Texts in Conversation
The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 ends with a notice that Israel enjoyed forty years of peace after victory. The Book of Judith closes with the same formula, linking Judith to the pattern of the judges as deliverers of Israel.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Judges 5:31
Hebrew Bible
30 ‘No doubt they are gathering and dividing the plunder—a girl or two for each man to rape! Sisera is grabbing up colorful cloth, he is grabbing up colorful embroidered cloth, two pieces of colorful embroidered cloth, for the neck of the plunderer!’ 31 “May all your enemies perish like this, O Lord! But may those who love you shine like the rising sun at its brightest.” And the land had rest for forty years.
Date: 600–501 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Judith 16:25
Deuterocanon
23 She increased in greatness exceedingly; and she grew old in her husband’s house, to one hundred five years. She let her maid go free. Then she died in Bethulia. They buried her in the cave of her husband Manasses. 24 The house of Israel mourned for her seven days. She distributed her goods before she died to all those who were nearest of kin to Manasses her husband, and to those who were nearest of her own kindred. 25 There was no one who made the children of Israel afraid any more in the days of Judith, nor for a long time after her death.
Date: 100 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The last verse reads, "During the lifetime of Judith and for a long time after her death, no one ever again spread terror among the Israelites" (Judith 16:25). By concluding the story of a righteous leader who thwarts an incursive gentile adversary, the author of Judith imitates several stories from the Book of Judges, which end with a similar description of the peace brought by the victor. Such a concluding notice appears in Judges 8:28: "Midian was subjugated by the Israelites; they no longer held their heads high, and the land had rest for forty years" (see also Judges 3:11, 30; 5:31). ..."
Geoffrey David Miller, “Methodological Reflections for Future Intertextual Studies,” in Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, ed. Jeremy Corley and Geoffrey David Miller (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), 325–326.
* 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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