Judith 3

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¹Then the kings and princes of all (the) cities and provinces, that is, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and Celosyria (or Greater Syria), and of Lebanon, and of Cilicia, sent their messengers, or their legates, (or their ambassadors). And when they came to Holofernes, they said,

²Thine indignation cease about us; for it is better, that we live and serve Nebuchadnezzar, the great king, and to be subject to thee, than that we die, and suffer with our perishing the harms of our servage (or our servitude), that is, suffer more harms then is servage.

³Each city of ours or All our cities, and all our possession(s), all our mountains, and little hills, and our fields, and droves of oxen, and flocks of sheep, and of goats, and of horses, and of camels, and all our riches and our meines (or families) be in thy sight;

⁴(yea), all things be under thy law.

⁵Also we and our children be thy servants.

⁶Come thou and be thou a peace-able lord to us, and use thou our service, as it pleaseth thee.

⁷Then Holofernes came down from the hills, with knights or with horsemen in great strength (or force), and he got each city, and each man inhabiting the land, or and each man that dwelled in that land.

⁸And of (or from) all the cities he took to him helpers (or got for himself helpers), strong men and chosen to battle.

⁹And so (the) great dread of Holofernes lay or fell upon all (the) provinces, (so) that the dwellers of all (the) cities, and the princes and men of honour, went together out with their peoples to meet him coming towards them,

¹⁰and received him with crowns and lamps, and they led dances before him with pipes and tympans or (with) trumps and timbrels.

¹¹Nevertheless they doing these things might not assuage the fierceness of his heart;

¹²for why both he destroyed their cities, and hewed down their maumet woods.

¹³For king Nebuchadnezzar had commanded to him, that he should destroy all the gods of (the) earth or of the land, that is, that he alone should be said god of all these nations, that might be made subject/s by the power of Holofernes.

¹⁴And Holofernes passed over all Celosyria (or through all Greater Syria), and all the country of Appany, and all Mesopotamia, and he came to (the) Idumeans in the land of Geba;

¹⁵and he took the cities of them, and dwelled there by thirty days, in which days he commanded all the host of his power to be gathered together.