The Book of Judith isn't in the regulation Bible. It's one of those  books that didn't quite make the final cut because of questions  about its authenticity or authorship. So you'll find it in the apocrypha.

Judith is sort of a re-make of David and Goliath, that story where somebody small and humble, but clever and fearless brings down somebody huge and invincible.

It's like this: Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Assyria, a war machine pretending to be a country. He sent out this bigass army to conquer the world, and he said he would "couer the whole face of the earth with the feete of mine armie, and I will giue them for a spoil vnto them," which meant he would give the wealth of the conquered territories -- their gold, jewels, and oil wells onshore and off, to the men in his big army, with a percentage for his financial backers.

Nebuchadnezzar could never spell worth a damn.*

"I shal gette all their oyle," he added somewhat lamely.  He also said that the people he conquered, from Patagonia all the way up to the North Pole, had to toss out their gods and worship him instead, or in lieu of that, adopt sincere beliefs in freedom, democracy, and the free market system, by which he meant markets controlled by him.

And he called his head general, Holofernes, the guy with the hard name, and says, "For as I liue, and by the power of my kingdome, whatsoeuer I have spoken, that I will doe by my hand." But he really meant by Holofernes's hand.

So off goes Holofernes leading Nebuchadnezzar's humungous, ferocious, and very high-tech army, and lays seige to the town of Bethulia, which is on a hilltop and kind of the gateway to Judea. And rather than charge up that big hill, Holofernes wisely just cuts off the water supply, and the elders of Bethulia knew they were in deep kim-chee, and talked about giving up in five days.

Then comes Judith, a widow of the town and local major babe, and says "Cool it, fools, and grow some spines. If you had any faith you'd know that the supreme being -- what's-his-name -- is gonna give us what we need to do what we gotta do."**

To be continued...

*My copy of the 1611 KJV retains the original spelling.

**I believe at that time they weren't allowed to say the actual name out loud.

The Deutero-Canonical Status of The Apocrypha is an interesting Thing ...

I highly recommend The Oxford Annotated NRSV with The Apocrypha ( so, includes The Book of Judith ) ... Each Book has a nice brief few Paragraphs about the Book ...