During that far time when there were many gods
and the kings of Assyria considered
the world lying west of the Euphrates,
from that river to the Sea of Joppa,
theirs by right of threat of conquest, in Shechem –
that some call Bethulia, some Nablus,
between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim –
lived a beautiful woman named Judith.
She was a widow with a maid servant,
and dunams of wheat fields, and olive groves,
and scrublands for grazing flocks of goats and sheep.
Allegedly, this nubile woman’s courage,
cunning, and her zeal for her god saved
her people from slaughter. She has been
immortalised – by Caravaggio,
Gentileschi, Bigot, and Klimt twice.
Sometimes her maid servant appears –
but only the head of Holofernes,
the Assyrian general threatening
Shechem, and whom Judith cajoled into wine,
and decapitated in his stupor.
Hers has become a tale increasingly
salaciously painted by Europeans;
a sort of Red Riding Hood for grown ups;
a PC version of Salomé
and John the Baptist; a cautionary tale
for bibulous tyrants; a reckoning
for the straitened widows of Shechem,
Bethulia, Nablus.
By David Selzer