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Susanna 1: What the Passage Says

187 claims across 64 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Susanna 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

A rich man named Joacim lives in Babylon with his wife Susanna, and two elders appointed as judges spend much time at his house. They watch Susanna in her garden, corner her alone, and demand that she lie with them, threatening to testify that they caught her with a young man; she refuses, cries out, and they carry out the threat before the assembly, which condemns her to death. As she is led away, God raises up the spirit of a young boy named Daniel, who stops the execution, questions the two elders separately, and gets different trees out of them. The people put the elders to death according to the law of Moses, and Daniel is held in great reputation from that day on.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • A man lived in Babylon.
    • The man's name was Joacim.
  2. 1:2
    • Joacim took a wife.
    • His wife's name was Susanna.
    • Susanna was the daughter of Chelcias.
    • Susanna was very beautiful.
    • Susanna feared the Lord.
  3. 1:3
    • Susanna's parents were righteous.
    • Susanna's parents taught their daughter according to the law of Moses.
  4. 1:4
    • Joacim was very rich.
    • Joacim had a garden adjoining his house.
    • The Jews used to come to Joacim.
    • Joacim was more honourable than all the others.
  5. 1:5
    • That same year two elders of the people were appointed as judges.
    • The Lord had spoken concerning such men.
    • The Lord said that wickedness came out of Babylon from elders who were judges.
    • These judges appeared to govern the people.
  6. 1:6
    • These two elders spent much time at Joacim's house.
    • All who had lawsuits came to these two elders.
  7. 1:7
    • The people would depart at midday.
    • Susanna would go into her husband's garden and walk there.
  8. 1:8
    • The two elders saw Susanna going in and walking every day.
    • The two elders came to desire her.
  9. 1:9
    • The two elders perverted their own minds.
    • The two elders turned away their eyes so as not to look toward heaven.
    • The two elders turned away their eyes so as not to remember just judgments.
  10. 1:10
    • Both elders were stricken with desire for Susanna.
    • Neither elder told the other of his pain.
  11. 1:11
    • The elders were ashamed to declare their lust.
    • The elders desired to have sexual relations with Susanna.
  12. 1:12
    • The elders watched eagerly day after day to see Susanna.
  13. 1:13
    • One elder said to the other that they should go home.
    • One elder said it was dinner time.
    • The elders went out and parted from one another.
  14. 1:14
    • The elders turned back and came to the same place.
    • The elders questioned one another about the reason.
    • The elders confessed their lust to each other.
    • The elders together agreed on a time when they could find Susanna alone.
  15. 1:15
    • The elders were watching for a suitable day.
    • Susanna went into the garden as on previous days.
    • Susanna went in with only two maids.
    • Susanna wanted to wash herself in the garden.
    • It was hot.
  16. 1:16
    • No one was there except the two elders.
    • The two elders were hidden.
    • The two elders were watching Susanna.
  17. 1:17
    • Susanna told her maids to bring her oil.
    • Susanna told her maids to bring her washing balls.
    • Susanna told her maids to shut the garden doors.
    • Susanna said this so that she might wash herself.
  18. 1:18
    • The maids did as Susanna said.
    • The maids shut the garden doors.
    • The maids went out by the side doors to fetch what Susanna had commanded.
    • The maids did not see the elders.
    • The elders were hidden.
  19. 1:19
    • When the maids had gone out, the two elders rose up.
    • The two elders ran to Susanna.
  20. 1:20
    • The elders said the garden doors were shut.
    • The elders said no one could see them.
    • The elders said they were in love with Susanna.
    • The elders told Susanna to consent to them.
    • The elders told Susanna to lie with them.
  21. 1:21
    • The elders said that if Susanna refused, they would testify against her.
    • The elders said they would testify that a young man was with her.
    • The elders said they would testify that this was why she sent her maids away.
  22. 1:22
    • Susanna sighed.
    • Susanna said she was hemmed in on every side.
    • Susanna said that if she did this thing it meant death for her.
    • Susanna said that if she did not do it she could not escape their hands.
