Susanna: The Woman Two Judges Accused

At a Glance

Who wrote it: An unknown Jewish writer. The story was added to the book of Daniel in Greek.

When: Probably the 100s or early 00s BC. Whether it was first written in Hebrew or in Greek has been argued since the 200s AD.

Where it fits: Set among the exiles in Babylon, when Daniel is still a young man. Written as a story about justice in a Jewish community that judged its own members.

Which Bibles keep it: Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, as part of Daniel (in Catholic Bibles, Daniel 13). Protestant Bibles moved it to the Apocrypha.

Where you hear it in your Bible: Nowhere quoted. Its law against false witnesses is Deuteronomy 19:18–19. Its woman dragged before the elders, and the men who accused her, are close to the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3–11).

How close it stays to me: Very close in defending a woman against the powerful men who accused her.

If you only read three chapters: It is one chapter of sixty-four verses. Read it all.

Words to Know

Elders — the senior men of the community. In this story two of them also serve as judges.

False witness — lying testimony in court. The law of Moses punished a false witness with the penalty he tried to bring on the accused.

Cross-examination — questioning witnesses separately to see whether their stories agree.

Mastic and holm — two kinds of tree, a small evergreen shrub and an evergreen oak.

The Book in Brief

In Babylon lives a rich and respected Jew named Joakim, whose house is where the community’s court meets. His wife Susanna is beautiful and devout, raised by her parents in the law of Moses. That year, two elders are appointed as judges. Both see Susanna walking in her husband’s garden, and both secretly desire her. One day they discover each other’s secret and agree to catch her alone.

When Susanna goes to bathe in the garden and sends her maids away, the two elders rush out of hiding. They tell her to lie with them, or they will testify that they caught her with a young man. Susanna sees that she is trapped either way, refuses, and cries out. The elders shout too, and the household comes running.

The next day the elders bring her to trial before the people. They make her uncover her face, lay their hands on her head, and give their false testimony. Because they are elders and judges, the assembly believes them and condemns her to death. Susanna cries out to God.

As she is led away, God stirs up a young man named Daniel, who shouts that he is innocent of her blood and calls the people back to the court. He has the two elders separated and asks each, in turn, under what tree he saw her with the young man. The first says a mastic tree. The second says a holm oak. Their lie is exposed. The assembly puts the two elders to death by the law of Moses, and Susanna’s family praises God. From that day Daniel is honored among the people.

Behold, the garden doors are shut, that no man can see us, and we are in love with you; therefore consent to us, and lie with us. If you will not, we will bear witness against you, that a young man was with you (Susanna 20–21).

That is the whole trap. Two powerful men, with the authority of the court, and a woman alone. If she says yes, she sins. If she says no, they will say she committed adultery, and the law will kill her. Their word against hers, and they are the judges.

She sees it exactly. I am straitened on every side: for if I do this thing, it is death to me: and if I do it not, I can’t escape your hands. It is better for me to fall into your hands, and not do it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord (Susanna 22–23).

Then she screams.

Believed because they were elders

The trial the next day is short. The two elders stand up before the whole assembly, lay their hands on her head, and tell their story. There is no one to contradict them.

Then the assembly believed them, as those that were elders of the people and judges: so they condemned her to death (Susanna 41).

That sentence should stop you. They were not believed because of any evidence. They were believed because of who they were. And she was condemned because of who she was not.

The writer knows this is not the first time. When Daniel turns on one of the elders, he says: Thus have you dealt with the daughters of Israel, and they for fear companied with you: but the daughter of Judah would not abide your wickedness (Susanna 57). These men had done it before. The other women gave in, out of fear. Susanna was the one who would not.

Powerful men who use their position to force women, women too afraid to speak, and a community that believes the men because they are respected. The story is more than two thousand years old. You know it is not old.

Separate them

Susanna is led out to die. And a young man shouts from the crowd: I am clear from the blood of this woman (Susanna 46).

He turns the whole assembly around with one question. Are you such fools, you sons of Israel, that without examination or knowledge of the truth you have condemned a daughter of Israel? (Susanna 48).

Then he does the simplest thing in the world. Put them asunder one far from another, and I will examine them (Susanna 51). He asks each elder the same question, separately: under what tree did you see them? One says a mastic. The other says a holm oak. Two witnesses who saw the same thing cannot disagree about a tree.

