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Context No. 1404 of 4322 · Judith

Context · Reflection

Judith 7:23-32: in context

23All the people, including the young men, the women, and the children, were gathered together against Ozias, and against the rulers of the city. They cried with a loud voice, and said before all the elders, 24“God be judge between all of you and us, because you have done us great wrong, in that you have not spoken words of peace with the children of Asshur. 25Now we have no helper; but God has sold us into their hands, that we should be laid low before them with thirst and great destruction. 26And now summon them, and deliver up the whole city as prey to the people of Holofernes, and to all his army. 27For it is better for us to be captured by them. For we will be servants, and our souls will live, and we will not see the death of our babies before our eyes, and our wives and our children fainting in death. 28We take to witness against you the sky and the earth, and our God and the Lord of our fathers, who punishes us according to our sins and the sins of our fathers. Do what we have said today!” 29And there was great weeping of all with one consent in the midst of the assembly; and they cried to the Lord God with a loud voice. 30And Ozias said to them, “Brethren, be of good courage! Let us endure five more days, during which the Lord our God will turn his mercy toward us; for he will not forsake us utterly. 31But if these days pass, and no help comes to us, I will do what you say.” 32Then he dispersed the people, every man to his own camp; and they went away to the walls and towers of their city. He sent the women and children into their houses. They were brought very low in the city.

The town of Bethulia has been under siege by the army of Holofernes, its water cut off, and the people are dying of thirst. Their strength and their faith broken, the whole population turns on their leaders, crying out that they should surrender the city. It is better, they say, to become slaves and live than to watch our little ones and our wives faint and die before our eyes. They accuse their rulers of bringing this on them and demand surrender. Ozias, the chief magistrate, pleads for time: take courage, brothers; let us hold out five more days, in which the Lord may turn his mercy to us; but if no help comes by then, I will do as you say.

Two responses to prolonged suffering sit side by side here, and neither is quite right. The people, worn down by real and terrible suffering, their children dying of thirst, have reached the end of their faith and want only to give up; better slavery and survival, they say, than to keep trusting God through this. Their anguish is genuine and deserves compassion, not scorn; it is a hard thing to watch children suffer and go on believing. But their conclusion is despair, a giving up on God under the weight of the affliction. And Ozias, meaning to steady them, does something almost as troubling: he puts God on a deadline. Five more days, he says, and if God has not acted by then, we surrender. He gives God a schedule, an ultimatum, as though God's mercy could be required to arrive by a date the besieged set for him. It is understandable, but it is not faith; it is bargaining that reserves the right to give up if God does not perform on time. As the story will show, when Judith hears of it she rebukes exactly this, this setting of terms and timelines for God. There is a caution in it for our own seasons of prolonged suffering. When relief is slow, we are tempted either to give up on God entirely or to grant him a deadline past which we will stop trusting. Neither is the trust that holds on without dictating to God when and how he must act.

In prolonged suffering, when relief is slow, am I tempted to give up on God, or to put him on a deadline past which I will stop trusting, rather than holding on in a faith that does not dictate to God when and how he must act?

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