Catholic Commentary
Eschatological Warning: Divine Judgment on the Nations
17“Woe to the nations who rise up against my race! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment and put fire and worms in their flesh; and they will weep and feel their pain forever.”
Judith 16:17 is the concluding verse of Judith's victory canticle, pronouncing eschatological judgment upon nations opposing God's people, employing imagery of eternal fire and worms drawn from Isaiah 66:24 to depict permanent, conscious suffering. The passage shifts from celebrating Israel's military triumph to emphasizing God's ultimate cosmic sovereignty and the irreversible consequences for those who finally reject God.
God's justice is as eternal as His mercy—those who finally reject Him experience forever what they have chosen: permanent separation from the source of all goodness.
"Put fire and worms in their flesh"
This paired image draws directly on Isaiah 66:24, the final verse of that prophetic book, where the corpses of those who rebelled against God are consumed by worms that do not die and fire that is not quenched. Judith's canticle deliberately appropriates this Isaianic imagery and applies it not merely to corpses but to those who endure — "they will weep and feel their pain forever." The torment is thus interiorized and made permanent. Fire speaks to the consuming, purifying, and punishing power of divine holiness; worms (skōlēx) speak to corruption and inescapable decay — and yet here corruption without the terminus of death. Together they form a composite image of a state that is neither life nor death as ordinarily experienced, but an existence of unrelieved suffering.
"They will weep and feel their pain forever"
The Greek eis aiōnas — "unto the ages," translated "forever" — is the same temporal formula used in doxologies and in descriptions of God's own eternal reign. Judith here grants it to a condition of suffering, which represents a startling theological move: the permanence ordinarily attributed to God's blessing is here attributed to the consequence of final, unrepented opposition to God. This is not vindictiveness but logic: those who have permanently and finally set themselves against the source of all life and goodness can experience only the permanent absence of that goodness — a condition Scripture names with images of fire, darkness, and worms.
Catholic tradition receives this verse as a genuine scriptural witness to the reality of hell — not a later theological imposition, but a thread woven into the fabric of inspired revelation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire'" (CCC 1035). Judith 16:17 stands as one of the earliest canonical articulations of this truth in anything approaching explicit form.
St. Jerome, commenting on the parallel imagery in Isaiah 66:24, understood the fire and worms as representing the spiritual torments of those who have definitively rejected God — the "worm" being identified with a gnawing, interior conscience that no longer has hope of relief. Origen, though later corrected on universal apocatastasis, nonetheless saw in such texts the absolute seriousness of human freedom and divine justice. St. Thomas Aquinas synthesized this tradition in the Summa Theologiae, arguing that eternal punishment is not disproportionate because the gravity of sin is measured not by its duration but by the dignity of the One offended (ST Suppl. q. 99, a. 1).
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) defined as dogma that the wicked will receive perpetual punishment with the devil, and the Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (48) reaffirms that the Church awaits a final judgment in which God's justice will be fully manifest. Notably, Catholic tradition does not teach that hell is populated in certainty by any particular person; the Church canonizes saints (declaring them in heaven) but has never formally declared any individual damned. The solemn possibility of hell — expressed in Judith's "forever" — is thus a summons to conversion and perseverance, not a counsel of despair.
Contemporary Catholic culture is often tempted toward what theologian Cardinal Gerhard Müller has called a "therapeutic gospel" — a faith so focused on God's mercy that his justice becomes an embarrassment. Judith 16:17 serves as a necessary corrective, not by inspiring fear as an end in itself, but by restoring the full architecture of Christian hope: mercy and judgment are not opposites but aspects of the same holy Love that takes human freedom seriously.
For the Catholic reader today, this verse has three concrete applications. First, it calls for intercessory prayer for those who persecute the Church — active enemies of God's people are not to be hated but prayed for precisely because the "woe" pronounced here is a warning of what awaits unrepented opposition to God. Second, it confronts comfortable Catholics with the question: am I, in any dimension of my life, "rising up against" God's purposes through persistent, unrepented sin? The "nations" in the text are not an abstraction. Third, it grounds perseverance under genuine persecution — whether of contemporary Christians in the Middle East, Africa, or the subtle marginalization of faith in secular societies — in a cosmic guarantee: history is not the last word. God's justice, patient now, will be perfect then.
Commentary
Literal Sense and Narrative Context
Judith 16:17 is the closing verse of the canticle Judith sings after the destruction of Holofernes and the rout of the Assyrian army (16:1–17). Structurally, the canticle moves from a warrior hymn of praise (vv. 1–12) through a meditation on Judith's own instrument-like role in God's plan (vv. 13–16) before arriving at this final, thunderous warning. The shift is significant: the song does not end in celebration of Israel's triumph but in awe before divine judgment. This rhetorical movement — from historical victory to cosmic reckoning — is characteristic of Old Testament hymns that locate particular deliverances within the larger frame of God's ultimate sovereignty (cf. Ex 15; Deut 32).
"Woe to the nations who rise up against my race"
The Hebrew exclamation ʾôy ("woe") is throughout the prophetic tradition a declaration of impending catastrophe — not a curse that Judith herself pronounces, but a recognition of the self-chosen catastrophe that awaits those who position themselves against God's covenant people. The phrase "my race" (to genos mou in the Greek LXX) is spoken in Judith's own voice, but it echoes God's own identification with Israel expressed throughout the Torah and Prophets. To attack the people of God is, as Saul of Tarsus would one day hear from the risen Christ, to persecute Christ himself (Acts 9:4). The "nations" (ta ethnē) here are not condemned for being Gentiles per se — the Book of Judith presents no inherent animus toward non-Jews — but for their active, militant opposition to the Lord's purposes.
"The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment"
The divine title Kyrios Pantokrator — Lord Almighty, or Lord of Hosts — is deliberately chosen. It is the title that frames the entire canticle (cf. 16:5) and recalls God's identity as the one who commands all cosmic forces, rendering Holofernes's military machine not merely defeated but cosmically ridiculous. "The day of judgment" (en hēmera kriseos) is a notable phrase: while earlier Old Testament texts speak of "the Day of the LORD" as an imminent historical intervention, here the language has shifted toward a terminal, eschatological event — a final assize beyond history. This represents a genuine development within late Second Temple Jewish thought, preparing the way for the New Testament's explicit doctrine of the Last Judgment. Vengeance (ekdikēsis) is reserved exclusively to God (cf. Deut 32:35; Rom 12:19): Judith does not call for human retaliation but rests the outcome entirely in God's hands.