The Young Man Who Asked What Tree

Susanna was already condemned when Daniel opened his mouth.

The story begins with a household, not a courtroom. In Babylon during the exile, a man named Jehoiachin was more respected than any of his generation, and all the Jews came daily to his house for judgment. He had a beautiful garden adjoining the house, and his wife Susanna, who feared God, used to bathe there during the heat of the day. Two judges had been appointed over the people, and they came morning and evening to Jehoiachin's house to deliver judgment.

The two judges saw Susanna and wanted her. They were separately consumed by the same desire, and neither confessed it to the other. Each thought his secret was safe. When the crowds dispersed one day, each judge turned back toward the garden, found the other already there, and they stared at each other in the knowledge of what they both were. They admitted it. Then they began planning.

The account of their surveillance is preserved in the Apocrypha and records that they returned day after day to the garden door, watching. They were not acting on impulse. They were lying in wait. On the day they acted, Susanna came to the garden with her maids. She sent the maids out to fetch oil, telling them to close the door behind them. The two judges had concealed themselves among the trees. They came out when she was alone and delivered their ultimatum: lie with us, or we will testify that a young man has lain with you here.

Susanna understood the situation immediately. She said: I cannot escape these men. It is better for me to resign myself to the Lord, the righteous and great God, the Deliverer and mighty Redeemer. She raised her voice and cried out for help. They also cried out, shouting their accusation over hers. The men of the house came and found the elders bearing witness against her.

The people believed the judges, who were known as pious and God-fearing men. The trial the following morning was swift. The elders testified. The crowd believed them. In the full account of the proceedings, Susanna was condemned and led out to die with her face covered, her family and friends surrounding her, all of them astonished. As they led her out, she lifted her eyes and called on God: truthful and righteous Judge, faithful Witness, behold me and save me from a death through false witnesses. Let me not be found a sinner before all these people.

God heard her and sent a helper. The text says God aroused the spirit of Daniel, who was still a young man serving in the king's household. Daniel raised his voice in the crowd and declared that a righteous woman was being condemned without proper investigation. The people asked who was speaking. When they were told it was Daniel, they challenged him: why do you say she should not die? He told them to sit down and to separate the two elders from each other. Then he interrogated them one at a time.

He asked the first judge a question so simple it had the quality of a trap: under what tree did you find her? The judge said: under the terebinth. Daniel turned to the crowd. There is no such tree in the garden. The judge was taken away.

The second judge was brought in. Daniel asked the same question. Under what tree? Under a trellis of the vine. Daniel told the crowd: the angel stands over you with a drawn sword in his hand, for there is no such tree in the garden either.

Both judges had invented different trees for a garden neither could accurately describe, because they had spent all their time watching Susanna rather than the garden itself. Two men who had sat in that space day after day to plan their crime had not bothered to notice where they were. The investigation took less time than the false testimony had taken to deliver.

It was done to the judges as they had devised against their sister. From that day, Daniel was exalted in the sight of the people of Judah. Susanna's parents, her husband Jehoiachin, and all her relatives gave thanks to God. A further account preserved in the Apocryphal tradition, the Book of Susanna that became part of the extended Daniel literature, notes that after Daniel's exoneration of Susanna, the community carried out the full legal penalty against the false witnesses. The law of Moses required that whoever bore false witness against a neighbor would receive the punishment they had tried to inflict. The judges who had condemned Susanna to death were put to death themselves. The text gives the last word not to Daniel but to the people who had been wrong, who now turned and praised God. In that detail is the whole weight of what had almost happened, and what a single question about a tree had stopped.