Our cities also and their inhabitants are your slaves: Now the towns and their people are offered to the conqueror. “Towns” (Good News Translation) is better than cities. This is a rural area, and nothing is said about gates or walled fortifications, unless these are the localities intended in 3.6. For a comment on the translation of “towns,” see Tob 1.2. Only the people will be slaves, of course. Revised Standard Version misses this perceptive distinction, but Good News Translation makes it. Slaves are people who are owned by masters and serve them without pay.

Come and deal with them in any way that seems good to you: Come makes an invitation. It introduces the final capitulation: deal with them in any way that seems good to you (literally “do to them as it is good/right in your eyes”). There may be some subtlety in this choice of words, in the progression of the three offers of surrender in verses 2-4. The envoys are offering unconditional surrender, but we may assume that at the same time they are appealing for some mercy. In verse 2 they speak for themselves and say, “Do what you think appropriate.” In verse 3 they speak for the property and say, “Do what pleases you.” Finally in verse 4 they speak for the people and say, “Do the right thing.” However, they do not tell Holofernes what the right thing is. With this in mind, an alternative translation model is:

• All our towns belong to you. Do with them what you want. Do the right thing with us, because we are your slaves.

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.