So now that prayer is accomplished for our final lesson, it is entitled Judith delivers Judah. It's going to be chapters eight through 16, so a bit of material here to cover, but it's the epic conclusion. So just by way of recap, which I always like to do, what we saw in lesson two is the first half of this book chapters one through seven, which we basically have the drama laid out before us. We've got the tension, the excitement, you've got Holofarinese, the commander-in-chief of Nebuchadnezzar, the literary Nebuchadnezzar, as what I like to call him.
He is rampaging to the countryside. He is mowing down everyone in front of him, and essentially Judah is the last one standing. They were at this town of Bethelia. The citizens of Bethelia have holed themselves up in their city.
They've got food storage, they've got their water. However, Nebuchadnezzar's commander, Holofarinese, has taken control over the springs and starving them out. They're getting hungry, they're thirsty. So after a month, everyone is really, really desperate.
The resolve is not so strong, and they're beginning to really second guess their decisions on fighting against or at least resisting Holofarinese. And so they come to the commanders or the elders of the city and they say, okay, it's time for us to give in. It'd be better for us to be slaves. And there's very much echoes of Exodus.
I really want you to remember that connection. I shared many times with you in the last lesson that there's all these throwbacks and echoes to the Exodus because the Assyrians are depicted as new Egyptians. And so God will deliver his people here and now from Holofarinese, just like he delivered his people from Pharaoh. So there's all kinds of echoes to Exodus.
So they're thirsty and they whine and complain and they're not trusting God and they put a deadline on God's deliverance. Five days. And so the elders of Bethelia say after five days, if nothing happens, it'll be getting no rain to refill our cisterns, then we're going to surrender. Alright, so now we're left wondering, well, what's going to happen?
How will God deliver his people? And now we're going to be talking about Judith. So I want to just mention a few biographical points about Judith. Her name in Hebrew is Jewess.
It's very basic. Very broad. It's like if I had a daughter, you name her Americana, right? Because she's, you know, her name is the, represents the name of our country.
So that's the same thing. Judith, Jewess, I would also remind you that her name is very vague and broad like this because she does represent her people. So I'm actually a little bit ahead of myself. What I want to do is read for you chapter eight versus one through eight because this is where she's introduced.
So let's do that. Chapter eight verse one says, at that time, Judith heard about these things. She was the daughter of so-and-so-and-so-and-so. So she goes down 16 generations.
Verse two, her husband, Manasseh, who belonged to her tribe and family had died during the barley harvest. Really quickly, I'm just going to interrupt myself and say, this is not the same Manasseh, obviously, who is Joseph's son. He just has the same name. We're many, many centuries after the story of Joseph and his two sons being born in Egypt.
Just to clarify this, this happens sometimes where certain individuals are the course of Israel will have the same names as the patriarch. So in any case, his name is Manasseh. He belonged to her tribe and her family. He died during the barley harvest.
Whereas he stood overseeing the men who were binding sheaves in the field. He was overcome by the burning heat and took to his bed and died in Bethelia, his city. So they buried him with his father's in the field between Dothan and Balamon. Judith had lived at his home as a widow for three years and four months.
She set up a tent for herself on the roof of her house and built a sackcloth about her loins and wore garments of her widowhood. She fasted all the days of her widowhood except the day before the Sabbath and the Sabbath itself, the day before the new moon and the day of the new moon, the feasts and days of rejoicing of the house of Israel. She was beautiful in appearance and had a very lovely face. She was prudent of heart, discerning in judgment and quite virtuous.
Her husband, Manasseh, the son of Joseph, and he had a little genealogy for him, the son of Joseph, the son of Simeon, they're the same tribe of Simeon, had left her gold in silver and men and women's slaves and cattle and fields and she maintained this estate. No one spoke ill of her, for she feared God with great devotion. All right, we'll stop right there at verse eight. So this is pretty interesting.
She's quite a woman. She's very remarkable, very stunning in so many different ways. So first, I'm just following the notes here if you happen to have them in front of you. She had a little Bible trivia.
