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Catholic Commentary
The Escape to Bethulia
10and she put it in her bag of food. They both went out together to prayer, according to their custom. They passed through the camp, circled around that valley, and went up to the mountain of Bethulia, and came to its gates.
Judith 13:10 describes Judith and her maidservant exiting the Assyrian camp with the severed head of the general Holofernes hidden in her food bag, using their established pattern of nightly prayer as cover. They pass through the enemy encampment and ascend toward the gates of Bethulia, their mountain refuge, where Israel's deliverance will be revealed.
Prayer in hiding teaches us that the habits we practice in ordinary times become the mechanism of God's rescue when crisis comes.
Typological and Spiritual Senses On the typological level, Judith's ascent mirrors the pattern of the Exodus — a journey from slavery and danger to liberation on high ground. Her custom of prayer parallels the Israelites' daily offering and underscores that Israel's survival is never purely military or strategic but always liturgical and covenantal. The hidden head in the bag anticipates the ultimate hiddenness of divine victory: God works through means the enemy cannot perceive.
Catholic tradition has consistently read Judith as a type (figura) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and this verse concentrates that typology with particular intensity. St. Jerome, who included Judith in the Vulgate canon and wrote its influential Latin preface, saw her as a figure of chastity and spiritual warfare triumphing over vice. The Council of Trent's canonical affirmation of Judith underscored its place in the Church's Scriptures precisely because the tradition found in it a rich mine of Mariological and ecclesiological meaning.
The head of Holofernes hidden in the food bag has been read by patristic and medieval commentators — including Rabanus Maurus and later St. Robert Bellarmine — as an image of the defeat of the devil, whose head is crushed by the woman (cf. Gen 3:15). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Church sees in Mary the fulfillment of all the foreshadowings of the Old Testament" (CCC §721). Judith, the widow who overcomes the enemy through prayer, fasting, and courageous action, is one such foreshadowing.
The detail of habitual prayer resonates deeply with Catholic ascetical tradition. St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Ávila both taught that consistent, disciplined prayer — even when dry or seemingly unremarkable — forms the soul for extraordinary acts of grace. The Catechism itself describes prayer as "the battle" of the Christian life, requiring "humility, trust, and perseverance" (CCC §2725–2728). Judith's prayer custom was not merely strategic camouflage; it was the spiritual formation that made her capable of the act itself. God uses what is faithful and habitual, not merely what is dramatic.
Judith's escape holds a bracing lesson for Catholics today: the spiritual disciplines we practice in ordinary times — daily prayer, the Rosary, the Liturgy of the Hours, consistent Mass attendance — are not merely personal piety. They form in us a character and a habitual orientation toward God that, when crisis comes, becomes the operative mechanism of grace. Judith did not improvise her prayer routine under pressure; she already had one, and that consistency was what made the escape possible.
For a contemporary Catholic, this means taking seriously the unglamorous work of daily prayer. In a culture that prizes spontaneity and intensity of feeling, the Book of Judith quietly insists that it is the custom of prayer — the habit, the routine, the unremarkable regularity — that builds the kind of soul capable of great courage. Whether facing a moral crossroads, a crisis of faith, or an act of prophetic witness in a secular workplace, the question Judith poses is: have you been practicing? Begin or renew a concrete daily prayer practice today, not because it feels transformative, but precisely because, over time, it will be.
Commentary
"She put it in her bag of food" The gruesome trophy — the severed head of Holofernes — is placed in the same bag that had accompanied Judith throughout her stay in the enemy camp, the bag from which she ate ritually pure food (cf. Jdt 10:5). The detail is laden with irony: the vessel of sustenance for God's faithful servant now carries the proof of the enemy's destruction. The bag, which Holofernes and his soldiers would have recognized as an unremarkable provision sack belonging to a pious Hebrew woman, becomes the hidden ark of Israel's salvation. Nothing in Judith's outward appearance has changed — she is still the observant widow with her maidservant — and this ordinariness is itself the disguise.
"They both went out together to prayer, according to their custom" This phrase is pivotal. Judith and her maid had established a pattern of leaving the camp each night to pray (Jdt 12:5–9). The Assyrian guards had grown accustomed to this practice and allowed them to pass without suspicion. What had been dismissed by the pagans as harmless religious observance becomes the very mechanism of Israel's rescue. The regularity of Judith's prayer — her custom — is not incidental but essential. It is precisely because her piety was habitual, disciplined, and public that it became credible cover. The narrative quietly teaches that the integration of prayer into daily life carries a power that the world underestimates.
"They passed through the camp, circled around that valley, and went up to the mountain of Bethulia" The geography here is deliberate and theologically charged. Judith must pass through the very heart of the enemy's strength — through the Assyrian camp — before ascending to the safety of the mountaintop city. The "valley" she circles may evoke the valley of death, the liminal space between danger and deliverance. The movement is consistently upward: from the valley floor of the enemy encampment to the mountain of Bethulia. In biblical geography, mountains are consistently places of divine encounter, revelation, and refuge (Sinai, Zion, Moriah). Bethulia, whose name may derive from the Hebrew bětûlāh (virgin), sits enthroned above the valley as a symbol of Israel's inviolate fidelity to God.
"And came to its gates" The arrival at the gates of Bethulia closes a dramatic arc that began in chapter 8 with Judith's bold entrance into the public square. Gates in ancient Israel were the site of judgment, proclamation, and communal life. Judith's return through these gates will shortly be transformed into a scene of public triumph and thanksgiving (Jdt 13:11–20). But the verse ends here, at the threshold — a moment of breathless anticipation before revelation. The restraint of the narrative intensifies the drama.