5 min read

Judith Called on Simeon's God to Crush the Proud

She rose from the floor with dust on her mouth. The name she had used was Simeon, the son who walked into Shechem with a sword.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Dust on Her Mouth
  2. The Name She Chose
  3. The Third Day in Shechem
  4. The Old Man Confessed His Rage
  5. She Put Off the Sackcloth
Judith Called on Simeon's God to Crush the Proud Click for full size

Dust on Her Mouth

Judith had already decided. The sackcloth was still on her. Dust from the floor was still on her mouth. She had not asked God to choose for her. She had chosen, and the prayer she poured into the boards was a request that heaven ratify a plan already packed: jewelry, perfume, a bag of food, a maid at the door, a road into an enemy camp.

She did not call on the God of Abraham. She did not call on the God of Isaac or of Jacob. She called on the God of her father Simeon.

The Name She Chose

"O Lord God of my father Simeon," she said, "to whom you gave a sword to take vengeance on the strangers." She named the crime the way a woman names a wound. They loosened the girdle of a maid to defile her. They uncovered the thigh to her shame. They polluted her virginity to her reproach. God had said it would not be so, and they did so anyway.

Therefore, she said, God gave their rulers to be slain. They dyed their bed in blood, being deceived. Servants fell with their lords, and lords upon their thrones. Wives became prey. Daughters became captives. Spoils were divided among children who had been moved with zeal and had called on God for aid.

Judith asked for that same hand. Crush the enemies. Give the humble a weapon. Bring down the proud by the hand of a woman. Not by an army. Not by a man with Simeon's old sword. By her.

The Third Day in Shechem

The prayer had a city inside it. Dinah had gone out to see the daughters of the land, and Shechem the son of Hamor had taken her. Hamor came to talk peace and marriage. Jacob's sons answered with a condition: circumcise every male, and then we will give our sister and live among you.

The men of Shechem agreed. On the third day, when no man in the city could rise from his bed, Simeon and Levi took their swords and went in and killed every male. They brought Dinah home. They took the flocks and the donkeys and the women and the children and everything in the city and the fields.

Jacob said they had made him odious to the people of the land. Simeon and Levi answered with a question the Torah records and never answers: should they have let their sister be treated like a whore? (Genesis 34:31). Judith knew that question when she braided nothing yet and still lay on the floor. She was invoking the man who had looked at a whole city that had wronged his house and decided the answer was a sword, timed to the hour the enemy could not stand.

The Old Man Confessed His Rage

Simeon was not a clean hero, and he knew it late. In the hundred and twentieth year of his life, when Joseph had died and the old man's sons came to the bed, he sat up, kissed them, and confessed. His heart had been hard. His liver immovable. His bowels without compassion. In his youth he had been jealous of Joseph because Jacob loved that brother beyond all, and he had set his mind to destroy him.

He went to Shechem, he told them, to bring ointment for the flocks, while the plot against Joseph ran. When Judah sold the boy alive to Ishmaelites, Simeon's rage lasted five months. The Lord withheld the power of his hands. His right hand was half withered for seven days. He wept. He begged that the hand be restored, and that he hold aloof from envy and from folly. The same heat that had walked into Shechem for Dinah had also hunted a brother. Judith called on the first heat. She had heard of the second.

A woman going into a general's tent with perfume and a knife needs a God who has already given a sword. She also needs to know what that sword does to the man who carries it.

She Put Off the Sackcloth

She ceased to cry to the God of Israel. She completed the words. She rose where she had fallen down and called her maid. She went down into the house in which she lived on the sabbath days and on her feast days. She pulled off the sackcloth. She put off the garments of her widowhood.

Hair. Oil. Rings. The bag of food for the days she would have to eat in a camp that was not hers. The prayer was already behind her, still warm, still violent. The God of Simeon had been asked to crush the proud by a woman's hand. Judith stepped into the clothes that would get her through the gate.

Behind her on the floor, the dust still held the shape of a body that had refused a gentler name.

SimeonJudithDinahShechemPrayerVengeancePatriarchs
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Book of Judith 9:4Book of Judith

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

It's right at the heart of the Book of Judith.

Judith isn't just any story; it's a powerful tale of courage, faith, and a woman taking matters into her own hands. It's set during a time of crisis for the Jewish people, facing overwhelming odds against an invading army. But before Judith acts, before she even plans, she prays. And it’s in that prayer that we find a raw, unflinching cry for justice.

In Judith 9, she calls out to the "O Lord God of my father Simeon." Why Simeon specifically? Well, this is a direct reference to a troubling episode in Genesis 34, the story of Dinah. Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was defiled by Shechem, and Simeon, along with his brother Levi, exacted a brutal revenge on the entire city. It’s a complicated story, to say the least, raising questions about honor, vengeance, and the limits of justifiable force.

Judith reminds God that he empowered Simeon to avenge the wrong done to his sister. She recounts the violence: "You gave a sword to take vengeance on the strangers, who loosened the girdle of a maid to defile her, and uncovered the thigh to her shame, and polluted her virginity to her reproach; for you said, 'It will not be so,' and yet they did so. She's not shying away from the harsh realities of the situation or the actions taken in the past. She's reminding God of the precedent, of the promise that such acts wouldn't stand.

And she continues, "Therefore you gave their rulers to be slain, so that they dyed their bed in blood, being deceived, and you struck the servants with their lords and the lords upon their thrones; and you have given their wives for a prey and their daughters to be captives and all their spoils to be divided among your dear children, who were moved with your zeal and abhorred the pollution of their blood and called upon you for aid."

