By Deirdre Good
The Daily Office, the daily common worship experience of professionals and proficients in many mainline Christian denominations, incorporates the Song of Judith as one of the Canticles we sing on a regular schedule (the asterisks denote a pause):
A Song of Judith
I will sing a new song to my God, *
for you are great and glorious, wonderful in strength, invincible.
Let the whole creation serve you, *
for you spoke and all things came into being.
You sent your breath and it formed them, *
no one is able to resist your voice.
Mountains and seas are stirred to their depths, *
rocks melt like wax at your presence.
But to those who fear you, *
you continue to show mercy.
No sacrifice, however fragrant, can please you, *
but whoever fears the Lord shall stand in your sight for ever.
A canticle is any song in the biblical text other than Psalms. Based on Judith 16:13-16, the Song of Judith is part of a larger song forming a conclusion to the astonishing tale of Judith’s defeat by decapitation of the Assyrian General Holofernes. But the canticle we sing in the Daily office extolling God for the defeat of God’s enemies, powerful as it is, has been severed from its connection with the wider context of Judith’s song and its recapitulation of the deeds of her hands. Do we recognize that Judith sings a new song celebrating the omnipotent Lord who set enemies aside at the hand of a woman? Can we who sing it hear the textual echoes and transformations of God’s spirit in Exodus not now being sent to drown the Egyptians but to effect the creation of the world?
The fuller version of the Song of Judith (Judith 16:1-17) celebrates in song the earlier prose form of the narrative of the book of Judith in which Judith celebrates the deliverance of Israel from her enemies. At the same time, the complete version of the Song of Judith draws in form and content on other biblical songs of deliverance by God sung by women such as the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 (attributed to Moses but now widely recognized to have been sung by Miriam and the women of Israel), and the Song of Deborah in Judges 5. And the Song of Judith in Greek anticipates the Song of Mary or the Magnificat in Luke’s Gospel in the New Testament.
We know that Judith quotes the Greek text of Exodus: Judith 16:2 states, “For the Lord is a God who crushes wars,” an allusion not to the Hebrew but to the Greek version of Exodus 15:3, “The Lord crushes wars, the Lord is his name.” In the Hebrew text, Yahweh is a man of war but in the Greek text, the Lord crushes wars. This situates intertextuality at the level of the Greek text, not the Hebrew.
Exodus 15:10 describes God’s “spirit” as potency and power for destruction: “You sent your spirit; it covered them: sea clothed like lead in violent water.” Spirit in Exodus covers and drowns. But the same phrase, “You sent your spirit” appears in Judith as direct borrowing with different application: the spirit in Judith 16:14 creates: “You sent your spirit, and it built them up, and there is no one who will withstand your voice”.
Specific to the Song of Miriam and the Song of Judith is the enemy threat of the sword in the hand: Ex. 15:9 describes the aggression of the Egyptians, “The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them'”. Similarly, Judith describes the boast of Israel’s enemies at 16:4: “He said he would set my territory ablaze and dispatch my young men with the sword”. Yet when Israel’s enemy is routed in Judith, it is not by the hand of God but by the hand of a woman holding a particular short sword.
Miriam’s song celebrates a victory wrought by the hand of another, her brother. In Miriam’s song, the sword is wielded by God; but Judith wields the sword of deliverance herself. In a sense, there is an identification of Judith with God so that she embodies God’s triumph.
We can now reflect on the difference this makes to our corporate worship. Worship embodies human beliefs about God. Recognizing that the language of war, subjugation and victory undergirds worship intrinsically, we can restore to the Song of Judith the meaning of God’s actions on behalf of a broken and subordinate people by the hand of an inferior and marginalized woman. And we can thereby begin to redeem language of war in worship.
Dr. Deirdre Good is professor of New Testament at The General Theological Seminary, specializing in the Synoptic Gospels, Christian Origins, Noncanonical writings and biblical languages. While she is an American citizen, she grew up in Kenya and loves marmite which may explain certain features of her blog, On Not Being a Sausage.