The Corruption of the Court and the Appeal to God

The end is fitting! In Paradise, the first fall of the exalted man occurred; in Paradise also now the elders, being worked by the serpent, fall away from the original glory, becoming condemned instead of judges, workers not of life but of sin.

But there, the man prevailed, while the woman was defeated, and the emptiness of the first woman found no maiden upon the Babylonian. And one could rightly say that Babylon is not a confusion because of Susanna, but a keeping of God's commandments, a guard of temperance, a city of a manly woman, a place of a triumphal feast.

This I, having ascended through the middle times, lead to Joseph by the likeness of virtue toward the world; but I set the honorable woman beside the temperate one who is a friend of God, beside the child of Israel. I place one and the same crown upon both, the one for temperance; and I cast down the defeated ones beneath the feet of the victors: to Joseph, the unrestrained Egypt, the mistress of the free slave; but to Susanna, the dishonorable elders.

I set these as teachers of temperance: the one of womanhood, the other of the youth of men; lamps of the inhabited world, flowers of the resurrection, judges of adultery, guardians of lawful marriages. Finally, let us occupy ourselves only with the sacred woman's account; for now Joseph is an episode and the temperate one is a parenthesis of temperance.

Because the elders, as they thought, had the hunt within nets, and stepped out from the thicket to take prey immediately, they did not find the most cowardly deer, but one standing against them both and against the dragon who is the cause of these things, but a deer-slayer animal; and the account rightly found the image of the animal: they enticed, but were not heard; they threatened, but did not strike terror.

Therefore the wicked are helpless and are held by two great things...

By chance of desire and fear of rebuke. But filthy sums of money seize slander, and for a solution to evil they find another evil, and they prepare a cover for adultery through murder. For a sinner, when he falls into the beginnings of transgressions, like a splinter at the start, he drags along the following lawlessness. And he happens to beget of the good things the good, and of the bad things the similar.

Therefore also now murder is the fruit of adultery, and a council sits in haste as if upon a great injustice against the woman, and a crowd is led away having the one being judged as a spectacle. And the accusers and the judges are the same; and many a slandering person was deemed trustworthy, and a youth being slandered was condemned from the prevailing suspicion.

And a people, being tossed about and suffering—for a people is accustomed to be struck by impulse—was driven astray in indignation and was carried along by the impulse of the elders; the parents of the one being judged wailed, the husband suffered the calamity, the children wailed from here and there, being distraught because of the mother's danger, and the race was covered by shame.

But the good judges, the fellow-combatants of temperance, commanded her, having her dignity solemnly covered by a garment—for she, possessing decorum, had rushed to be naked—not even regarding the confusion of evils, so that in the court of adultery, they might perform adultery against the adultery, giving rest to the shameful desire by the sight of the one being judged. And they placed hands upon the head, which was a symbol of condemnation, using a clean body; the unrestrained ones, through touch and through it, were proselytizing the lie, while the good ones are defenders of the truth.

And as the people were subdued and the vote was cast and the punishment was near, the one being slandered then looked up to the judge of judges; she brought the legal case from men to God, making an appeal to the Unaccountable.