The Book of Judith

⭑ Catholic Public Domain Version 2009 ⭑

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- Chapter 1 -

Nabuchodonosor king of the Assyrians overcomes Arphaxad king of the Medes.

And so Arphaxad, king of the Medes, subjugated many nations under his authority, and he built a very powerful city, which he called Ecbatana.(a)

From stones, cut and squared, he made its walls: seventy cubits in height and thirty cubits in breadth. And, in truth, he set its towers one hundred cubits in height.(b)

In fact, at its corners, each side was extended for the space of twenty feet. And he set its gates according to the height of the towers.(c)

And he glorified it, in its power, with the force of his army and with the glory of his chariots.

Thereafter, in the twelfth year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, who reigned in Nineveh the great city, fought against Arphaxad and prevailed over him:(d)

in the great plain, which is called Ragae, near the Euphrates, and the Tigris, and the Hydaspes, at the encampment of Arioch, king of the Elymaeans.

Then the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar was exalted, and his heart was elevated. And he sent to all who dwelt in Cilicia, and Damascus, and Lebanon,

and to the nations that are in Carmel and Kedar, and to the inhabitants of Galilee, in the great plain of Esdrelon,

and to all who were in Samaria and across the river Jordan, even to Jerusalem and to all the land of Jesse, until one passes through to the borders of Ethiopia.

To all these, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, sent messengers:

whom they all with one mind contradicted, and they sent them back empty, and they rejected them without honor.

Then king Nebuchadnezzar, being indignant against all that land, swore by his throne and his kingdom that he would defend himself against all those regions.(e)

Footnotes

(a)1:1 Arphaxad:He was probably the same as is called Dejoces by Herodotus; to whom he attributes the building of Ecbatana, the capital city of Media.(Challoner)

(b)1:2 Some translations have the 70 cubits as its width, but this is clearly not what the Latin text says. The text does not specify width, as this would be irrelevant to the strength of the wall. Only the height and thickness of the wall is relevant to its strength. The width would be whatever was necessary to encompass the area.(Conte)

(c)1:3 Although in Biblical times they did not have the English unit of measure called a foot (12 inches), this passage calls the distance twenty ‘foot,’ meaning literally twenty times the length of a man’s foot.(Conte)

(d)1:5 Nabuchodonosor:Not the king of Babylon, who took and destroyed Jerusalem, but another of the same name, who reigned in Ninive: and is called by profane historians Saosduchin. He succeeded Asarhaddan in the kingdom of the Assyrians, and was contemporary with Manasses king of Juda.(Challoner)

(e)1:12 The word ‘defenderet’ does not refer to revenge; the king thought of this offense against his messengers as an attack against his honor, which he would then defend against.(Conte)