The Young Man Who Asked What Tree and Saved Susanna

Two Men in the Same Garden

The two judges had arrived at Jehoiachin's house separately. They came morning and evening for judgment, as was their responsibility. They saw Susanna in the garden and wanted her. Each man kept his desire to himself, believing the secret was safe. When the crowds dispersed one afternoon and each judge turned back toward the garden door, they found the other already there. They stared at each other and understood. They admitted it. Then they began to plan.

For days they returned and watched. They were not acting on impulse. They were lying in wait, learning the rhythms of the garden, noting when the maids were sent out, when Susanna came to bathe alone in the heat of the day. They were patient. They were judges. They knew how to build a case.

The Ultimatum in the Garden

On the day they acted, Susanna sent her maids out for oil and told them to close the garden door behind them. The two judges came out from among the trees where they had been hiding. They told her: "Lie with us. If you refuse, we will testify that we found you here with a young man, and the testimony of two judges will be believed over the word of one woman."

Susanna understood the geometry. If she refused, she would be condemned on false testimony. If she yielded, she would sin against God with the men who should have been protecting the law. She made the calculation and said: "It is better for me to fall into your hands innocent than to sin before God." She screamed. The judges opened the garden door and people came running, and the two men told the story they had prepared.

The Trial That Was Already Finished

The assembly condemned her without hesitation. Two judges, unimpeachable witnesses, had testified together. Susanna maintained her innocence but there was nothing she could say against two witnesses. They led her to execution. She called out to God as she walked: "You know that these men have borne false witness against me."

A young man named Daniel, standing in the crowd, felt something move in him that he recognized as the spirit of God. He stopped the procession and said he would not be a party to this death. The people turned and asked him what he meant. He said: "Go back. Examine this more carefully. These men have given false testimony."

The Question That Broke the Case

Daniel separated the two judges and questioned them apart. He asked the first: "Under what tree did you see them together?" The man said: "Under a mastic tree."

Daniel sent him away and called the second. "Under what tree?"

The second man said: "Under a holm oak."

The two trees are different in every particular. One is small and shrubby. The other grows tall. A man who had actually been in the garden watching would have seen the same tree. The two men who had spent days in that garden, lying in wait among the actual trees, had not coordinated this one detail, because they had been counting on not being asked.

The assembly turned on the two judges and did to them what they had been about to do to Susanna. Susanna went home to her family.

What Daniel Was and What He Was Not Yet

The Daniel who stood in that crowd was young, not the aged prophet of the later visions. He watched an execution and was moved by something he identified as divine spirit, a specific pressure that demanded action. He had not yet been tested in the lions' den or stood before Nebuchadnezzar with his dream. The garden held the first instance of what he would do his entire life: receive an inner prompting and act on it in public, in front of people who had not asked for his intervention, against a verdict that had already been rendered by the established authorities. The tree question was his opening move.