Verses 21-28 describe the course of Holofernes’ western campaign, tracing his destructive progress from Nineveh to Palestine, so it will be helpful to begin a new paragraph here. It is hard to take the bewildering geography seriously, but some, Moore especially, make brave attempts both to identify unknown places and to explain the incongruities This gives the author credit for more geographical knowledge than is evident in the confused Greek text before us. In The Macmillan Bible Atlas, there is a map that shows the military deployments and movements in the book of Judith. While tentative, it is helpful, and the only such map to be found easily. Many of the place names in these verses are given in different forms in the manuscripts, but we will not belabor those points here. Other interpreters think the author was simply poorly informed about the geography of the area he had to cover. Interpreters on both sides will probably agree, however, that geography is not the author’s point, so it is surely not the point translators need to major on. What the author is doing in this half chapter is creating an effect. Holofernes, in obedience to his “lord” zigzags across the map in an unstoppable destructive march. He wastes no time getting to Cilicia, where he begins his bloody march southward. He roughly follows the outline given of the rebellious states in 1.7-10. He fights in the mountains, on the plains, and on the seacoast. He levels fortified cities and destroys agricultural areas. He is carrying out the terrible wrath of his god Nebuchadnezzar (compare Isa 2.12-17). He goes to prepare the way of his “lord.”
They marched for three days from Nineveh to the plain of Bectileth … to the north of Upper Cilicia: The plain of Bectileth is an unknown site, but Cilicia was a country in southeastern Asia Minor (Turkey). Upper Cilicia refers to the northern part of the country; therefore north of Upper Cilicia and “north of Cilicia” mean the same thing. From Nineveh that’s quite a march. It is over 300 miles in three days. Both New American Bible and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible try to alleviate this by separating Bectileth from Cilicia. They say Holofernes’ army marches three days toward Bectileth, and from Bectileth sets out toward a second encampment in the mountains north of Cilicia. It is not a convincing attempt. It relies too much on interpreting the sense of some prepositions used here; further, nothing in the Greek really says that Cilicia was the army’s “next” encampment. Translators should follow Revised Standard Version or Good News Translation‘s interpretation. The plain of Bectileth may also be rendered “the flat area around the city of Bectileth.”
Camped opposite Bectileth …: Camped means “set up camp” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version) or “set up their tents.”
An alternative translation model for this verse is:
• They left Nineveh, and after they had marched three days, they reached the plains surrounding the city of Bectileth. They set up their tents across from the city, near the mountains north of Cilicia.
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Judith. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.