OZIAS.  Stand instead of God!

JUDITH.  Who are you that have tempted God this day?  For you cannot find the depth of the heart of man,—­how then shall you search out God or comprehend his purpose?  Brother, provoke not the Lord our God to anger.  For if he will not help us within these five days, he has power to defend us when he will, even every day.  Do not bind the counsels of God.  For God is not as man that he may be threatened, neither as the son of man that he should be wavering.  Therefore let us wait for salvation from him, and he will hear our voice,—­if it please him.  Moreover, this city is the key and the gateway to all Judea.  If it be obstinate in resistance, Judea is not defiled, but if it be taken the whole land shall lie waste and God will require the profanation of it at our mouth.

OZIAS.  All that you have spoken is truth, and there is none to gainsay your words.  From the beginning of your days we have known your wisdom, and your understanding is manifest.... (With significance.) But we are thirsty.

JUDITH.  If we are thirsty, let us give thanks to the Lord our God, who tries us, even as he did our fathers.

OZIAS.  The people in the extremity of their thirst compelled me to an oath, which I will not break.

JUDITH.  Say you the people, Ozias?  As for them, you hold them lightly, and they are as naught in your eyes.  So much you have avowed.

OZIAS (in a new tone).  It is true.  This day I hold the people lightly.  But when the great madness and desperation of thirst comes at last upon them, who shall hold them?  In that day they will seize the things forbidden, and they will drink the wine sanctified and reserved for the priests that serve the Lord.  And to avert from me the wrath of Joachim, the high priest of Jerusalem, I have sent already a messenger to Jerusalem to bring a licence that this matter may be lawful.

JUDITH (shocked).  Nay!

OZIAS.  I say it will be so.

JUDITH.  It shall not be so.

OZIAS.  Then pray you to the Most High for the city, even for all of us, and the Lord will send rain for our cisterns and we shall faint no more.  Pray, for you are a godly woman, and the God of Israel shall listen.

JUDITH (with supreme impressiveness).  Hear me again, Ozias.  This night I will do a thing which shall go throughout all the generations to the children of Israel.  You shall stand this night in the gate of the city, and I will go forth from the city with my waiting-woman; and within the days that you have promised to deliver the city to our enemies the Lord will visit Israel by my hand.

OZIAS.  On what errand will you go?

JUDITH.  Enquire not of my act, for I will not declare it until the things are finished that I do.  But this I declare, that the Lord has inclined himself to me, and now he has sent Achior for a sign.

OZIAS.  You go to Holofernes!