III. JUDITH.
10. This book relates the exploit of Judith, a Jewish widow distinguished alike for beauty, courage, and devotion to her country. When Holofernes, one of Nebuchadnezzar's generals, was besieging Bethulia, a city of Judea, she went over to his camp with her maid in the character of a deserter, promised to guide him to Jerusalem, and by her flattery and artful representations so insinuated herself into his favor that he entertained her with high honor. At last, being left alone with him at night in his tent, she beheaded him with his own falchion as he lay asleep and intoxicated, and going forth gave his head to her maid, who put it in her bag, and they two passed the guards in safety under the pretext of going out for prayer, as had been their nightly custom. The head of Holofernes was suspended from the wall of the city, and when the warriors within sallied forth, the besieging army fled in consternation. Judith receives as a reward all the stuff of Holofernes, lives at Bethulia as a widow in high honor, and dies at the age of one hundred and five.
11. The historical and geographical contradictions of this book are too many and grave to allow the supposition that it contains an authentic narrative of facts. It was manifestly written after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity and the rebuilding of the city and temple (chaps. 4:3; 5:18, 19), when the nation was governed, not by a king, but by a high priest and Sanhedrim. Chap. 4:6, 8; 15:8. Yet it makes Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned in Babylon long before, king in Nineveh in the eighth year of his reign, whereas his father had destroyed Nineveh. The attempts that have been made to reconcile these and other inconsistencies with true history are forced and unnatural. Whatever historical truth may lie at the basis of the story, it is so interwoven with fiction that the two elements cannot be separated from each other. It was probably written by a Palestinian Jew in Hebrew or Aramaic somewhere about the second century before Christ. The design of the book is to excite the people to faith and courage in their severe conflicts with foreign persecutors; but its morality is of a very questionable character. Judith, its heroine, while she adheres with great punctiliousness to the Mosaic ritual, does not scruple to employ hypocrisy and falsehood that she may prepare the way for assassination, being evidently persuaded that in the service of the covenant people the end sanctifies the means.