She has the longest genealogy of any woman in the Bible, which is really fascinating. It really does also touch upon the fact that maybe this is historical, or at least cryptic history, as I've talked about many times in the past two lessons. But she has 16 generations here of genealogy. That's really remarkable.
Now we could re-typeologically-numerology into this. Eight is the number of new creation, rejuvenation, renewal, so it's two times eight because, well, I think that it's safe to say, as we're going to see in the story, she does bring renewal to her city, to her people as a whole. So maybe there's something going on with that. I'm not quite so sure, but I can never resist the temptation of looking at numbers and what they mean.
But 16 generations, eight times two, she certainly is going to bring about a renewal and a new creation, a new beginning for her people as we'll see. All right, she's from the tribe of Simeon. I kind of already mentioned that here as we were reading along. So she's from the tribe of Simeon.
Her husband is from the tribe of Simeon. And that's important because it's a further point of her fidelity because the Israelite people were commanded by Moses and Joshua to marry within their tribe. You certainly must marry within the 12 tribes of Israel, but even more than that, you really should marry within your own tribe. Reason being that when you die, you want to be able to pass on your land to your next generations, which belong to your tribe.
Because the land was part of their inheritance. They don't do what Americans do, and maybe other countries do. Where you buy and sell willy-hilly. I mean, I've lived in five different states, in two different countries.
I don't even know how many places I've lived in, how many houses I've bought and sold, moving around from job to job, all across the United States. They didn't really do that. The land belongs to their family. And so you want to keep the land within the ancestral tribe, if that makes sense.
So the fact that she married, and also her husband, both of them, married within their tribe, points to their fidelity to the law. And that's a very good thing. All right, next, she has all these ascetical practices. She's very, very pious.
And so not only she pious in observing all these different ascetic practices, it surpasses the minimum requirements of the law. She goes above and beyond the call of duty. So she is uniquely faithful, uniquely pious, uniquely, and heroically saintly, you call her saintly. She's a saint of the Old Testament, right?
So I think this is really, really important. She just doesn't observe what is required of the law. She goes above and beyond. And here's another thing I want to point out here before we go on to next point.
She is so pious, practicing all of these acts of religion. However, she doesn't fast and put on this sackcloth upon her loins and on her body and all this stuff on feast days. I think that's a really important, relevant point. So you've got all the various feasts, the new moon, the Sabbath and other feasts days throughout the year.
She doesn't do that because we're not supposed to fast and mourn on days of celebration. This is like in the Catholic Church, just go to the biggest example, which is Easter. You're not supposed to fast and mourn on Easter. It is a big day of celebration of partying, of rejoicing, virtuously, of course, right?
You party with virtue, you don't go overboard and get drunk or anything like that. You know what I'm saying. But you're supposed to do that. Sunday is as well.
Every Sunday is a little mini Easter. So on Sundays, you're not supposed to fast. So in the holy season of Lent, you're not supposed to practice your observances on Sunday. I mean, you can, but I mean, you're supposed to tone it way back.
I mean, some people, let's say they give up sugar, alcohol or coffee or whatever it is. I mean, some people just, they know themselves and it's better just to go cold turkey from Ashwin's day to Easter Sunday. Well, that's one thing, but the church has always said on Sundays days of little mini Easter's, little days recognizing and celebrating the Lord's resurrection, you're not supposed to do that. So I think this is beautiful.
She's a role model for Jews, but also for Christians now reading about her story to go above and beyond. I call it an ordinary time of the liturgical seasons that liturgical year. We should go above and beyond what the law requires and pray and fast and give alms and do penance. But when those feast days come, we really should party.
We really should rejoice in the Lord's grace and goodness. I find that very, very helpful. Okay. All right.
Next, she was left all kinds of wealth, gold, silver, men, women's slaves, cattle, fields, and she maintained this vast estate. And that some commentaries will point out kind of the emblematic virtuous, the valiant wife or woman of Proverbs 31. If you go back and read Proverbs 31, I know I don't have time to get into all of that right now, but go back and check it out. The last chapter of Proverbs is all about this valiant wife or this valiant woman.
