7:20 Thus all the company of Assur remained about them, both their
footmen, chariots, and horsemen, four and thirty days, so that all
their vessels of water failed all the inhibitants of Bethulia.
7:21 And the cisterns were emptied, and they had not water to drink
their fill for one day; for they gave them drink by measure.
7:22 Therefore their young children were out of heart, and their women
and young men fainted for thirst, and fell down in the streets of the
city, and by the passages of the gates, and there was no longer any
strength in them.
7:23 Then all the people assembled to Ozias, and to the chief of the
city, both young men, and women, and children, and cried with a loud
voice, and said before all the elders,
7:24 God be judge between us and you: for ye have done us great injury,
in that ye have not required peace of the children of Assur.
7:25 For now we have no helper: but God hath sold us into their hands,
that we should be thrown down before them with thirst and great
destruction.
7:26 Now therefore call them unto you, and deliver the whole city for a
spoil to the people of Holofernes, and to all his army.
7:27 For it is better for us to be made a spoil unto them, than to die
for thirst: for we will be his servants, that our souls may live, and
not see the death of our infants before our eyes, nor our wives nor our
children to die.
7:28 We take to witness against you the heaven and the earth, and our
God and Lord of our fathers, which punisheth us according to our sins
and the sins of our fathers, that he do not according as we have said
this day.
7:29 Then there was great weeping with one consent in the midst of the
assembly; and they cried unto the Lord God with a loud voice.
7:30 Then said Ozias to them, Brethren, be of good courage, let us yet
endure five days, in the which space the Lord our God may turn his
mercy toward us; for he will not forsake us utterly.
7:31 And if these days pass, and there come no help unto us, I will do
according to your word.
7:32 And he dispersed the people, every one to their own charge; and
they went unto the walls and towers of their city, and sent the women
and children into their houses: and they were very low brought in the
city.
8:1 Now at that time Judith heard thereof, which was the daughter of
Merari, the son of Ox, the son of Joseph, the son of Ozel, the son of
Elcia, the son of Ananias, the son of Gedeon, the son of Raphaim, the
son of Acitho, the son of Eliu, the son of Eliab, the son of Nathanael,
the son of Samael, the son of Salasadal, the son of Israel.
8:2 And Manasses was her husband, of her tribe and kindred, who died in
the barley harvest.
8:3 For as he stood overseeing them that bound sheaves in the field,
the heat came upon his head, and he fell on his bed, and died in the
city of Bethulia: and they buried him with his fathers in the field
between Dothaim and Balamo.
8:4 So Judith was a widow in her house three years and four months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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