CHAPTER 16
1 Then Judith sang this song to the Lord,
2 and said, Begin ye to praise God in tympans [or timbrels]; sing ye to the Lord in cymbals; sing ye sweetly a new psalm to him; fully make ye joy [or full out joyeth], and inwardly call ye his name.
3 The Lord all-breaketh battles, the Lord is name to him;
4 which hath set his castles, that is, angels, or his strengths, in the midst of his people [or that put his tents in the middle of his people], for to deliver us from the hand of all our enemies.
5 Assur came from the hills, from the north, in the multitude of his strength; whose multitude stopped strands [or the streams], and the horses of them covered valleys.
6 And he said, that he should burn my coasts, and slay my young men with sword, to give my young children into prey, and the virgins thereof into captivity.
7 But the Lord Almighty annoyed him, and betook him into the hands of a woman, and she shamed [or confounded] him.
8 For the mighty prince of them felled not down by strength of young men, neither the sons of giants killed him, neither high giants putted them-selves to him; but Judith, the daughter of Merari, overcame him by the fairness of her face.
9 For she unclothed her from the cloth of [her] widowhood, and clothed her with [or in] the cloth of gladness, into the full out joying of the sons of Israel.
10 She anointed her face with ointment, and she bound together the tresses of her hairs with a coronal [or a mitre], to deceive him.
11 Her sandals ravished his eyes, her fairness made his soul captive; with a sword she cut off his neck.
12 Men of Persia had hideousness of her steadfastness, and men of Media of her hardiness. [The Persians dreaded her steadfastness, and Medes her hardiness.]
13 Then the strong powers of the men of Assyria [or Assyrians] yelled for dread, when my meek men of Israel, waxing dry for thirst, appeared to them.
14 The sons of young women have pricked them, and they have killed them as children fleeing; they perished in battle from the face of my God [or from the face of my Lord].
15 Sing we an hymn to the Lord, and sing we a new hymn to our God. [A new hymn sing we to the Lord our God.]
16 Lord God, thou art a great Lord, and full clear [or all clear]art thou in thy virtue, whom no man may over-come.
17 Each creature of thine serve thee, for thou saidest, and so all things were made; thou sentest thy Spirit, and then all things were made of nought [or be formed]; and none is that against-standeth thy commandment.
18 For hills shall be moved from the foundaments with waters; and stones shall float abroad as wax before thy face [or stones as wax shall melt before thy face].
19 And they that dread thee, shall be great with thee by all things.
20 Woe to the folk rising up upon my kin [or my kindred]; for the Lord Almighty shall take vengeance in them, and in the day of doom he shall visit them.
21 For he shall give fire and worms in the fleshes of them [or in their flesh], that they be burnt, and live, and they feel the fierceness thereof till into without end [or unto evermore.]
22 And it was done after these things, all the people after the victory came to Jerusalem to worship the Lord; and anon as they were cleansed [or were purified]after the law, all men offered burnt sacrifices, and avows [or vows], and their promises.
23 Forsooth Judith gave then into the cursing of forgetting all the armours [or the arms] of battle of Holofernes, which the people had given to her, also the curtain [or the canopy], which she had taken away.
24 Certainly all the people was merry after the face of holy men [or joyful after the face of saints]; and by three months the joy of this victory was hallowed with Judith.
25 And after those days each man went again into his own things or into his own dwelling place, [or After those days forsooth each went again into his own]; and Judith was made great in Bethulia, and she was more clear than all the women of the land of Israel.
26 For chastity was joined to her virtue of steadfastness, so that she knew no man fleshly all the days of her life, since Manasseh, her husband, was dead.
27 Soothly in feast days she came forth with great glory./In holidays, Judith came forth, and with great glory she was worshipped before other women.
28 And she dwelled in the house of her husband an hundred years and five; and she let go, or made, her handmaid free. And then Judith was dead, and she was buried with her husband in Bethulia, or And she was dead, and buried with her husband in Bethulia;
29 and all the people bewailed her seven days.
30 Forsooth in all the space of her life, there was none that overcame or disturbed Israel, and many years after her death.
31 And the day of the victory of this feast is taken of Hebrews, and reckoned in the number of holy days, and it is worshipped of the Jews, from that time till into this present day.