JUDICIUM DEI
1083
JUDITH, BOOK OF
where the passage is quoted, as (John xii, 40), He hath bliiuled their eyes and hardened their hearts; which seems to be contradictory to Matt, xiii, 15, where the people themselves are said to have closed their own ej'es ; and so Acts xxviii, 27. These seemuig contra- dictions are very easily reconciled. God, by giving plenty and abundance, affords the means of the people's abusing his goodness, and becoming both over-fat with food anil intoxicated with drink ; and thus his very be- neficence may be said to make their heart fat, and their eyes heavy, while at the same time the people, by their own act, their overfeeding, become unwieldy, indolent, bloated, over-fat at heart, and, moreover, so stupefied by liquor and strong drink, that their eyes and ears may be useless to them : with wide-open eyes, " staring, they may stare, but not perceive; and listening, they may hear, but not understand ;" and in this lethargic state they will continue, preferring it to a more sedate, ra- tional condition, and refusing to forbear from prolonging the causes of it, lest at any sober interval they should see truly with their eyes and hear accurately with their ears, in consequence of which they should be shocked at themselves, be converted, be changed from such mis- conduct, and I should heal them — should cure these de- lusory effects of their surfeits and dissoluteness. Comp. Isa. v, 11; xxviii, 7. This is equally true in spiritual matters. In short, the expressions in question are to be miderstood in the same sense as the hardening of Pha- raoh's heart under a perversion by his own wilfulness of the providences of God (Rom. ix, 17, 18). See Pre- destination.
2. Is this state hopeless? — That sinners may, by a course of persistent opposition to God, so far destroy or deaden their conscience as to be beyond the hope (but not absolutely the power) of divine grace, is a fearful fact, and one corroborated by the Holy .Scriptures (1 Tim. iv, 2; Rom. i, 28; 2 Thess. ii, 11, Heb. vi, G). But this condition, again, is not so much the result of God's de- termination as of their own inveterate perversity. See Unpardonable Sin.
Judicium Dei. See Jud(^::.:ents of God.
Ju'dith (lleb. YehudUi,' r^^lW^, Je!cess,- Septuag. 'Ioi't(.3'), the name of two females; properly the femi- nine form of "^"I^il^ Judceus (comp. Jer. xxxvi, 14, 21) ; but in the passage of Genesis it is generally taken as the correlative of Jiickth, i. e. "pi-cnsed."
1. Tlie daughter of Beeri, the Hittite, and one of the first Uvo wives of Esau (Gen. xxvi, 34). She is else- where more correctly called Aholibamaii, the daughter of Anah the Horite (Gen. xxxvi, 2-14). See Esau.
2. Tlie heroine of the apocryphal book which bears her name, who appears as an ideal type of piety (Jud. viii, G), beauty (xi, 21), courage, and chastitj' (xvi, 22 sq.). Her supposed descent from Simeon (ix, 2), and the manner in which she refers to his cruel deed (Gen. xxxiv, 25 sq.), mark the conception of the character, which e\ndently belongs to a period of stern and peril- ous conflict. The most unscrupulous daring (ch. xiii) is combined with zealous ritualism (xii, 1 sq.), and faith is turned to action rather than to supplication (viii,31 sq.). Clement of Rome (Ep. i, 55) assigns to Judith the epi thet given to Jael (^'lovctid >'/ /AaKapia); and Jerome sees in her exploit the image of the victory of the Church over the power of evil (Ep. Ixxix, 11, p. 508 ; Judith ... in Uyo Ecclesiaj diabolum capite trunca vit; compare Ep. xxii, 21, p. 105). According to the Greek text, Judith was the rich widow of JIanasses of Bethulia ; to which the Vulgate adds that she was the daughter of Merari, or more properly Beari C^iS^), as the Hebrew recension has it; the latter .ilso places her in the days of Maccabieus, which is undoubtedly correct. —Smith ; Kitto. See Judith, Book of.
JUDITH, Book of, one of the most interesting of the apocrj-phal books, which has called forth a greater variety of opinions among interpreters since the days of the Reformation than almost any other of the Deutero-
canonical productions. Our statements on the subject are largely taken from the article in Kitto's Cydopoidia.
I. Title ami Position of the Book. — The book is named after its heroine, ri^'71iT|'=Jezws5. St. Jerome's opin- ion, that it is so called because Judith was the authoress of it {Comment, in Arjg. i, 6), is rightly rejected by every scholar. In the MSS. of the Alexandrine version, the Vulgate, and in Wycliffe's translation, Judith is placed between Tobit and Esther. This is followed by Cover- dale, the Geneva version, the Bishops' Bible, and the A. v., where, from the nature of the division, it is put be- tween Tobit and the apocryphal Esther. In the Vati- can copies it is jilaced between Tobit and the Wisdom of Solomon; in the Zurich Bible, between Baruch and the apocryphal Esther; whilst Luther puts it at the head of the apocryphal books.
II. Design and Contents of the Boole. — The object of this book evidently is to show that as long as God's peo- ple walk in his commandments blamelessl}-, no matter how distressing the circumstances in which they may temporarily be placed, the Lord will not suffer the ene- my to triumph over them, but will in due time appear for their deliverance, and cause even those who are not Jews to acknowledge that the God of Israel is the only true God. In its external form this book bears the character of the record of a historical event, describing the complete defeat of the Assyrians by the Jews through the prowess of a woman.