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Augustine quotes Judith to explain why Abraham’s family left Chaldea, a reason Genesis does not give. He treats Achior’s account as evidence that worship of one God brought persecution.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Judith 5:8
Deuterocanon
5 Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, said to him, "May my lord please listen to a report from the mouth of your servant, and I will tell you the truth about this people that lives in the mountain district near you. No falsehood shall come from your servant's mouth. 6 These people are descended from the Chaldeans. 7 At one time they lived in Mesopotamia, because they did not wish to follow the gods of their ancestors who were 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, their ancestors drove them out from the presence of their gods. So they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there for a long time. 9 Then their God commanded them to leave the place where they were living and go to the land of Canaan. There they settled, and grew very prosperous in gold and silver and very much livestock.
Augustine, City of God 16.13
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
The only reason we can think of is, that perhaps he had lapsed from the piety of his father and brother, and adhered to the superstition of the Chaldeans, and had afterwards emigrated from there, either through penitence, or because he was persecuted as a suspected person. For in the book called Judith, when Holofernes, the enemy of the Israelites, inquired what kind of nation that might be, and whether war should be made against them, Achior, the leader of the Ammonites, answered him thus: “Let our lord now hear a word from the mouth of your servant, and I will declare to you the truth concerning the people which dwells near you in this hill country, and there shall no lie come out of the mouth of your servant. For this people is descended from the Chaldeans, and they dwelt heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were glorious in the land of the Chaldeans, but went out of the way of their ancestors, and adored the God of heaven, whom they knew; and they cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and dwelt there many days. And their God said to them, that they should depart from their habitation, and go into the land of Canaan; and they dwelt,” etc., as Achior the Ammonite narrates. Hence it is manifest that the house of Terah had suffered persecution from the Chaldeans for the true piety with which they worshipped the one and true God.
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Notes and References
“... There are gaps in the story of Abraham’s early life as re-
counted in Genesis 11:28–12:5. In Genesis 11:31 we are told that Terah,
Abraham, Lot, and Sarai leave Ur of the Chaldeans on their way to the land
of Canaan, but end up living in Haran, a city in northern Mesopotamia,
and we hear nothing of the deities worshipped in Ur. Abraham is then com-
manded by God to go to Canaan (Gen 12:1–5). In our passage, Achior fills
in the gaps, and we learn that these migrations are connected to the rejec-
tion of ancestral gods and the worship of God. Achior states that the Israe-
lites’ ancestors were expelled from their homeland because of their belief in
the existence of the God of heaven rather than the gods of their fathers. ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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