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1In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, on a certain day in midspring, word went out from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, that he would seek revenge on the whole region, just as he had said.[#2:1 Greek In the eighteenth year, on the twenty-second day of the first month, of the ancient Hebrew lunar calendar.]
2He called all his advisers and governors and told them about his secret plan. And when he told them that the people throughout the region had refused to help him,
3they decided that everyone who had disobeyed his command should be destroyed.
4After the council had finished making its plan, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, gave these orders to Holofernes, his commander who was second in power only to himself:
14So Holofernes left the king and called together all the commanders, generals, and officers of the Assyrian army.
15He arranged the 120,000 select troops by divisions, as the king had ordered him to do, together with 12,000 archers on horseback.
16He organized them in battle formation.
17He secured a vast number of camels, donkeys, and mules for carrying baggage, and innumerable sheep, oxen, and goats for food.
18Everyone received plenty of rations and a large amount of gold and silver from the royal palace.
19Then Holofernes personally led his army ahead of King Nebuchadnezzar and overran the entire region to the west with chariots and horsemen and select troops.
20After them followed a huge force of all sorts of people—like a swarm of locusts and the dust of the earth, too many to count.
21They marched for three days from Nineveh to the plain of Bectileth, and they camped near Bectileth by the mountain to the north of Upper Cilicia.
22From there Holofernes took his whole army—the foot soldiers, horsemen, and chariots—and went up to the hill country.
23He devastated the region of Lydia and carried away all the Rassisites and the Ishmaelites on the border of the desert south of the country of the Chelleans.[#2:23 Greek Put and Lud.]
24Then he marched along the Euphrates, crossed Mesopotamia, and destroyed all the fortified towns along Abron Brook as far as the sea.
25He seized control of the territory of Cilicia and killed everyone who resisted him. Then he went to the southern borders of Japheth, across from Arabia.
26He surrounded all the Midianites, burned their tents, and plundered their sheepfolds.
27Then he went to the plain of Damascus during the wheat harvest. He burned their fields, destroyed their flocks and herds, plundered their towns, ravaged their lands, and slaughtered all their young men with the sword.
28All the people who lived along the seacoast were terrified—those who lived in Sidon and Tyre and those in Sur, Ocina, and Jamnia. Those who lived in Azotus and Ashkelon were seized with terrible panic.