23
Then all the people, the young men, the women, and the children, gathered around Uzziah and the rulers of the town and cried out with a loud voice, and said before all the elders,
24
"Let God judge between you and us! You have done us a great injury in not making peace with the Assyrians.
25
For now we have no one to help us; God has sold us into their hands, to be strewn before them in thirst and exhaustion.
26
Now summon them and surrender the whole town as booty to the army of Holofernes and to all his forces.
27
For it would be better for us to be captured by them. We shall indeed become slaves, but our lives will be spared, and we shall not witness our little ones dying before our eyes, and our wives and children drawing their last breath.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.