  23. 1:23
    • Susanna said it was better for her to fall into their hands without doing it than to sin in the sight of the Lord.
  24. 1:24
    • Susanna cried out with a loud voice.
    • The two elders cried out against her.
  25. 1:25
    • One of the elders ran and opened the garden door.
  26. 1:26
    • The servants of the house heard the cry in the garden.
    • The servants rushed in through the side door.
    • The servants came to see what had happened to Susanna.
  27. 1:27
    • The elders told their account.
    • The servants were greatly ashamed.
    • Such a report had never been made about Susanna before.
  28. 1:28
    • The next day the people assembled at the house of Susanna's husband Joacim.
    • The two elders came full of wicked intent against Susanna.
    • The elders intended to put Susanna to death.
    • The elders spoke before the people.
  29. 1:29
    • The elders said to send for Susanna, the daughter of Chelcias, the wife of Joacim.
    • They sent for her.
  30. 1:30
    • Susanna came.
    • Her father and mother came.
    • Her children came.
    • All her kindred came.
  31. 1:31
    • Susanna was very delicate.
    • Susanna was beautiful in appearance.
  32. 1:32
    • The wicked men commanded that Susanna be uncovered.
    • Susanna was veiled.
    • The wicked men wanted to be filled with her beauty.
  33. 1:33
    • Susanna's friends wept.
    • All who saw her wept.
  34. 1:34
    • The two elders stood up in the midst of the people.
    • The two elders laid their hands on Susanna's head.
  35. 1:35
    • Susanna wept.
    • Susanna looked up toward heaven.
    • Susanna's heart trusted in the Lord.
  36. 1:36
    • The elders said they were walking alone in the garden.
    • The elders said Susanna came in with two maids.
    • The elders said Susanna shut the garden doors.
    • The elders said Susanna sent the maids away.
  37. 1:37
    • The elders said a young man who was hidden came to Susanna.
    • The elders said the young man lay with her.
  38. 1:38
    • The elders said they were in a corner of the garden.
    • The elders said they saw this wickedness.
    • The elders said they ran to the pair.
  39. 1:39
    • The elders said they saw the pair having relations.
    • The elders said they could not hold the man.
    • The elders said the man was stronger than they were.
    • The elders said the man opened the door and leaped out.
  40. 1:40
    • The elders said they seized Susanna.
    • The elders said they asked who the young man was.
    • The elders said Susanna would not tell them.
    • The elders said they testify to these things.
  41. 1:41
    • The assembly believed the elders because they were elders and judges of the people.
    • The assembly condemned Susanna to death.
  42. 1:42
    • Susanna cried out with a loud voice.
    • Susanna addressed God as everlasting.
    • Susanna said God knows secret things.
    • Susanna said God knows all things before they come to be.
  43. 1:43
    • Susanna said God knew that they had borne false witness against her.
    • Susanna said she was about to die.
    • Susanna said she had done none of the things these men maliciously invented against her.
  44. 1:44
    • The Lord heard Susanna's voice.
  45. 1:45
    • Susanna was being led away to be put to death.
    • The Lord raised up the holy spirit of a young youth.
    • The youth's name was Daniel.
  46. 1:46
    • Daniel cried with a loud voice.
    • Daniel said he was clear from the blood of this woman.
  47. 1:47
    • All the people turned toward Daniel.
    • The people asked what the words he had spoken meant.
  48. 1:48
    • Daniel stood in the midst of them.
    • Daniel asked whether the sons of Israel were such fools.
    • Daniel said they had condemned a daughter of Israel without examination or knowledge of the truth.
  49. 1:49
    • Daniel told them to return to the place of judgment.
    • Daniel said the elders had borne false witness against Susanna.
  50. 1:50
    • All the people returned in haste.
    • The elders told Daniel to come and sit among them.
    • The elders told Daniel to declare the matter to them.
    • The elders said God had given Daniel the honour of an elder.
  51. 1:51
    • Daniel told them to separate the two elders far from one another.
    • Daniel said he would examine the two elders.
  52. 1:52
    • The two elders were separated from one another.
    • Daniel called one of them.
