There rallied to him all the people of the hill country and all those who lived along the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, and, on the plain, Arioch, king of the Elymeans. Thus many nations joined the forces of the Cheleoudites.

and those among the nations of Carmel and Gilead, and Upper Galilee and the great plain of Esdraelon,

Yet he demolished all their shrines and cut down their sacred groves, for he had been commissioned to destroy all the gods of the land, so that all nations should worship Nebuchadnezzar alone and that all their dialects and tribes should call upon him as a god.

Judea on the Alert

When the Israelites living in Judea heard of everything that Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Assyrians, had done to the nations and how he had plundered and destroyed all their temples,

They even draped the altar with sackcloth and cried out in unison, praying fervently to the God of Israel not to allow their infants to be carried off and their wives to be taken as plunder, and the towns they had inherited to be destroyed, and the sanctuary to be profaned and desecrated to the malicious joy of the nations.

The slaughter of our kindred and the captivity of the land and the desolation of our inheritance—all this he will bring on our heads among the nations, wherever we serve as slaves, and we shall be an offense and a disgrace in the eyes of those who acquire us.

“Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever.”