Judith 5

¹ Holofernes, general-in-chief of the Assyrian army, received the intelligence that the sons of Israel were preparing for war; that they had closed the mountain passes, fortified the high peaks and laid obstructions in the plains. Holofernes was furious.

² He summoned all the princes of Moab, all the generals of Ammon and all the satraps of the coastal regions.

³ ‘Men of Canaan,’ he said ‘tell me: what people is this that occupies the highlands? What towns does it inhabit? How large is its army? What are the sources of its power and strength? Who is the king who rules it and commands its army?

⁴ Why have these not condescended to wait on me, as all the western peoples have done?’

⁵ Achior[*a], leader of all the Ammonites, replied, ‘May my lord please listen to what your servant is going to say. I will give you the facts about these mountain folk whose home lies close to you. You will hear no lie from the mouth of your servant.

⁶ These people are descended from the Chaldaeans.

⁷ They once came to live in Mesopotamia, because they did not want to follow the gods of their ancestor who lived in Chaldaea.

⁸ They abandoned the way of their ancestors to worship the God of heaven, the God they had learnt to acknowledge. Banished from the presence of their own gods, they fled to Mesopotamia where they lived for a long time.

⁹ When God told them to leave their home and set out for Canaan, they settled there and accumulated gold and silver and great herds of cattle.

¹⁰ Next, famine having overwhelmed the land of Canaan, they went down to Egypt where they stayed as long as food could be found there. There they became a great multitude, a race beyond counting.

¹¹ But the king of Egypt turned against them and exploited them by forcing them to make bricks; he degraded them, reducing them to slavery.

¹² They cried to their God, who struck the entire land of Egypt with incurable plagues, and the Egyptians expelled them.

¹³ God dried up the Red Sea before them

¹⁴ and led them forward by way of Sinai and Kadesh-barnea. Having driven off all the inhabitants of the desert,

¹⁵ they settled in the land of the Amorites and, such is was their strength, exterminated the inhabitants of Heshbon. Then, having crossed the Jordan, they took possession of all the highlands,

¹⁶ driving out the Canaanites before them and the Perizzites, Jebusites, Shechemites and all the Girgashites, and lived there for many years.

¹⁷ All the while they did not sin before their God, prosperity was theirs, for they have a God who hates wickedness.

¹⁸ But when they turned from the path he had marked out for them, some were exterminated in a succession of battles, others taken captive to a foreign land. The Temple of their God was razed to the ground and their towns were seized by their enemies.

¹⁹ Then having turned once again to their God, they came back from the places to which they had been dispersed and scattered, regained possession of Jerusalem, where they have their Temple, and reoccupied the highlands which had been left deserted.

²⁰ So now, master and lord, if this people has committed any fault, if they have sinned against their God, let us first make sure that they have offended in this way, and then let us advance and attack them.

²¹ But if their nation is guiltless, my lord would do better to abstain, for fear that their Lord and God should protect them; we should then become the laughing-stock of the whole world.’

²² When Achior had ended this speech, all the people crowding round the tent began protesting. Holofernes’ own senior officers, as well as all the coastal peoples and the Moabites, threatened to tear him limb from limb.

²³ ‘Why should we be afraid of the Israelites? They are a weak and powerless people, quite unable to stand a stiff attack.

²⁴ Forward! Advance! Your army, Holofernes our master, will swallow them in one mouthful!’