Texts in Conversation
Judith uses the language of Exodus where God hears Israel’s cry in Egypt and responds with favor, using language often connected to divine action. By repeating this pattern, the story is told as a continuation of Israel’s past.
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Exodus 2:24
Hebrew Bible
22 When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.” 23 During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning; God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the Israelites, and God understood.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Judith 4:13
Deuterocanon
11 And all the Israelite men, women, and children living at Jerusalem prostrated themselves before the temple and put ashes on their heads and spread out their sackcloth before the Lord. 12 They even draped the altar with sackcloth and cried out in unison, praying fervently to the God of Israel not to allow their infants to be carried off and their wives to be taken as booty, and the towns they had inherited to be destroyed, and the sanctuary to be profaned and desecrated to the malicious joy of the Gentiles. 13 The Lord heard their prayers and had regard for their distress; for the people fasted many days throughout Judea and in Jerusalem before the sanctuary of the Lord Almighty. 14 The high priest Joakim and all the priests who stood before the Lord and ministered to the Lord, with sackcloth around their loins, offered the daily burnt offerings, the votive offerings, and freewill offerings of the people.
Date: 150-100 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... If we turn to the understanding of εἰσακούω by the Greeks of modern times, we get a little different perspective on the word. According to Georgios Babiniotis, the verb in daily usage today is defined as: “to hear with a positive / favorable disposition and comply with the request, petition”. The ΜΛΕΓ indicates that this sense of the word is attested from modern times back through medieval to Hellenistic times and applies especially to the case where the one doing the hearing is God. If we look at the usage of εἰσακούω in the Pentateuch, this understanding of the word fits well with the cases where God is the subject of the verb ... Outside of the Pentateuch, this sense of εἰσακούω also occurs in the vast majority of its uses where God is the one who does the hearing (Judith 4:13; Job 35:12; Sirach 5:3; Hosea 9:17) ..."
Bons, Eberhard, and Patrick Pouchelle
The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and Its Hellenistic Background
(pp. 90-91) Mohr Siebeck, 2019
* 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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