She is like that woman who maintains her estate. She's pious and beautiful and wealthy and wise. That's Proverbs 31, and that is Judith, right? So she's really living out the law and living out the scriptures.
That's really beautiful. All right. She's a consecrated widow. In fact, her whole widowhood to the Lord is a foreshadowing.
I picked up the long way. I forget where I got this of the prophetess Anna. If you go to Luke chapter two, remember, you had this prophetess Anna who lived within the precincts of the temple, or she was there every single day praying and fasting, and she never got remarried because she was worshiping God. She had consecrated her life to the Lord.
And that's exactly what Judith is. So in a certain sense, Judith is a foreshadowing of the prophetess Anna, but specifically in as much as just like Anna in the New Testament, in Luke chapter two was waiting for the coming of Messiah. In a real sense, so is Judith. Judith has consecrated herself to the Lord and she is waiting for the new to vedict king.
And I think when you look at that parallel, the connection between Judith and Anna is really lovely. All right. Now, how long was she a widow? Well, it says three years and four months.
Well, if you count it up, that's 40 months. That is the famous biblical number of trial, tribulation, testing. And so she's been a widow for 40 months. And so she is enduring this period of trial, tribulation, and testing in her own life, proving to be holy and pious and faithful.
But also it's going to be symbolic, I think, for her and her people, because she's going to deliver her people by being faithful to God, by overcoming this period of difficulty. Because I think you could read between the lines. She probably had a very great marriage with Mass. I hope I'm not reading too much into it, but I certainly like to think that.
And so obviously when you lose your spouse, it's very, very difficult. Although more so if you have a lovely happy marriage. So she's enduring this trial of her widowhood 40 months, and that's going to be pointing forward to the people of Israel as well, in this trial of having to deal with whole fairness. All right.
And in all of that, I kind of already said this multiple times in the past two lessons, and even in these opening comments, she represents and symbolizes not just every individual Jewish woman or Jewish person, Christian person, but she represents the religious vocation and ideals of Israel. That's why her name is Jewish. You know, because she is the Jewish woman. She represents the Jewish people who is faithful and beautiful and wise and is supposed to consecrate themselves to God and to manage the states of the land, which is God's blessing for the people and so on and so forth.
So that's really, really important. All right. So you can see already just these eight verses. There's so much to this woman.
She is a dynamite woman. And it is a really, really beautiful thing to study the women of the Old Testament. I'm not just pandering here, but obviously God works through men and women. Predominantly, obviously people will point out, you know, working through the great patriarchs and the prophets, but there's women who are absolutely phenomenal, the matriarchs.
And you've got Rahab and Ruth and Judith and Esther and so many other women. And she, Judith is just absolutely phenomenal. I love her story. So let's keep reading it.
All right. So now let's move on with what she does confronting and rebuking the leaders of Bethalia. So it happens in Traverse 9, then after her little biography is given to us, it says that she hears the wicked words spoken by the people against the ruler, and how what they had done to promise and to swear and oath that they're going to surrender after five days, all of this stuff. And in verse 10, it says that she sent her maid, who was in charge of all she possessed, to summon these two elders of the city, Cadreus and Carmice, the elders of the city.
And they came to her and she said to them, now, first off, I think this is amazing. So she summons the male leaders, the elders of the city to her presence, and they heed her call. That tells you immediately what kind of woman this is. She's a woman that everybody respects.
Just like we saw in verse eight, no one spoke iller. She feared God with great devotion. Everybody saw that. Everybody knew what kind of woman she was.
So much so that these elders of the city come at her beck and call. I just think that that's phenomenal. All right, well, in any case, she rebukes them. Let me go down to verse 12, actually, and let's read on from 12 to 17.
Who are you, she says to them, who are you that have put God to the test this day and are setting yourselves up in the place of God among the sons of men? You are putting the Lord Almighty to the test, but you will never know anything. You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart nor find out what a man is thinking. How do you expect to search out God who made all these things and find out his mind or comprehend his thought?
