Note that here the discourse returns to the first person singular for Judith; see the note at 16.5.

“Shouted in victory” (Good News Translation) is closer to the imagery of the Greek than shouted for joy. The reference is to a war cry. In some languages there will be specific vocabulary for a cry of victory.

This is a difficult verse. Revised Standard Version is making a textual change in the second line (shouted for “feared”), which Good News Translation does not make. Good News Translation has drastically rearranged the order of the elements in the verse, but everything is there and nothing is there that doesn’t belong. In the course of the rearrangement the parallelism has been lost, but without the textual change there really is no parallelism—which is part of the problem since the rest of the song uses parallel lines to great effect. The change (shouted for “feared”) is not a great one; one could easily be mistaken for the other by an inattentive scribe or one with failing eyesight, and there is good manuscript evidence to support it (some Greek manuscripts as well as the Old Latin and Syriac). Here is the structure of the verse as emended:

A. Then my oppressed ones raised the war cry.
My weak ones shouted and the enemy cringed in fear.
They [my people] lifted their voice and the enemy lost their nerve.

Traduction œcuménique de la Bible has a slightly different approach to the emendation. Rather than assume that “feared” was somewhere mistakenly inserted in the place of shouted, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible assumes both to have been original, but that shouted was mistakenly omitted in the scribal tradition. The parallelism that results is even nicer as the first line becomes:

B. Then my oppressed ones raised the war cry and the enemy feared.

Traduction œcuménique de la Bible patiently explains this in a textual note. It appears that New American Bible, New English Bible, and New Jerusalem Bible have taken this approach also, but none provide a textual note. As attractive as this is, there seems to be no manuscript evidence to support it.

There is yet another way to approach this. In the reconstruction A above, “They” of the third line can be understood as the enemy. Both Moore and Enslin in their commentaries understand it this way. The verse would then look like this:

C. Then my oppressed ones raised the war cry and my weak ones shouted;
And the enemy cringed in fear, lifted their voice, and lost their nerve.

The only real problem here is that the parallelism is not as convincing as in example A above.

The essential problem in this verse is that the subjects of the verbs are not clear. The author could best have gotten away with this by relying on parallel structures. This supports the case for emending the text. Notice too that the contrast set up between the Lord’s people and an enemy reduced to fear is found also in Exo 15.14-16. The simplest way out of this sticky situation is to accept the emendation made by Revised Standard Version (retained in New Revised Standard Version) and go with some form of example A. A reasonable textual note could read “Shouted; other manuscripts read feared.”

Contemporary English Version provides an alternative model that some translators will find helpful. It combines some of the elements in A, so it shortens the translation:

• Our weak and abused people
let out shouts of victory,
while the Assyrians
trembled in fear and ran.

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.