Susanna

What Susanna is about

Susanna is the wife of a prominent man in the Jewish community at Babylon. Two elders, appointed as judges, become obsessed with her, hide in her garden, and confront her while she is bathing: submit to us, or we will testify that we found you with a young man. Adultery carried the death penalty. She refuses, saying she would rather fall into their hands than sin against the Lord, and she cries out.

The elders testify. Their standing is such that nobody questions them, and Susanna is condemned to death without a proper examination. She prays aloud as she is led away, and a young man named Daniel interrupts the proceedings, declaring that he will not share in her blood.

His method is the part everyone remembers. He insists the two elders be questioned separately, and asks each the same question: under which tree did you see this? One says a mastic tree, the other a holm oak. The discrepancy destroys the case, Susanna is cleared, and the false witnesses receive the penalty they had sought for her.

Where it sits

In Catholic and Orthodox Bibles Susanna is chapter 13 of Daniel; in Protestant Bibles that include the Apocrypha it is printed separately, which is why it appears here as its own entry. It is received as scripture by Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Protestants value it but do not treat it as canonical.

The story has had a long life outside the Bible. Its separation of witnesses has been cited for centuries in discussions of legal procedure, and Susanna is one of the most frequently painted figures in Western art — often, it must be said, in ways that miss the point of the story entirely.

Why it is worth reading

Because it takes the side of a woman whose word is disbelieved against men whose position makes them credible, and it does so without hedging. Sixty-four verses, and the questions it raises about power, testimony, and the cost of telling the truth have not aged at all.