No, my brethren, do not provoke the Lord to anger, for if he does not choose to help us within these five days, he has power to protect us within any time he pleases, or even to destroy us in the presence of our enemies. Do not try to bind the purposes of the Lord our God. For God is not like man to be threatened nor like a human being to be won over by pleading. Therefore, while we wait for his deliverance, let us call upon him to help us and he will hear our voice if it pleases him.
All right, so what is she doing? First, she is rebuking them. All right, you don't have enough faith and you're also testing God by giving him this deadline. Five days and only five days and if God doesn't heed your voice, this is a big lesson in scripture.
You know, God tests us. We are not to test him. Do you run any six, six things as do not test the Lord your God. In fact, that is the verse that Jesus quotes in the temptation narrative, right?
Jesus is tempted and tested by Satan in the wilderness. Well, he quotes the Quran in me, 6, 16, by saying, don't put the Lord like God to the test. We can't do this. This is something that's very foolish for us to do.
So don't test the Lord. Don't put him within your little time strains. So she's basically saying, look, if God wants to help us, he's going to help us when he's good and ready. We just must be faithful the entire time.
And if we're defeated, it's because of our own sins. And if we're not defeated, well, God is there for us. He's always going to deliver us. All right, so what she's going to go on to say is don't test him.
God is testing us. And so we must be faithful. Let's skip all the way down here for the sake of time to verse 24. Now therefore brethren, let us set an example to our brethren for our lives to pinned upon us and the sanctuary and the temple and the altar rest upon us.
He's obviously talking about the people in Jerusalem that everyone's waiting. Just comment here really quickly. Remember, Bethelia is this fortified city. I hope I made this clear in the last lesson.
I don't even remember, but okay, maybe I'm angels telling me to tell you this right now. But Bethelia is this very important place in the hillside where people, the enemy, if they capture Bethelia, they're going to be able to have access to Jerusalem farther down south, which is very, very bad because Nebuchadnezzar's army, Holofarini's army is going through and sacking all the temples and shrines and forcing everyone to worship Nebuchadnezzar, which touches upon the themic who we can worship, Nebuchadnezzar or God who we can trust, Nebuchadnezzar or God, right? So in any case, there's this very narrow passageway. So if Bethelia holds out, then all the rest of the people of Jews will have hope and courage.
But if Bethelia falls, well, then the Persian army is going to gain access to the Southern Road. Okay, so I just want to clarify that. So she says everybody is relying upon us, verse 25. In spite of everything, let us give thanks to the Lord our God who was putting us to the test as he did our forefathers.
Remember what he said with Abraham and how he tested Isaac and what happened to Jacob and Mesopotamian Syria while he was keeping the sheep of Laban his mother's brother. For he has not tried us with fire as he did them to search their hearts, nor has he taken revenge upon us, but the Lord scourges those who draw near to him in order to admonish them. This is a great line. It has repeated so many times in Scripture going back to Deuteronomy, the Lord says to the Israelites, the Lord is testing you as a father, tests and disciplines his son.
The same theme is picked up in Hebrews and everywhere in between. The Lord disciplines and admonishes and tests those whom he loves just like a father does. Right? So I'm getting into this funny because in Hebrews, I'm going to say the author of Hebrews is Saint Paul.
He says in the middle of discipline, it doesn't seem very pleasant. And you're like, no kidding, it doesn't seem pleasant. But afterwards, you understand what God's gracious goodness is doing for us. So this is what she's saying.
And you go to James and put in your notes here a reference to James chapter 1 verse 3. There's so many other passages in the Catholic epistles and Paul's epistles of how the Lord tests our faith as goal or precious metals is tested through fire. So this is a theme throughout all of Scripture. And she's reminding them and telling them to be faithful to allow their faith or trust, their hope in God be purified because that's really what God is doing.
So you got to give these elders credit because they say in verse 28, Uzziah and these other two characters, Kavras and Karmius, they say all that you, this is verse 28, all that you have said has been spoken out of a true heart and there is no one who can deny your words. Today is not the first time your wisdom has been shown but from the beginning of your life, all the people have recognized your understanding for your heart's disposition is right. But the people are very thirsty. They compelled us to do for them what we promised.