    • Daniel said the man had grown old in wickedness.
    • Daniel said the man's sins committed before had now come to light.
  53. 1:53
    • Daniel said the man had pronounced unjust judgments.
    • Daniel said the man had condemned the innocent.
    • Daniel said the man had let the guilty go free.
    • Daniel said the Lord commands that the innocent and righteous shall not be slain.
  54. 1:54
    • Daniel told the elder to say, if he had really seen her, under what tree he saw them together.
    • The elder answered that it was under a mastic tree.
  55. 1:55
    • Daniel said the elder had lied against his own head.
    • Daniel said an angel of God had received the sentence from God.
    • Daniel said the angel would cut the elder in two.
  56. 1:56
    • Daniel put the first elder aside.
    • Daniel commanded that the other elder be brought.
    • Daniel called the second elder seed of Canaan and not of Judah.
    • Daniel said beauty had deceived him.
    • Daniel said lust had perverted his heart.
  57. 1:57
    • Daniel said the elders had dealt this way with the daughters of Israel.
    • Daniel said those women out of fear had relations with them.
    • Daniel said a daughter of Judah would not endure their wickedness.
  58. 1:58
    • Daniel told the second elder to say under what tree he caught them together.
    • The second elder answered that it was under a holm oak.
  59. 1:59
    • Daniel said this elder also had lied against his own head.
    • Daniel said the angel of God waits with a sword.
    • Daniel said the angel would cut him in two.
    • Daniel said this would be done to destroy them.
  60. 1:60
    • The whole assembly cried out with a loud voice.
    • The assembly praised God.
    • The assembly praised God as the one who saves those who hope in him.
  61. 1:61
    • The people rose up against the two elders.
    • Daniel had convicted the two elders of false witness out of their own mouths.
    • The people did to the elders as the elders had maliciously intended to do to their neighbour.
  62. 1:62
    • They acted according to the law of Moses.
    • They put the two elders to death.
    • Innocent blood was saved that day.
  63. 1:63
    • Chelcias and his wife praised God for their daughter Susanna.
    • Joacim her husband joined in.
    • All the kindred joined in.
    • No shameful thing was found in Susanna.
  64. 1:64
    • From that day forward Daniel was held in great esteem in the sight of the people.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
Babylon: the story is set among the Jews deported to Babylonia after Jerusalem fell in 587 BC. They lived under foreign rule, with no king and no temple, but ran their own internal affairs. Susanna survives only in Greek. In Greek and Latin Bibles it is attached to the book of Daniel, and the King James printed it among the books it called the Apocrypha.
1:2
Joacim and Chelcias are Greek spellings of the Hebrew names Jehoiakim and Hilkiah. "One that feared the Lord" does not mean she was frightened of him; in the King James it is the standard phrase for someone devout and observant.
1:3
The law of Moses: the first five books of the Bible, which contained Israel's laws along with its earliest history. It was normally sons who were taught its contents, so the detail marks this household as unusually careful.
1:4
The exiled community settled its own disputes among itself. With no royal or temple court available, cases were heard in the house of a leading man, which is why Joacim's home fills with people each morning.
1:5
An elder was a senior man whose standing in the community gave him authority to judge cases; the King James calls them "ancients," meaning old men, not ancient people. The saying attributed to the Lord here does not appear in this form anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. It is usually connected with Jeremiah's letter to the exiles, which names two men in Babylon as false prophets and adulterers (Jeremiah 29:21-23).
1:6
A case at law was an argument two people could not settle. A judge listened and decided who was right.
1:7
Business at the house was done in the morning. At midday the crowd broke up for the main meal and the worst of the heat, leaving the household to itself.
1:9
People looked up toward heaven when they prayed. Turning their eyes away meant they stopped thinking about God.
1:13
Back then the big meal came in the middle of the day. That is the dinner they mean here.
1:15
Servant girls worked in the house and helped her. They went almost everywhere with her.
1:17
Washing balls: soap as we know it was not in ordinary use. Bathers rubbed themselves with olive oil and then with a ball of scouring material, usually ash or soda worked together with fat or oil, and scraped or rinsed it off.
