Texts in Conversation
In Exodus 17 the Israelites face a water crisis and demand that Moses surrender, preferring slavery to death by thirst. Judith 7 reworks this scene with Bethulia's people making the same desperate plea during the Assyrian siege.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 17:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The whole community of the Israelites traveled on their journey from the wilderness of Sin according to the Lord’s instruction, and they pitched camp in Rephidim. Now there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So the people contended with Moses, and they said, “Give us water to drink!” Moses said to them, “Why do you contend with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people were very thirsty there for water, and they murmured against Moses and said, “Why in the world did you bring us up from Egypt—to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” 4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What will I do with this people?—a little more and they will stone me!”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Judith 7:27
Deuterocanon
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. 25 Now 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. 26 And now summon them, and deliver up the whole city as prey to the people of Holofernes, and to all his army. 27 For 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. 28 We 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!”
Date: 100 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The clearest hints are an allusion to Exodus 17:7 in Judith 13:11 and allusions to the blessing of Levi in Deuteronomy 33:8-11 in Judith 9:1, 9 and 13:4, 7, which imply an analogy between Judith and Levi. As we have seen, the Massah and Meribah episode in Exodus 17:1-7 ends with a short flashback: "He [Moses] called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying: 'Is the Lord among us or not?'" (17:7). The brief question at the end of verse 7 "Is the Lord among us or not?" can be connected with the situation in Judith 7-8 and the theme of testing through water shortage. ..."
Silvia Castelli and Jan Willem van Henten, “Massah and Meribah Re-interpreted: Biblical Accounts, Judith, and Josephus,” in The Early Reception of the Torah, ed. Kristin De Troyer et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 32–33.
* 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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