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Judith 5:5-7
New Catholic Bible
Judith 5:5-7
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.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Judith 5:5 Achior: is thought to have been fashioned after the celebrated sage Ahiqar mentioned in the Book of Tobit (Tob 1:21f; 2:10; 11:18; 14:10). The author has him give a summary of the history of Israel centered around the acts of God (see Pss 78; 105; 106; Wis 10; Ezek 16:20; Acts 7; see also the story of Balaam, Num 22–24). It prepares the ground for the words Judith will use to obtain Holofernes’s attention (Jud 11:5-19).
- Judith 5:6 Abraham originally came from Ur of the Chaldeans (Gen 11:28) and then migrated to Harran (Gen 11:31) in Aram-naharaim (Gen 24:10), which the Greeks named Mesopotamia. The gods of their ancestors: refers to the pagan gods that Abraham’s father, Terah, and his relatives worshiped.
