Judith speaks again, so Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, and Contemporary English Version begin a new paragraph here.

Listen to me: “All right” (Good News Translation) does not express correctly Judith’s answer to Uzziah. She is not exactly agreeing to his suggestion, after all. The literal Listen to me is more effective in calling the reader’s attention to something extraordinary, as well as getting Uzziah’s serious attention.

I am about to do a thing: In Judith’s reply to Uzziah the reader first senses that something more is going to be involved here than just a successful prayer for rain. I am about to do a thing suggests Hab 1.5 or 1 Sam 3.11. It leads the reader, if not Uzziah, to expect something more decisive than unseasonable rain, however miraculous. Her confident words about herself come close to Mary’s words in Luke 1.48.

Which will go down through all generations of our descendants: Good News Translation‘s “which our Jewish people will not forget” is not strong enough. Another possibility is “which all of our descendants will always remember.”

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.