Judith 2:14-28

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Campaign of Holofernes

¹⁴ So Holofernes left the presence of his lord and summoned all the commanders, generals, and officers of the Assyrian army. ¹⁵ He mustered the picked troops by divisions as his lord had ordered him to do, one hundred twenty thousand of them, together with twelve thousand archers on horseback,^{(A) 16} and he organized them as a great army is marshaled for a campaign. ¹⁷ He took along a vast number of camels and donkeys and mules for transport and innumerable sheep and oxen and goats for food,^{(B) 18} also ample rations for everyone and a huge amount of gold and silver from the royal palace.

¹⁹ Then he set out with his whole army to go ahead of King Nebuchadnezzar and to cover the whole face of the earth to the west with their chariots and cavalry and picked foot soldiers.^{(C) 20} Along with them went a mixed crowd like a swarm of locusts, like the dust^[a] of the earth, a multitude that could not be counted.^(D)

²¹ They marched for three days from Nineveh to the plain of Bectileth and camped opposite Bectileth near the mountain that is to the north of Upper Cilicia.^{(E) 22} From there Holofernes^[b] took his whole army, the infantry, cavalry, and chariots, and went up into the hill country. ²³ He ravaged Put and Lud and plundered all the Rassisites and the Ishmaelites on the border of the desert, south of the country of the Chelleans.^{(F) 24} Then he followed^[c] the Euphrates and passed through Mesopotamia and destroyed all the fortified towns along the Wadi Abron, as far as the sea.^{(G) 25} He also seized the territory of Cilicia and killed everyone who resisted him. Then he came to the southern borders of Japheth, facing Arabia.^{(H) 26} He surrounded all the Midianites and burned their tents and plundered their sheepfolds.^{(I) 27} Then he went down into the plain of Damascus during the wheat harvest and burned all their fields and destroyed their flocks and herds and sacked their towns and ravaged their lands and put all their young men to the sword.^(J)

²⁸ So fear and dread of him fell upon all the people who lived along the seacoast, at Sidon and Tyre, and those who lived in Sur and Ocina and all who lived in Jamnia. Those who lived in Azotus and Ascalon feared him greatly.^(K)