Jahn (quoted by Ball in
_Speaker's Comm._ 325a) points out, have been a subsidiary aim.
The kind of judicial acumen displayed strikes one, too, as being very
similar to that of the young Solomon in his judgment on the two women
(I. Kings iii.); but the story here is not an imitation of that. It is a
wholly distinct instance of the same class, a most popular one for
narration in Eastern countries.
Another object in writing this history (and certainly the most useful
object from a Christian point of view) is to give an example of the
maintenance of purity and right, even at the risk of losing both life
and reputation.
It may be questioned, however, whether the idea of depressing the
estimation of elders, or of raising that of Susanna and of Daniel, was
uppermost in the writer's mind. Almost equal prominence is given to each
of these ideas. The latter, perhaps, would throw over the piece a
somewhat less attractive character than the former. But there is that in
the cast of the composition which suggests that its object may have been
quite as much to raise disgust at the elders' crime as to raise
admiration at Susanna's purity; in fact that the whiteness of her
character was designed as a foil to make more prominent the blackness of
her oppressors.
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