Commentaria in Judith
Chapter 3
The kings of Syria and Mesopotamia from fear surrender to Holofernes, who nevertheless fiercely destroyed their cities, groves and gods, that Nabuchodonosor alone might be worshipped as a god.
1. Then they sent ambassadors to him, the kings and princes of all cities and provinces, of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Syria Sobal, and Libya, and Cilicia, who coming to Holofernes, said: 2. Let thy indignation cease towards us: for it is better that we live and serve Nabuchodonosor the great king, and be subject to thee, than die and suffer the miseries of slavery. 3. All our city, and all our possessions, all the mountains, and hills, and fields, and herds of oxen, and flocks of sheep, and goats, and horses, and camels, and all our goods, and families are in thy sight: 4. Let all we have be under thy law: 5. We, and our children are thy servants. 6. Come to us a peaceable lord, and use our service as it shall please thee. 7. Then he came down from the mountains with horsemen in great power, and made himself master of every city, and all the inhabitants of the land. 8. And out of all the cities he took to himself auxiliaries, valiant men, and chosen for war. 9. And such a dread of him lay upon all those provinces, that the inhabitants of all the cities, both princes and honourable men, as well as the people, went out to meet him as he came, 10. Receiving him with garlands and lamps, and leading dances with timbrels and flutes. 11. Yet doing these things, they could not mitigate the fierceness of his heart: 12. For he both destroyed their cities, and cut down their groves. 13. For Nabuchodonosor the king had commanded him to destroy all the gods of the land, that he alone might be called god by those nations which could be brought under Holofernes’ power. 14. And when he had passed through Syria Sobal, and all Apamea, and all Mesopotamia, he came to the Idumeans, into the land of Gabaa, 15. And he took possession of their cities, and stayed there thirty days, in which days he commanded all the army of his host to be gathered together.
1. “THEN THEY SENT AMBASSADORS.”—So to Alexander the Great, as Curtius says, when he wished to return to Babylon, it was announced that ambassadors from diverse lands had flocked together from every side to Babylonia. Syria, strictly taken, whose capital is Damascus, which was thence called Damasina, whose king was Benadad, Rasin, Hazael, 3 Kings chapter 20 and following; but taken broadly, includes Antioch, Phoenicia, Judea, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Assyria, as Pliny attests, book V, chapter 12.
“SOBAL”—is the part of Syria which is called Sophone by Ptolemy, Strabo and Pliny, of which in the books of Kings.
“LIBYA.”—Some suspect that one should read “Lycia,” because Libya is in Africa and far from Syria. But the terror of Nabuchodonosor was so great that it could have reached Libya, as the fame and terror of Alexander the Great penetrated to the Garamantes and the Indians.
2. “THAT WE LIVE AND SERVE NABUCHODONOSOR THE GREAT KING.”—Truly Alexander the Great in Plutarch, book II *On the Fortune of Alexander*, used to say: “Many are great in name only.”
7. “THEN HE (Holofernes) CAME DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS.”—Of Syria, namely Casius, Libanus and Antilibanus, between which Damascus is situated, whose fertile plains Holofernes occupied in the time of harvest, as has been said above.
10. “RECEIVING HIM WITH GARLANDS AND LAMPS, LEADING DANCES WITH TIMBRELS AND FLUTES.”—A crown is the badge of a king, before whom of old lamps were lit, or fires were carried before him, as Tertullian teaches in the *Apology* and Xiphilinus in *Nero*. Hear Curtius, book V: “Bagistanes, keeper of the Babylonian citadel and of the treasure, went out to meet Alexander the victor, and had strewn the whole way with flowers and garlands, with silver altars set on both sides, which he had heaped not only with incense but with all perfumes.” See what is said on Jeremias 1:13, on the words: “I see a boiling caldron.”
12. “AND CUT DOWN THEIR GROVES,”—together with the gods and idols which, after the manner of the nations, were worshipped in groves, covering their obscenities, as I said in the books of Kings.
13. “THAT HE SHOULD DESTROY ALL THE GODS, NAMELY, THAT HE ALONE MIGHT BE CALLED GOD.”—See to what height the pride of man rises, who, forgetting that he is earth and dust, declares war on God and divinity, and wishes himself to be held and worshipped as God, indeed as the only God. And this also because he had conquered Arphaxad. Truly Darius in Curtius, book IV: “Human frailty,” he says, “is an excessive forgetfulness in prosperity.” Like was the state of Lucifer, Isaias 14:15, and of Pharao, Ezechiel 29:3, and of the king of Tyre, Ezechiel 28, and therefore they all deserved to be laid low and cast down from kingdom and life. Pride, then, is sheer madness, which makes a man as it were a Titan, not only a fighter against giants but a fighter against God, so that he dares to challenge God as it were to a duel, just as if a dog should challenge an elephant, or a mouse a lion, to combat.
14. “INTO THE LAND OF GABAA,”—that is, into a hilly and mountainous land. For this is what Gabaa signifies in Hebrew.
The Greek has: He came opposite, or into the plain of Esdrelon near Dothea, which is over against the great Serra of Judea, and pitched his camp between Gabaa and Scythopolis. Hence Serarius suspects that for “Idumeans” one should read “Dothaeans.” “Serra,” says Arias, “is a tract continuously closed and divided, or narrowed like the teeth of a saw, as are the passes and narrows of mountains.”