Crying to God. Prayer and Plot in the Book of Judith 227 intervention in an armed conflict by giving the sword for vengeance and by granting the victory. The requests for action deal with the defeat of the enemy as well, by breaking the strength of the opponents and giving strength to Judith. The latter moreover suggests that God can act through human hands and answers the prayers of his people. The prayer also describes God’s power and what it consists in, by description and by characterisation of the adversaries. These advers- aries rely on military force for their might (see Jdt 2,5) and are arrogant and proud enough to think that they can attack the tabernacle where God’s name rests. Israel’s God, though, does not rely upon a large number, or on men of strength, but in being the God of the weak, of being the God who protects Israel. Judith uses this image of God as an incentive for YHWH to grant her request: as Israelite widow and a (weak) woman, she both belongs to the people YHWH protects and to the social group of the weak (16). c) Judith’s prayers in the hostile camp (Jdt 11–13) In the hostile camp, Judith pretends that God will answer her prayer to inform her of when her people sins. This fits her image of a traitorous woman, who came to betray her people, since they have sinned (Jdt 11,11-19). The image of God she portrays, is that of a revengeful God, who will punish his people for every transgression of his law, even when they asked to be relieved from their plight to fulfil these laws seen the context of war. This is a caricatural concretisation of Achior’s statements that a God who hates iniquity is with them, so that when the Israelites depart from God’s ways, they get defeated in war; and that if the people is free of guilt (literally: ajnomiva, law- lessness), their God will protect them (Jdt 5,17-18.21). Though this image of God is a caricature, Holofernes buys it. The actual prayers of Judith characterise Judith and her God differently. Judith wants God to act through her in order to save her people, and God is the God who will protect his people by acting through her. d) Prayers of blessing and praise (Jdt 13,17; Jdt 16) The prayer of blessing characterises God as a God who indeed acts against the enemies of his people. The recognition of both God as the saviour of his people and Judith as the woman through whom God (16) Though she does certainly not fit the image of the “poor widow” in need, see Jdt 8,7.