This isn't just a plea; it's a reckoning. Judith is reminding God of his power, of his past interventions, and of the covenant between God and his people. She emphasizes the consequences that followed the actions against Dinah – consequences divinely ordained, in her view. She frames the current crisis as a similar moment, a time when God's people are threatened with defilement and destruction.

The phrase "moved with your zeal and abhorred the pollution of their blood" is key. It speaks to the intensity of feeling, the righteous anger that fuels action. Judith aligns herself and her people with that same zeal, that same abhorrence of injustice.

It's more than just a request for help. It’s a demand for justice rooted in historical precedent and unwavering faith. And it sets the stage for Judith's own audacious act, an act that will become a legend in its own right. And how do we find that same fierce courage within ourselves?

Full source
Testament of SimeonTestaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, R. H. Charles (1917) · Public Domain

Simeon, second son of Jacob and Leah, was dying in his hundred and twentieth year. Joseph his brother had already passed. When his sons came to visit, Simeon strengthened himself, sat up, kissed them, and began to speak.

What he confessed was monstrous.

"I was strong exceedingly," he said. "My heart was hard, my liver immovable, my bowels without compassion." In his youth, Simeon had been consumed with jealousy of Joseph, because their father loved Joseph beyond all the others. The prince of deceit sent forth the spirit of envy and blinded Simeon's mind, until he regarded Joseph not as a brother, but as an enemy to be destroyed.

He laid out the events plainly. When Simeon went to Shechem for ointment, and Reuben to Dothan for supplies, Judah sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:28). When Reuben heard, he grieved, for he had wished to restore Joseph to their father. But Simeon was furious that Judah had let Joseph go alive. For five months, rage consumed him.

Then God intervened directly. "The Lord restrained me," Simeon said, "and withheld from me the power of my hands. My right hand was half withered for seven days." This was the sign. Simeon understood: because of Joseph, this had befallen him. He repented and wept. He besought the Lord that his hand might be restored and that he might hold himself aloof from all envy and folly.

"Beware of the spirit of deceit and envy," Simeon warned his children. "For envy rules over the whole mind of a man. It suffers him neither to eat nor to drink nor to do any good thing. It ever urges him to destroy the one he envies. And so long as the envied one flourishes, the one who envies fades away." Two years of fasting in the fear of God taught Simeon the cure: if a man flees to the Lord, the evil spirit runs from him, and his mind is lightened.

When the brothers went down to Egypt, Joseph bound Simeon as a spy. Simeon knew he was suffering justly and did not grieve. And Joseph, who had the Spirit of God within him, bore no malice. He loved Simeon as he loved all his brothers. All his days, Joseph never reproached them. He loved them as his own soul, glorified them beyond his own sons, and gave them riches, cattle, and fruits.

"Love each one his brother with a good heart," Simeon pleaded, "and the spirit of envy will withdraw from you. For envy makes savage the soul and destroys the body. It causes anger and war in the mind, stirs up deeds of blood, leads the mind into frenzy. Even in sleep, malicious jealousy gnaws at a man, disturbs his soul with wicked spirits, and wakes him in confusion."

Joseph's beauty of face, Simeon explained, came from the fact that no wickedness dwelt in him. The trouble of the spirit shows itself in the face. A pure heart makes a person radiant.

Looking to the future, Simeon declared that the Mighty One of Israel would glorify Shem, and the Lord God would appear on earth to save humanity. All the spirits of deceit would be trodden underfoot, and men would rule over wicked spirits. He commanded his sons to obey Levi and Judah, for from them would arise the salvation of God: from Levi a High Priest, and from Judah a righteous King.

Simeon slept with his fathers at a hundred and twenty years old. They laid him in a wooden coffin to take his bones to Hebron. They carried them secretly during a war of the Egyptians, for the Egyptians guarded the bones of Joseph in the tombs of their kings. Their sorcerers had prophesied that when Joseph's bones departed, darkness and plague would fall upon all Egypt, so terrible that even with a lamp a man could not recognize his own brother.

Full source
Book of Judith 10:1Book of Judith

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC-BY

Book of Judith turns to Gift of Shabbat.

The scene. She's been prostrate, on the ground, wrestling with fear and hope in equal measure. And then, the words stop. The prayer is complete. "And so make every nation and tribe acknowledge that you are the God of all power and might, and that there is no other who protects the people of Israel but you." It’s a powerful, resounding declaration. A bold claim in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

What happens after such a profound moment of supplication? Does she just sit there, waiting for a miracle to fall from the sky?

No. Judith rises.

"She rose where she had fallen down," the verse says, and this simple act is so full of meaning. It's a physical manifestation of her renewed faith, her commitment to action. She doesn’t stay defeated. She gets up. She takes charge.

And then, in a move that seems almost startling in its practicality, "she called her maid; and she went down into the house in which she lived on the sabbath days and on her feast days, and she pulled off the sackcloth which she had on, and put off the garments of her widowhood." for a second. She's been living in mourning, dressed in the rough, uncomfortable sackcloth of grief and the plain garments of a widow. These clothes are a constant reminder of loss, of vulnerability. And now, she deliberately removes them.

Why?

It's more than just a change of clothes. It's a transformation. A shedding of the old, a preparation for what’s to come. It’s about stepping into a new role, embodying a different kind of strength. She's not just a grieving widow anymore; she is a woman on a mission. She is a warrior of faith, ready to confront the enemy.

This moment reminds us that prayer, as powerful as it is, is often just the beginning. It's the catalyst that ignites action. It's the fuel that propels us forward. Judith's story isn’t just about divine intervention; it's about human courage, about the willingness to rise, to transform, to act in accordance with our deepest convictions, even when we are afraid.

Full source