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"Are there any more babes like you up there? If so, we don't stand a chance!" (Judith 10:19).[1] That was an Assyrian military officer speaking to the Jewish Judith. She'd come down from her hillside village, heading toward the Assyrian general's tent with murder in her heart.
The same statement could just as well have been applied, mutatis mutandis, to such other extraordinary women found in intertestamental literature as Esther, Vashti, Sophia, and Susanna. Which is to say, they were the sort who, despite a blindfold, could take creation apart and reassemble it again as though it were a Rubik's Cube.
First thing one notices about these women is that they were smart.
Susanna was educated in the intricacies of Mosaic law at her father's behest. Judith had a plan to resist when all the Jewish elders on the hillside village, fearing they'd be overrun, wanted to surrender. Sophia, an abstract Greek noun translated into English as wisdom, is spoken of so intimately by the author of the Book of Wisdom that she becomes a person; she's personified as Dame Wisdom or Lady Wisdom or just plain Sophia. As such, she was educated beyond our competence to comprehend:
[God] introduced her to the various branches of knowledge; composition of the earth and names of the elements; measurement of time and calculation of calendars; seasons and cycles; festival days and ferial days; planets and stars; animal husbandry and animal behavior; wind power and the power of reason; horticulture and pharmacology. (Wisdom 7:17-20)
Inductive and deductive Sophia was, but she was also intuitive: "She's more splendid than the sun, but like the stars prefers spot lighting, bright but not blinding, which is good after dark; owlish about evil, she can spot mischief at midnight" (Wisdom 7:29-30).
Second thing is that these women had guts, courage, intestinal fortitude.
Judith sweet-talked her way into the Persian encampment on the plain below. When the moment presented itself—about to rape her, the king fell into an alcoholic haze—her fingers, supple enough for cuticle scissors, couldn't get the scimitar off the wall. But with another, and indeed divine, hand aiding her, she finally hacked the king's head off (it took two hefty strokes). Then she wrapped it in a towel, put it in a picnic basket, and walked right out of the enemy camp before she was missed.
Susanna had the same sort of pluck. Every afternoon she'd leave her husband's rather substantial home in Babylon for a walk in the nearby garden. One particularly hot day she decided to bathe in the pond; she sent her two young maids to the house to fetch the oils and salts. Alone at last—or so she thought—she was dipping a tentative toe in the water when two senior citizens—she recognized them as judges from the daily assembly—tottered down to the pond's edge and started yelling at her. Apparently, they'd been drinking in the scene for some time.
"No one can see us," they shouted. "We have you trapped, and either you do what we want, or we'll give you worse than death" (Daniel 13:20).
Sexual arousal in these senior denizens would have been funny if it weren't so serious. They wanted to have their way with her or else.
"If you refuse, we'll ruin your reputation. We'll testify against you. We'll say that some young stud was shagging you, and you were enjoying it immensely" (Daniel 13:21).
"If I do the deed, I'll die the death," she cried out. "If I don't, my reputation will be dead as a dodo" (Daniel 13:22). No, she didn't give in; yes, she almost suffered the consequences.
Vashti too could hold her own against horrific odds. She was queen to King Ahasuerus, a mighty Persian leader who liked to entertain his suzerains with sazeracs. Which is another way of saying, every year he conducted all-male boozers that lasted a week. At the end of one he summoned his ravishing wife; he wanted her to walk the walk around and through the drunken horde sprawled on recliners.
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