So in other words, hey, we're sorry what we did but it's done. So pray for us verse 31. Intercede for us because you're a devout woman, the pray that the Lord will send rain to fill our cisterns and will no longer be faint. So it's a legitimate issue what they're dealing with right now.
So they thank her for her counsel. They praise her and they ask for her intercession. Like James chapter 5 or 16 will say the prayers of a righteous man, avail if much. In this case, it's the prayers of a righteous woman.
We'll avail if much. And that's what they're recognizing. So basically what she says in response to them is hold my beer. Hold my beer.
I'm going to take care of this. You idiots. They put the Lord to the test. You made a big big mistake but hold my beer.
I'm going to handle it. Let's read verse 32. She would have said, listen to me. I'm about to do a thing.
We'll go down through all generations of our descendants. Stand up to sit again tonight. I'll go out with my maiden within the days after which you have promised to surrender the city to our enemies. The Lord will deliver Israel by my hand.
Only don't try to figure out what I'm doing. And it was I and the other elders say, go and peace the Lord be with you essentially, right? Okay. So she has a secret plan.
She's going to help. She's going to pray hard and trust in God and she's going to take matters into her own hand. And she says here, the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand. That's incredible confidence.
For this woman in the ancient Near Eastern culture, that's a big deal. She's also a widow, which is also a big deal, right? No one would expect God to deliver his people through the hand of a woman. That's kind of this underlying theme throughout the whole book.
And that's true of all the scripture and even in our lives today. God uses the humble. God uses those who trust him to accomplish his designs. He brings down the mighty from the throne and lifts up the lowly like the Blessed Virgin Mary says in her magnificon.
So when she says the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand, she says this kind of expression by my hand happened seven times in the book. Some commentaries will say eight, but I researched it. I can't find eight. I only find seven.
I could be mistaken on this, but in any case, I'm going with seven seven different times. I have the references here in your notes. And that's important because seven is the number of the covenant that God will be so first that the leah must be faithful to the covenant with God and then God will be faithful to them and they will be blessed. Now, if they're the expression like I think it's your Ignatia Catholic study Bible says this, but if it's eight times, that's also awesome because I said before the beginning, it's the number of new creation renewal, right?
And so that's pretty awesome that by her hand, God will renew his people and that's equally awesome. All right. Now, there's also a contrast here. So besides the numerology, don't forget that back in chapter two, verse 12, Nebuchadnezzar in his hubris and in his pride and his allunacy.
If you go back to chapter two, verse 12, Nebuchadnezzar says right before he sends whole affair and needs to attack everybody. He says, as I live by the power of my kingdom, what I have spoken, my hand will execute. So you got this incredible contrast between the hand of the prideful Nebuchadnezzar and what he wants to accomplish versus the humility, the faithfulness of this humble woman, right, this humble little woman and what God will accomplish through her hand. I love that contrast between Nebuchadnezzar and Judith.
All right. Now, this is also another echo of the Exodus because so Judith says the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand. Well, that's exactly what happened in the Exodus. There's many passages if you go through the narration or the narrative of the plagues, it's always by the hand of Moses that God unleashes a plague upon Egypt.
All right. So it's by the hand of Moses, Egypt is punished. Now it's by the hand of Judith that that the Persians or I guess the Syrians depending on what look at that but it says he's the king of the Assyrians are going to be punished. That's that's pretty awesome here.
So further, there are more echoes to Exodus. So hang on tight. All right. So now that she's confronted the elders, the first thing that she does is to pray.
That's a huge that's a huge lesson before we do anything. We're confident in the Lord. We're repentant of our sin but we must pray and that's what she does in verse nine or chapter nine. She prays.
She lays prostrate before the Lord. She fasts. She does penance interceding on behalf of the people and asking God to bless her steps. Before she does anything else, she prays that I also find a highly, highly relevant point.
We must pray before we do anything. So what does she pray? It washer's read chapter nine verse one. Hey, this is Dr.
Nick. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S and T audio library where you can listen to them on demand however and whenever you want. So thank you so much.
God bless you and keep setting your Bible.