Texts in Conversation
Judith demonstrates a direct dependence on the Greek Septuagint version of Exodus 15 by quoting God as the one "who shatters wars" instead of the Hebrew Bible’s "man of war," using the Septuagint's theologically motivated change in the text.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Exodus 15:3
Septuagint
1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song to God, and spoke, saying, Let us sing to the Lord, for he is very greatly glorified: horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 He was to me a helper and protector for salvation: this is my God and I will glorify him; my father's God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord crushing wars, the Lord is his name. 4 He has cast the chariots of Pharaoh and his host into the sea, the chosen mounted captains: they were swallowed up in the Red Sea. 5 He covered them with the sea: they sank to the depth like a stone.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Judith 16:2
Deuterocanon
1 Judith said, “Begin a song to my God with timbrels. Sing to my Lord with cymbals. Make melody to him with psalm and praise. Exalt him, and call upon his name. 2 For the Lord is the God that crushes battles. For in his armies in the midst of the people, he delivered me out of the hand of those who persecuted me. 3 Asshur came out of the mountains from the north. He came with ten thousands of his army. Its multitude stopped the torrents. Their horsemen covered the hills. 4 He said that he would burn up my borders, kill my young men with the sword, throw my nursing children to the ground, give my infants up as prey, and make my virgins a plunder.
Date: 100 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The final and perhaps most powerful argument in favor of a Greek original for Judith rests on the author’s use of biblical quotations from the Septuagint. The Book of Judith is filled with allusions to biblical scenes, characters, and phrases. There are many quotations, or near quotations, from the Bible, and these biblical citations and quotations almost invariably derive from the LXX rather than the MT. Here we must distinguish between those cases where the Septuagint version of a biblical phrase is a literal translation of the original Hebrew text, and those where the Greek version differs considerably from the original MT. In the first instance, we cannot be certain which version underlies a biblical echo in Judith, but several citations found in Judith clearly stem from the Septuagint, since the cited LXX version differs considerably from the Hebrew. These LXX variants are often better suited to the story of Judith than the MT versions. Judith alludes to the Song of the Sea in both her prayer and her victory hymn, and one of her direct “quotations” is taken from the LXX of Exodus 15:3 where God is said to shatter wars, rather than the Masoretic text where God is a “man of war” ..."
Deborah Levine Gera, Judith (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 89.
* 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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