With that Susanna cried with a loud voice: and the two elders cried out against her.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
“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 seeme...
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. - "Commentary on Daniel 1.23.2–3"
Her voice was great, not because of the intense vibrations it sent through the air nor because of the outcry that came from her lips, but because of the greatness of the chastity with which she called out to the Lord. And so for this reason the Scripture did not attribute a great voice to the outcry of the elders, for the following statement is merely: "The elders also cried out against her."
