Righteous Judith

Judith is an Old Testament righteous figure venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose story is preserved in the Old Testament book that bears her name. She is remembered as a devout widow who, trusting in God, delivered her besieged people from a foreign army. The Orthodox tradition recognizes her as the slayer of the enemy general Holofernes.

According to the Book of Judith, she was a widow of the town of Bethulia, a settlement guarding the approach to Jerusalem. When the general Holofernes, sent by Nebuchadnezzar against Israel, laid siege to Bethulia and cut off its water supply, the inhabitants grew desperate and pressed their leaders to surrender. The city's elder Uzziah agreed to capitulate if God did not deliver the town within five days. Judith rebuked this faltering of faith and resolved to act.

The narrative relates that Judith went out to the Assyrian camp, gained the confidence of Holofernes, and at a banquet, after he had fallen into a drunken sleep, beheaded him with his own sword and carried his head back to Bethulia. The death of their commander threw the besieging army into confusion, and the people of Bethulia routed it. The book recounts that Judith lived the remainder of her life as a respected widow and died at a great age.

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical work, received as Scripture by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches but absent from the Hebrew and Protestant canons. Within the Orthodox liturgical calendar Judith is commemorated among the Old Testament righteous; the synaxarion entry for her is brief, directing the reader to the biblical book for the fuller account of her life.