Judith 5:5-21

New Catholic Bible

Discourse of Achior, the Good Pagan. ⁵ Then Achior,^[a] the leader of all the Ammonites, said to him, “My lord, if it pleases you to allow your servant to speak, I shall provide you with the true facts about this people that lives nearby in the mountain district. Nothing that is untrue shall be spoken by the lips of your servant.

^6 [b]“This people is composed of descendants from the Chaldeans. ⁷ At one time they settled in Mesopotamia because they refused to follow the gods of their ancestors who lived in Chaldea. ⁸ Since they had abandoned the ways of their ancestors and worshiped the God of heaven, the God they had come to know, they were banished from the presence of the gods of their forefathers. As a result, they fled to Mesopotamia, where they dwelt for a long time. ⁹ But their God commanded them to depart from the place where they were living and to migrate to Canaan.

“They settled there and acquired great wealth in gold and silver and vast herds of livestock. ¹⁰ Later, when a severe famine afflicted the land of Canaan, they went down to Egypt, where they remained as long as food was available in abundance for them. There they grew into so great a multitude that their numbers could not be counted. ¹¹ So the king of Egypt turned against them and exploited them by forcing them to labor at brickmaking and reducing them to slavery. ¹² They besought their God, and he afflicted the whole land of Egypt with incurable plagues.

“When the Egyptians expelled them, ¹³ their God dried up the Red Sea before them ¹⁴ and guided them along the route to Sinai and Kadesh-barnea. They drove out all the inhabitants of the desert, ¹⁵ settling in the land of the Amorites, and by their power they exterminated the entire population of Heshbon. Then they crossed over the Jordan and took possession of the whole hill country. ¹⁶ They drove out before them the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Shechemites, and all the Gergesites, and they dwelt in the mountains for a long time.

¹⁷ “As long as they did not sin before their God, they enjoyed prosperity, for their God who loathes wickedness was with them. ¹⁸ However, whenever they strayed from the path he had prescribed for them, they suffered tremendous losses in many battles and were led away as captives to foreign countries. The temple of their God was razed to the ground, and their towns were occupied by their enemies. ¹⁹ But now that they have returned to their God, they have come back from the lands where they had been scattered, have again taken possession of Jerusalem where their temple is located, and have settled in the mountain region that was uninhabited.

²⁰ “So now, my lord and master, if this people has committed the fault of sinning against their God, and if we can ascertain the accuracy of this report, then we can go up and conquer them. ²¹ But if they are a nation that is guiltless, then, my lord, it would be better for you to leave them alone, for their Lord and God will protect them, and we will then become the laughingstock of the whole world.”