by
Damien F. Mackey
“… Judith replied;
‘this is the happiest day of my life’. But even then Judith ate and drank only what
her slave had prepared. Holofernes
was so charmed by her that he drank more wine than he had ever drunk at one
time in his whole life”.
Judith 12:18-19
Very few persons would have been physically
present at Holofernes’ last banquet to have witnessed just how much wine the
commander-in-chief drank at the time.
For, according to Judith 12:10-12:
On the
fourth day of Judith's stay in the camp, Holofernes gave a banquet for his
highest ranking officers, but he did not
invite any of the officers who were on duty. He said to Bagoas, the eunuch
who was in charge of his personal affairs, ‘Go and persuade the Hebrew woman,
who is in your care, to come to my tent to eat and drink with us. It would be a
shame to pass up an opportunity to make love to a woman like that. If I don't
try to seduce her, she will laugh at me’.
There was assuredly the chief eunuch, Bagoas, and
Judith herself - probably her maid (“slave”) - and perhaps a handful of
Assyrians.
But who, amongst these, could have informed the
author of the Book of Judith - who I accept to have been the high priest
Joakim/Eliakim - that the amount of wine consumed by Holofernes then was “more
wine than he had ever drunk at one time in his whole life”?
Bagoas, a “eunuch who was in charge of his
personal affairs”, may have known Holofernes well enough to
have made such a judgment about his life-long drinking habits. But neither he,
nor any other of the Assyrians (presuming any of them even knew) would likely
have passed on this information to a high priest of the enemy.
They all had fled, many of the Assyrians having
been killed (Judith 15:5):
…
[the Israelite soldiers] all attacked the Assyrians and chased them as far as
Choba, slaughtering them as they went. Even the people of Jerusalem and others
living in the mountains joined the attack when the messengers told them what
had happened in the Assyrian camp. The people of the regions of Gilead and
Galilee blocked the path of the retreating Assyrians and inflicted heavy losses
on them. They pursued them as far as the region around Damascus.
Obviously Judith was the key eyewitness who
would have been able to have passed on to her fellow Bethulians - upon her triumphant
return to the camp - an account of what had happened during that private banquet.
But she could not have known about the life-long drinking habits of Holofernes.
She knew about the commander-in-chief only through word of mouth (11:8): ‘We have heard how wise and clever you
are. The whole world knows that you are
the most competent, skilled, and accomplished general in the whole Assyrian
Empire’.
Music to his ears, no doubt.
Only one person could have informed the
high priest-author of the drinking habits of Holofernes (who may not normally
have been a heavy drinker). That was Achior
(the Ahikar of the book of Tobit), who
was the actual tutor of Holofernes according to my:
"Nadin" (Nadab) of Tobit is the "Holofernes" of Judith
Cf. Tobit 14:10: ‘Remember what Nadin did to Ahikar his own
uncle who had brought him up. He
tried to kill Ahikar and forced him to go into hiding …’.
By the time Holofernes had entered upon
his banquet, Achior was within the walls of the city of Bethulia distilling to
the Jews inside information about the Assyrians. Thus Judith had told Holofernes
(11:9-10): ‘Achior was rescued by the men of Bethulia, and has told us what he said at your war council.
Please, sir, do not dismiss lightly
what Achior told you, but take it seriously, because it is true. No one can
harm or conquer our people unless they sin against their God’.
And later, when (15:8): “The High Priest
Joakim and the Council of Israel came from Jerusalem to see for themselves what
great things the Lord had done for his people and to meet Judith and
congratulate her”, Joakim could have concluded from the combined information
supplied him by Judith and Achior how much Holofernes had drunk at the banquet (Judith),
and that Holofernes had never drunk that much in his life before (Achior).
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