8. But the sons of Ammon and Moab approached Holofernes, saying: "The sons of Israel do not trust in their lances, nor in their arrows, but the mountains are their defense, and the steep hills and precipices constitute their fortifications.
9. Therefore, so that you may be able to overcome them without joining battle, set guards at the springs so that they may not draw water from them, and you will put them to death without the sword, or at least, being weary, they will hand over their city, which they suppose to be, by its position in the mountains, unable to be conquered."
10. And these words were pleasing before Holofernes and before his attendants, and so he stationed a hundred men around every spring.
11. And when they had kept this watch through twenty full days, the cisterns and collections of waters failed among all the inhabitants of Bethulia, so that there was within the city not enough to satisfy them for even one day, because water was given out to the people daily by measure.
12. Then, all the men and women, youths and little ones, gathering together before Uzziah, all with one voice together,
13. said: "May God be judge between us and you, for you have done evil with us, in not being willing to speak peacefully with the Assyrians, and because of this, God has sold us into their hands.