That is the whole of justice in one move. Do not believe the powerful because they are powerful. Ask questions. Check the stories against each other. The law of Moses demanded exactly this. The judges shall make diligent inquisition (Deuteronomy 19:18). The assembly had not bothered, because the accusers were judges themselves.

Go deeperPuns that started an argument

When Daniel catches the first elder, who said a mastic tree, he tells him the angel of God shall cut you in two (Susanna 55). When he catches the second, who said a holm oak, he says the angel waits with the sword to cut you in two (Susanna 59).

In Greek, those lines are puns. The mastic tree is schinos, and schisei means will split. The holm oak is prinos, and prisei means will saw. Each elder’s tree becomes his punishment.¹

Around the year 240, a Christian scholar named Julius Africanus wrote to the great teacher Origen and argued that Susanna could not be real scripture. The puns only work in Greek, he said, so the story must have been written in Greek, and the Hebrew prophets did not write in Greek. Origen wrote a long letter back, defending the story. He said translators could have found Greek puns to match Hebrew ones, and that the Jews had removed Susanna from their scriptures because it embarrassed their elders.¹

The argument has gone on ever since. Many modern scholars think the puns show that at least this version of the story was composed in Greek. Others think it could be a clever translation. No Hebrew or Aramaic copy of Susanna has ever been found.

What happened to the judges

The story ends with the people turning on the two elders, and doing according to the law of Moses … to them in such sort as they maliciously intended to do to their neighbor: and they put them to death (Susanna 62).

That is the law: if a witness lies to get someone killed, you shall do to him as he had thought to do to his brother (Deuteronomy 19:19). The story treats it as justice, and the innocent blood is saved.

I want you to hold this story next to another one. In some copies of the Gospel of John, though not in the oldest ones, there is a scene in which the religious leaders bring a woman to me, a woman taken in adultery, say they found this woman in adultery, in the very act, and remind me that Moses commanded such women to be stoned (John 8:3–5).

Notice what is missing in that story: the man. Adultery takes two, and the law of Moses condemns both of them (Deuteronomy 22:22). They brought only her.

I did not cross-examine them about trees. I said, He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her, and they went away one by one, beginning from the oldest (John 8:7, 9). Then I asked her, Did no one condemn you? and told her, Neither do I condemn you (John 8:10–11).

In Susanna’s story, the young man saves the woman and the guilty old men die. In mine, the woman is saved and the old men walk away alive. Both stories put the powerful accusers on trial instead of the woman. Mine leaves no one dead.

Go deeperSusanna in the catacombs

She was one of the stories the first Christians painted most often. On the walls of the catacombs of Rome, where Christians buried their dead in the 200s and 300s, Susanna appears again and again: standing with her hands raised in prayer between the two elders or between two trees. In one, in the Catacomb of Praetextatus, she is a lamb labeled Susanna standing between two wolves, one labeled the elders.²

She was there for a reason. The catacomb paintings were mostly pictures of rescue: Noah from the flood, Jonah from the fish, Daniel from the lions, the three young men from the furnace, Lazarus from the tomb. Susanna, saved from a death sentence on false testimony, belonged with them. For people who could themselves be dragged into court and condemned on lies, under emperors who killed Christians, she was a picture of hope.

Later, the story took a different turn in art. From the 1500s on, painters such as Tintoretto, Rubens and Rembrandt painted Susanna and the Elders as an excuse to paint a naked woman, with the viewer standing where the elders stood, watching her bathe.² In 1610 the young Artemisia Gentileschi painted it from Susanna’s side: a frightened woman twisting away from two men leaning over the wall. It is worth looking up the two kinds of picture side by side.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Susanna 20–23 and 41.

You will find: the trap, her refusal, and the assembly that believed the elders as those that were elders of the people and judges.

Then read John 8:3–11 and notice who is missing from it, and who is left standing.

The Short Version

• Susanna is a story added to Daniel in Greek. Catholic Bibles print it as Daniel 13.
• Two elders who are also judges trap a woman alone and threaten to accuse her of adultery if she will not lie with them. She refuses.
• The assembly believes them because they are elders, and condemns her. They had done this to other women, who gave in for fear.
• Young Daniel has the elders questioned separately, and their stories fall apart over which tree.
• In my own story of a woman accused before the elders, I put the accusers on trial too, and no one was put to death.