Blessed art thou among women
A phrase associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, it has its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and in later Jewish writings with the figure of Jael, on the one hand, and the figure of Judith, on the other hand. They are blessed among women or even above all women. They belong to a quartet of holy women who at once embody the essential features of Judaism: Jael from the Song of Deborah, Esther, Judith, and Susanna. They are each in their own way strong women who had to deal with adversities in one way or another. In turn, they shape the moral imaginary of the Christian world in the figures of Mary and Christ.
We have in Chapel this week read two passages from the Book of Judith. It has only come down to us in Greek, and yet entered much later into Jewish culture and ritual, paradoxically, because of its vitality and presence in the cultures of both Eastern and Western Christianity. For Eastern Orthodoxy the Book of Judith belongs to their canonical (authoritative) scriptures since they derive the Old Testament from the Septuagint. In the Christian West, largely through the interpretative influence of Jerome’s Prologue to the story, the Book of Judith belongs to the Deutero-canonical texts for Catholics and to the Apocrypha for Protestants, such as Anglicans. In other words, the Book of Judith provides an intriguing and interesting example of the interchange and interaction between and within religious cultures, philosophically understood.
It is a story about Jewish identity in the face of persecution and has grown in symbolic significance for Jews and Christians alike. A fictional work, composed sometime in the second century BC, whether first in Hebrew or in Greek is unclear, it is clearly set within a Jewish milieu and in the context of a global power struggle between the Assyrians and the Medes. Set in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, like the Book of Daniel to which the story of Susanna is appended, it concerns the persecution of the Jews by the dominant powers of the day. Judith is a beautiful widow in the fictional city of Bethulia which stands as the gateway to Jerusalem. Holofernes, Nebuchadnezzar’s general, puts Bethulia under siege on his way to capture Jerusalem. At issue is the subordination of the Jews to the Assyrians and to the demand, as in the Book of Daniel, to worship Nebuchadnezzar as god. The siege places the city in great distress with food and water shortages. Its leadership decides that if God does not do something within five days, they will capitulate to the demands of the Assyrians.
Judith upbraids the political leadership of the city for putting God to the test and bids them wait until she does something “which will go down through all generations,” words which are echoed in Mary’s Magnificat, They are not to ask her about her plans. She removes her widow’s garb and ‘dressed to kill’ (pardon the expression), she enters Holofernes’ tent. He is ravished by her beauty and seeks to possess her but has too much to drink and falls asleep. Just as Jael in the Book of Judges had saved Israel by driving a tent peg through the temple of the enemy Sisera while he was sleeping, so Judith takes Holofernes sword and cuts off his head. She places it in the food bag of her maiden and returns triumphant to the city. Wow. That’s some woman.
The story captured the interest of the early Christian Fathers and later the interest of artists. Yet it is not simply the violence of Jael and Judith but how they face adversity that is of interest. That has been the dominant point of the Judith story as it has been received. Jerome set the tone for centuries of interpretation in seeing Judith as a moral example for men and women alike since she embodies the virtue of chastity that triumphs over lust. She is the one, he says, who “conquered the unconquered,” who “surmounted the insurmountable.” The fourth century Christian poet, Prudentius, draws upon the Judith story in his celebrated Psychomachia, the Battle Within the Soul, which is a moral treatise about the struggle between the virtues and the vices, using Old Testament figures as types of New Testament figures. Thus Judith is the type of chastity or purity that conquers lust and of the humility that overcomes pride. She is seen in the Christian understanding as a type of Mary.
Yehudit means Jewess and so in the original (whether Hebrew or Greek), Judith personifies Judaism. A work of historical fiction, a kind of novella, we might say, it is also one of the earliest works of conversion literature. Yet its influence within Jewish culture was hidden for more than a thousand years. It was only through the alchemy of symbolism, by which she became through the association with Mary a type of the Church, that she also was reclaimed in the 11th century by the Jewish communities in Europe. Readings from the Book of Judith are read during Hanukkah, for example.
Her story as reflected through the lenses of Christian and Jewish moral thinking caught the interests of artists, both in painting, in poetry, and in music. Antonio Vivaldi’s only surviving oratorio is Juditha Triumphans. Mozart as a fifteen year old musical prodigy composed the music for a libretto, La Betulia Liberata, Judith as the liberator of Bethulia. Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Orazio and Artemisia Genteleschi et alia have depicted her story. Dante includes Judith in the beatific white rose of the Paradiso, and so on and so.
Of the quartet of holy women, Judith has the most autonomy and agency. She is beautiful and wise, virtuous and clever, courageous and cunning, devout and devious; she deceives the deceiver and stands up against tyranny. She is, in short, an emblem of virtue, of inner strength of character in the face of adversity. Her symbol is the sword. We are reminded that Simeon said of Mary that “a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also that the hearts of many shall be revealed,” referring to the sufferings of Mary through the sufferings of Christ. The point in a way is that suffering is an inescapable aspect of the human condition, something to which Jews and Christians bear witness. Yet the idea of the battle within the soul is universal. In the great Hindu classic, the Bhagavad Gita, a marvellous ethical treatise set within the vast war epic of the Mahabharata, the warrior prince Arjuna sets down his sword between two opposing armies. He is in despair about fighting those who are his relatives on both sides. His dilemma is about ‘why should I fight?’ Sri Krishna undertakes to educate him about following his dharma, following the essence or law of your own being but without attachment to the results. The setting, like the stories of Jael and Judith, is one of violence yet Mahatma Gandhi saw the Gita as teaching the deepest wisdom about strength and peace in the face of adversity.
How do we face adversity such as the Covid-19 outbreak? The point is that there are always adversities of one sort or another over which you have no real control other than how you face them. The story of Judith, rich and complex, especially in its fuller rendition in the Septuagint from which the King James Version derives, is about that inner struggle. Judith holds to her faith and trust in God, come what may, as she says, and uses her wit and her beauty, her moral courage and virtue, to save her people. She is Judith triumphans but like Mary she embodies the qualities of true human agency, qualities needed by men and women alike in the face of the world’s adversities. The struggles are always within.
(Rev’d) David Curry,
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy