning.
Here, in Judith 11, she's explaining to Holofernes why Bethulia is ripe for the taking. It’s not just military strategy she’s using; it's psychological warfare.
She says, "And now, so that my lord will not be defeated and frustrated in his purpose, even death has now fallen upon them and their sin has overtaken them." A bit dramatic, right? But Judith is painting a picture of utter despair. She's saying that the people of Bethulia are not just facing physical death from the siege, but also a spiritual death, brought on by their own actions.
What actions? Well, she continues, "and therefore they will provoke their God to anger whenever they do what is not right to be done." In other words, they're about to break the rules. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that. But Judith is suggesting that breaking those rules will have consequences far beyond the immediate crisis.
Then comes the real kicker: "For their food stores fail them and their water supply is scant, and they have decided to lay hands on their cattle, and have resolved to consume all those things which God has forbidden them to eat by his laws." Imagine the desperation. They're running out of food and water, so they're considering eating things that are treif – ritually impure, forbidden by Jewish law. It's a violation of their most deeply held beliefs.
And it gets worse! "And they are resolved to use up the first fruits and the tenths of wine and oil, which they had sanctified and which are reserved for the priests who serve in Jerusalem before the face of our God." This is huge. The bikkurim, the first fruits, and the ma'aser, the tithes, weren't just any offerings. They were sacred, meant for the Temple in Jerusalem and the priests who served there. Using them for themselves would be a profound act of sacrilege.
Judith is basically telling Holofernes that the people of Bethulia are about to cross a line, to betray their covenant with God. And she's implying that this will make them vulnerable, that God will abandon them. It's a brilliant, if audacious, manipulation.
Think about the layers here. Judith is playing on Holofernes's potential ignorance of Jewish law, perhaps even his arrogance, convincing him that Bethulia is doomed not just because of dwindling resources, but because of divine abandonment. She's using their own religious convictions against them.
It raises a really interesting question, doesn't it? How far would you go to survive? What lines would you cross? And what are the consequences, not just practically, but spiritually, of those choices? Judith understood that the battle wasn't just about armies and sieges. It was about faith, about identity, and about the choices we make when we're pushed to the brink. And she was willing to use that understanding to save her people, even if it meant walking a very dangerous, and morally ambiguous, path.