OZIAS. What words?
JUDITH. This promise that you have uttered to deliver the city to our enemies, unless within five days the Lord turn to help. Who are you that seek to stand instead of God among the children of men?
OZIAS. Stand instead of God!
JUDITH. Who are you that have tempted God this day? For you cannot find the depth of the heart of man,—how then shall you search out God or comprehend his purpose? Brother, provoke not the Lord our God to anger. For if he will not help us within these five days, he has power to defend us when he will, even every day. Do not bind the counsels of God. For God is not as man that he may be threatened, neither as the son of man that he should be wavering. Therefore let us wait for salvation from him, and he will hear our voice,—if it please him. Moreover, this city is the key and the gateway to all Judea. If it be obstinate in resistance, Judea is not defiled, but if it be taken the whole land shall lie waste and God will require the profanation of it at our mouth.
OZIAS. All that you have spoken is truth, and there is none to gainsay your words. From the beginning of your days we have known your wisdom, and your understanding is manifest.... (With significance.) But we are thirsty.
JUDITH. If we are thirsty, let us give thanks to the Lord our God, who tries us, even as he did our fathers.
OZIAS. The people in the extremity of their thirst compelled me to an oath, which I will not break.
JUDITH. Say you the people, Ozias? As for them, you hold them lightly, and they are as naught in your eyes. So much you have avowed.
OZIAS (in a new tone). It is true. This day I hold the people lightly. But when the great madness and desperation of thirst comes at last upon them, who shall hold them? In that day they will seize the things forbidden, and they will drink the wine sanctified and reserved for the priests that serve the Lord. And to avert from me the wrath of Joachim, the high priest of Jerusalem, I have sent already a messenger to Jerusalem to bring a licence that this matter may be lawful.
JUDITH (shocked). Nay!