Scripture Daily

Context No. 1411 of 4322 · Daniel (Greek)

Context · Reflection

Daniel (Greek) 13:7-14: in context

7When the people departed away at noon, Susanna went into her husband’s garden to walk. 8The two elders saw her going in every day and walking; and they were inflamed with lust for her. 9They perverted their own mind and turned away their eyes, that they might not look to heaven, nor remember just judgments. 10And although they both were wounded with lust for her, yet dared not show the other his grief. 11For they were ashamed to declare their lust, what they desired to do with her. 12Yet they watched eagerly from day to day to see her. 13The one said to the other, “Let’s go home, now; for it is dinner time.” 14So when they had gone out, they parted company, and turning back again, they came to the same place. After they had asked one another the cause, they acknowledged their lust. Then they appointed a time both together, when they might find her alone.

Two elders, respected judges in the community, have both become inflamed with lust for Susanna, a godly married woman they see walking each day in her garden. The text describes exactly how their sin took hold: they perverted their own minds and turned away their eyes, so that they would not look to heaven or remember God's just judgments. Each hid his desire from the other at first, ashamed to admit it, but they kept watching her eagerly. Then, discovered in their shared obsession, they confessed their lust to each other and conspired together, appointing a time to catch her alone.

The passage shows with unusual precision how sin gets its foothold: they turned away their eyes, so as not to look to heaven or remember God's just judgments. Before they could pursue their evil, the elders had first to look away from God, to push out of mind the awareness that he sees and judges. Sin almost always requires this preliminary act of deliberate blindness, a turning of the inner eye away from God so that his presence and his judgment stop checking us. As long as we keep looking to heaven, remembering that God sees and that there is a reckoning, the sin is restrained; so the first move, often barely conscious, is to stop looking, to let the awareness of God grow dim enough that we can do what we want. And notice the second thing: the two elders reinforced each other. What each might have been ashamed to pursue alone became possible once they discovered a partner in it; their shared lust emboldened them, and together they made a plan they might never have carried out separately. Sin is often enabled this way, by finding company in it, by two or more encouraging each other past the shame that might have restrained each one alone. The passage is a study in how evil is set up: first the deliberate turning of the eyes from heaven, then the mutual reinforcement that silences shame. To keep looking to heaven, and to refuse the company that eggs us on, is to cut sin off before it takes hold.

Do I let the awareness of God grow dim, turning my inner eye from heaven so his judgment stops checking me, and do I let others embolden me past the shame that should restrain me, or do I keep looking to heaven and refuse the company that eggs me on?

Sources