1:18
The side doors were small doors in the garden wall. They were not the main way in.
1:21
The threat has real force. Under the law of Moses a charge was established by two witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15), and these two are not merely witnesses but the very judges who would try the case. The penalty for adultery was death (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22).
1:22
She means she could be killed as a punishment. That was the punishment for what they said she did.
1:23
In the sight of the Lord means with God watching. She believed God saw everything she did.
1:24
Crying out was legally significant. The law distinguished a woman attacked in open country, where no one could hear her, from one in a town who did not cry out and was therefore treated as consenting (Deuteronomy 22:23-27). By shouting, Susanna does exactly what the law required of a woman being assaulted.
1:31
"Delicate" in 1611 English means refined and daintily brought up, a woman of a wealthy household. It does not mean fragile or sickly.
1:32
A married woman of standing appeared in public with her head and face covered. Ordering her uncovered in front of the whole assembly was a public humiliation, and, as the text says outright, a way for the two men to look at her again.
1:34
Laying hands on the head of the accused was the formal gesture of witnesses in a capital case. It identified the person they were accusing and fixed responsibility for the death on their testimony (Leviticus 24:14). Witnesses were also required to throw the first stones at the execution (Deuteronomy 17:6-7).
1:41
This meeting was like a court. The people there had the power to say someone must die.
1:45
"A young youth" doubles the wording because the Greek calls Daniel a young lad, a boy not yet old enough to sit as a judge, which is the point of the elders' concession in verse 50. He is the Daniel of the book of Daniel, shown here at the very beginning of his reputation.
1:46
"I am clear from the blood of this woman" is an idiom for taking no share in the guilt of a death. Anyone who helped bring about an unjust execution, by testifying, by judging, or by going along with the crowd, was held to carry bloodguilt for it.
1:48
Sons of Israel means the men of Israel, God's people. A daughter of Israel is a woman of that same people.
1:49
The court has already risen and the crowd has moved out to the execution ground. Daniel is demanding that the trial be reopened and the evidence heard again.
1:50
Only elders sat as judges, and Daniel is far too young for the office. In saying God has given him the honor of an elder, they are granting him the standing to conduct the questioning.
1:51
Separating the witnesses is the whole of Daniel's method. A conviction needed two witnesses whose accounts agreed, so if they differ on a checkable detail, the testimony falls apart.
1:52
Come to light means the truth is now being seen. He could not hide what he had done.
1:53
The quotation is from Exodus 23:7, "the innocent and righteous slay thou not."
1:54
The mastic is a low evergreen shrub grown for its resin, rarely more than a few feet high and poor cover for what the elder claims to have watched. The answer also sets up a pun that works only in Greek: schinos, the mastic, echoes schisei, "he will cut," in Daniel's reply.
1:55
"Thou hast lied against thine own head" means the lie will fall back on the liar himself. Under the law, a witness proved false suffered the punishment he had tried to bring on the accused, which here is death (Deuteronomy 19:18-19).
1:56
Calling him offspring of Canaan and not of Judah is an insult. The Canaanites were the people Israel had displaced, and Israelite tradition charged them with sexual corruption; Judah is the tribe of the exiles from Jerusalem. Daniel is saying his conduct shows him to be no true Israelite.
1:57
The Greek is blunter than the English: other women submitted to these men sexually because they were afraid of them. Susanna is the one who refused.
1:58
The holm tree, an evergreen oak, is a large forest tree, quite unlike the small mastic shrub the first elder named. It carries the matching Greek pun: prinos, the oak, echoes prisai, "to saw in two," in Daniel's reply.
1:59
In the Greek this story was written in, this tree's name sounds like the word for saw. Daniel is playing on the name of each tree.
1:62
The law required that a witness proved false receive the penalty he had tried to bring on the person he accused (Deuteronomy 19:16-21). Since the elders had pressed for Susanna's execution, they were executed.
1:63
"Dishonesty" in 1611 English means disgrace or unchastity, not lying. The sense is that nothing shameful was proved against her.

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