Because the compiler's available at run-time, queries can be compiled into efficient kernels that can run in parallel over multi-gigabyte arrays orders of magnitude faster than MySQL or Postgres on the same hardware.
Without Julia, I would have had to find some other way to compile queries into machine code at run-time, which for me would have ruled out all the languages you listed. In practical terms I would have abandoned the project.
>Without Julia, I would have had to find some other way to compile queries into machine code at run-time
Note that you could also do it in Common Lisp.
But I agree, Julia is very powerful, perhaps one of the most powerful recent languages.
It's less surprising if you know there's still a version of the Julia REPL that works with sexpressions: https://youtu.be/dK3zRXhrFZY?t=5m58s