Texts in Conversation
Judith uses the language of Exodus where God hears Israel’s cry in Egypt and responds with favor, a pattern connected to divine action. Judith echoes this in its narrative to present it as a continuation of Israel’s past.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
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: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Judith 4:13
Deuterocanon
11 Every man and woman of Israel, including the little children and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, fell prostrate before the temple, cast ashes upon their heads, and spread out their sackcloth before the Lord. 12 They put sackcloth around the altar, and cried to the God of Israel earnestly with one consent, that he would not give their children as prey, their wives as plunder, the cities of their inheritance to destruction, and the sanctuary to being profaned and being made a reproach, for the nations to rejoice at. 13 The Lord heard their voice, and looked at their affliction. The people continued fasting many days in all Judea and Jerusalem before the sanctuary of the Lord Almighty. 14 And Joakim the high priest, and all the priests who stood before the Lord, and those who ministered to the Lord, had their loins dressed in sackcloth and offered the continual burnt offering, the vows, and the free gifts of the people.
Date: 100 BCE (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) ..."
Eberhard Bons, Patrick Pouchelle, and Daniela Scialabba, eds., The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and Its Hellenistic Background (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 90–91.
* 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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