By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant: Use of the word deceit recalls its use in 9.3. Just as Simeon avenged his sister’s disgrace through deceit, Judith will use deceit to accomplish her goal. Lips refers to “words” and will be translated this way in many languages. Both Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have helpful models. Good News Translation has “Use my deceitful words to strike…” and Contemporary English Version “Use my deceit to slaughter….” If it sounds strange in a receptor language for “deceit” to kill someone, we may say “Use my lies to cause the Assyrians to die [or, be killed].” Strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant will be too repetitive in many languages since slave and servant have the same meaning in this context. They reflect the use of synonyms in Hebrew poetry. Good News Translation shortens the clause to “strike them all dead, master and slave alike,” while Contemporary English Version has “slaughter the Assyrian rulers and their slaves.”

Crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman: Crush in this verse does not translate the same Greek word as crushest in 9.7. In languages that cannot talk about “breaking” or “crushing” pride, one may say, for example, “let my weak hand make them humble [or, lose face].” On the use of the idiom by the hand of in Judith, see the note on 8.33. The word translated woman is not the usual word. Both Moore and Enslin are insistent that the sense of by the hand of a woman is more “by the hand of a female,” so as to emphasize the weakness of the hand that will humble the mighty Holofernes. In this light, Good News Translation‘s “a woman’s strength” or Contemporary English Version‘s “my strength” can be misread. It sounds like she is speaking of how strong a woman can be, when the emphasis is actually on powerlessness. She is stressing the weakness of a widow against the high and mighty, as the next verse will make certainly clear. Of course it would be seen as especially degrading to be killed by a woman; compare Jdg 9.54. A possible model, then, is “Let my weak hand, the hand of a mere woman, crush….”

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.