Scripture Daily

Context No. 1161 of 4322 · Judith

Context · Reflection

Judith 8:25-31: in context

25Besides all this let’s give thanks to the Lord our God, who tries us, even as he did our fathers also. 26Remember all the things which he did to Abraham, and all the things in which he tried Isaac, and all the things which happened to Jacob in Mesopotamia of Syria, when he kept the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother. 27For he has not tried us in the fire, as he did them, to search out their hearts, neither has he taken vengeance on us; but the Lord scourges those who come near to him, to admonish them.” 28And Ozias said to her, “All that you have spoken, you have spoken with a good heart. There is no one who will deny your words. 29For this is not the first day wherein your wisdom is manifested; but from the beginning of your days all the people have known your understanding, because the disposition of your heart is good. 30But the people were exceedingly thirsty, and compelled us to do as we spoke to them, and to bring an oath upon ourselves, which we will not break. 31And now pray for us, because you are a godly woman, and the Lord will send us rain to fill our cisterns, and we will faint no more.”

The town of Bethulia is dying of thirst under siege, and the elders have made a rash bargain: if God does not deliver in five days, they will surrender. Judith rebukes them, and here she reframes the whole crisis. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, she says, who is testing us as he tested our fathers. Remember how he tested Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has not tried us in the fire to search our hearts as he did them, nor is he taking vengeance on us; rather, the Lord disciplines those who draw near to him, to admonish them. The elders concede she is right, but plead their thirst and ask her to pray for rain.

Judith's reframing is the important thing. The people saw only disaster, God abandoning them to thirst and siege, and their response was to bargain and threaten surrender. Judith sees the same crisis as a test, a refining, the same kind of thing God did with the patriarchs he loved. Give thanks, she says, that he tests us. She refuses to read the hardship as God's absence or vengeance; she reads it as the discipline of a God who draws his people near through trial, and even calls for gratitude in the middle of it. There is a mature faith in that ability to reinterpret a crisis, not as evidence that God has failed or abandoned, but as the testing by which he refines and admonishes those he loves. The elders wanted to put God on a five-day deadline; Judith wanted them to give thanks and trust the God who tests. It is a hard word in a thirsty siege, and it is the right one. The trial is not proof that God has left; it may be proof that he is drawing near.

When a hard trial tempts me to read it as God's absence or to bargain my way out, can I do what Judith did, and receive it as the testing of a God who draws his people near, even with thanks?

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