What does Judith Chapter 5 record?

When Holofernes learned that the children of Israel had prepared for war and blocked the mountain passes, he was consumed with exceeding fury and summoned the princes of Moab and commanders of Ammon. He demanded to know what people occupied these heights, the nature and strength of their cities, their numbers and military leadership, and why they alone among all eastern nations had refused to come forth with peaceful submission. Achior, captain of the Ammonites, answered, promising to deliver a truthful account of the mountain people without uttering a single false word.

Achior explained that Israel originated from the Chaldeans, originally dwelling in Mesopotamia until they rejected the polytheistic idols of their ancestors to worship the one God of heaven. Commanded by God to settle in Haran, they later migrated into Egypt during a widespread famine, multiplying over four hundred years into an innumerable host. When an Egyptian king enslaved them in clay and brick construction, God struck the land with plagues, parted the Red Sea into standing walls of water for their passage on dry ground, and drowned the pursuing Egyptian army so completely that none survived. Wandering forty years in the uninhabitable desert of Mount Sinai, God sweetened bitter waters for them, fed them with food from heaven, and fought for them wherever they went without reliance upon bow, arrow, shield, or sword.

Achior described what he said governed Israel's warfare: no foreign power ever triumphed over them except when they revolted against the Lord their God. Whenever they worshipped false gods, they were handed over to pillage, sword, and reproach; but whenever they repented of their apostasy, the God of heaven restored their strength to overcome the Canaanites, Jebusites, Perizzites, Hethites, Hivites, Amorites, and the rulers of Heshbon. In recent generations, their sins had caused them to be crushed and exiled into strange lands, but having recently returned in repentance from scattering, they had reoccupied these mountains and regained possession of Jerusalem and the sanctuary.

Drawing his strategic conclusion, Achior advised Holofernes to investigate whether Israel had committed any current iniquity against their God. If guilt were found, the Assyrians could march against them with certainty of victory; but if no offense existed in their conduct, the Assyrians could not withstand them, for their God would defend them, turning the imperial army into a laughingstock before the whole earth. Hearing this, Holofernes' officers were enraged and sought to kill Achior, mocking the notion that unarmed, unskilled Israelites could resist Nabuchodonosor's legions, and proposing a march into the mountains so that Achior might be stabbed alongside the defeated Jews to prove that Nabuchodonosor alone is god of the earth.