1. The people of Judah heard what Holofernes, the commander of King Nebuchadnezzar's armies, had done to the other nations. They heard how he had looted and destroyed all their temples,
2. and they were terrified of him and afraid of what he might do to Jerusalem and to the Temple of the Lord their God.
3. They had only recently returned home to Judah from exile and had just rededicated the Temple and its utensils and its altar after they had been defiled.
4. So they sent a warning to the whole region of Samaria and to the towns of Kona, Beth Horon, Belmain, Jericho, Choba, and Aesora, and to the Valley of Salem.
11-12. They also covered the altar with sackcloth. Then all the men, women, and children in Jerusalem lay face down on the ground in front of the Temple; they lay there in the Lord's presence, all in sackcloth, their heads covered with ashes. They joined together in earnest prayer to the God of Israel, begging him not to let their children be captured, their wives carried off, or their home towns destroyed. They pleaded with him not to give the Gentiles the satisfaction of destroying the Temple and dishonouring it.