Anselm of Laon, dean and chancelor of the cathedral as well as archdeacon of Laon in northern France, lived around 1100. He was a theologian and founder of a school of scholars, whose greatest work is the
Glossa ordinaria, an interlinear and marginal gloss. The Patrologia Latina has more than 60 of his comments on books of the Old and the New Testaments.
On the book of Judith, Anselm comments:
VERS. 17. - « Descendit in campos. » Damascus potus sanguinis interpretatur, in qua principes gentium exprimuntur, who thirst for the blood of the faithful: qui sitiunt sanguinem fidelium: maxime in tempore messis, id est, in consummatione saeculi debacchante per latitudinem orbis furore Antichristi.
Patrologia Latina, mlat.uzh.chVERSE 17. - "went down into the plains." Damascus is understood to be a drinking of blood, in which the princes of the Gentiles are pictured, who thirst for the blood of the faithful: above all in the time of the harvest, that is, in the consummation of the age when the madness of Antichrist is raging all over the world.
In Isaiah 34 the great apostasy is pictured as "all the host of the heavens falling down as the leaf falleth from the vine, and from the fig tree", and Antichrist as the "inebriated sword" coming down "upon the people of my slaughter unto judgment." The flock is not gathered and nourished but rather slaughtered and devoured. Similarly in Zacharias 11:16, Antichrist is a shepherd who slaughters and devours his fat flock (see
Reply #162).
In the book of Judith 2:17, Antichrist is depicted not as a mad cattle-breeder, but as a mad wheat farmer and orchard- and winegrower:
[17] And after these things he went down into the plains of Damascus in the days of the harvest, and he set all the corn on fire, and he caused all the trees and vineyards to be cut down.
Following Anselm of Laon, at the time of the harvest, which is the consummation of the age (Mt 13:39), Antichrist will be allowed to rage and, thirsting for the blood of the faithful, destroy (most of) the harvest of Our Lord.
Again, the consummation of the age includes the reign of Antichrist before the second coming of Our Lord.