ดาเนียล 13:23 วิจารณ์

And to whom did Susanna cry out? She cried out to God, as Isaiah says, “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer you; while you are still speaking, he will say, Here I am.” “And the two elders cried out against her.” The wicked never stop crying out against us and say, Away with such people from the earth, for it is not fitting that they should live.

Verse 23. "'But it is better for me to fall into your hands without doing the deed than to sin in the sight of the Lord.'" In the Greek the word is not hairetoteron, or "better", but haireton, which we may render by "good" . And so she chose her words well when she avoided saying, "It is better for me to fall into the hands of my enemies, the elders, than to sin in the sight of the Lord"; for thus she avoided calling something better in comparison with sin, which was not a good thing at all. But, she remarks, it is good for me not to do the wicked thing, and to fall into your clutches without sinning in God's sight. Therefore one should not use the comparative and say, "It is better for me to fall into your clutches than to sin in God's sight," but rather the positive, "It is good for me not to do the wicked thing and fall into your clutches, rather than to commit sin in God's sight."

"It is better for me not to escape your hands than to sin in front of God." She refused the proposals she heard because she feared him who she could not see and to whose divine gaze, however, she was very visible. Because she did not happen, in fact, to see God does not mean that God did not see her. God saw what he was building up: he inspected his work, inhabited his temple. He was there; he was answering their insidious trap. If the giver of chastity had abandoned her, chastity also would have been extinguished. Therefore she said, "I am trapped on every side." But she waited for the one who would save her from weakness of spirit and from the fury of the false witnesses who were like stormy winds. Between these winds and that storm, however, chastity did not suffer shipwreck because the Lord guided the route. She screamed. People came. The process began, and the case came up for judgment. The servants of Susanna believed what the imposter elders said against their mistress. It seemed to them that it would be against their religion not to believe the elders, even though the innocent and stainless life Susanna had led up to this point seemed to offer valid testimony of her chastity. No such chatter had been made on her account. There they were, false witnesses, but God noticed. The household believed one thing; God saw another. But what God saw, human beings did not know, and it seemed right to believe the elders. Therefore she had to die, but if her flesh were to die, her chastity still would have triumphed. Instead, the Lord was present to whom she prayed, and he heard because he knew her.