Hawfields Presbyterian Church Ministry of Education At any given point in HISTORY, is it really possible to say women have not been in leadership? November 15-16, 2014 Judges 4 Realization of Faith: God Is, and Always Has Been, in Charge Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!1
Deborah answered, I ll definitely go with you. However, the path you re taking won t bring honor to you, because the Lord will hand over Sisera to a woman. Judges 4:9 Judges 4 Deborah, Barak, and Jael 1 After Ehud had died, the Israelites again did things that the Lord saw as evil. 2 So the Lord gave them over to King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, and he was stationed in Harosheth-ha-goiim. 3 The Israelites cried out to the Lord because Sisera[a] had nine hundred iron chariots and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly for twenty years. 4 Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth,[b] was a leader of Israel at that time. 5 She would sit under Deborah s palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the Ephraim highlands, and the Israelites would come to her to settle disputes. 6 She sent word to Barak, Abinoam s son, from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, Hasn t the Lord, Israel s God, issued you a command? Go and assemble at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand men from the people of Naphtali and Zebulun with you. 7 I ll lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin s army, to assemble with his chariots and troops against you at the Kishon River, and then I ll help you overpower him. 8 Barak replied to her, If you ll go with me, I ll go; but if not, I won t go. 9 Deborah answered, I ll definitely go with you. However, the path you re taking won t bring honor to you, because the Lord will hand over Sisera to a woman. Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 He summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh, and ten thousand men marched out behind him. Deborah marched out with him too. 11 Now Heber the Kenite had moved away from the other Kenites, the descendants of Hobab, Moses father-in-law, and had settled as far away as Elonbezaanannim, which is near Kedesh. 12 When it was reported to Sisera that Barak, Abinoam s son, had marched up to Mount Tabor, 13 Sisera summoned all of his nine hundred iron chariots and all of the soldiers who were with him from Harosheth-hagoiim to the Kishon River. 14 Then Deborah said to Barak, Get up! This is the day that the Lord has handed Sisera over to you. Hasn t the Lord gone out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men behind him. 15 The Lord threw Sisera and all the chariots and army into a panic[c] before Barak; Sisera himself got down from his chariot and fled on foot. 16 Barak pursued the chariots and the army all the way back to Harosheth-ha-goiim, killing Sisera s entire army with the sword. No one survived. 17 Meanwhile, Sisera had fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was peace between Hazor s King Jabin and the family of Heber the Kenite. 18 Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, Come in, sir, come in here. Don t be afraid. So he went with her into the tent, and she hid him under a blanket. 19 Sisera said to her, Please give me a little water to drink. I m Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!2
thirsty. So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and hid him again. 20 Then he said to her, Stand at the entrance to the tent. That way, if someone comes and asks you, Is there a man here? you can say, No. 21 But Jael, Heber s wife, picked up a tent stake and a hammer. While Sisera was sound asleep from exhaustion, she tiptoed to him. She drove the stake through his head and down into the ground, and he died. 22 Just then, Barak arrived after chasing Sisera. Jael went out to meet him and said, Come and I ll show you the man you re after. So he went in with her, and there was Sisera, lying dead, with the stake through his head. 23 So on that day God brought down Canaan s King Jabin before the Israelites. 24 And the power of the Israelites grew greater and greater over Canaan s King Jabin until they defeated him completely. Footnotes: [a] Judges 4:3 Or he [b] Judges 4:4 Or a woman of torches [c] Judges 4:15 MT adds before the edge of the sword. 2010 Common English Bible Text Notes & Comments A quick note. I often make use of articles from the site Working Preacher for the Brood study guides. This is not because I never look anywhere else. To the contrary, I look lots of places including books in our library as well as my own. That said, my goal with this guide and the resources in it is accessibility. Very often I find the articles written at Working Preacher to be solid scholarship and fairly typical examples of what I find other places. And because they are available on the Internet, anyone can get to them anywhere at anytime. And I like the diversity of the authors. Commentary on the passage by Sara Koenig http://www.workingpreacher.org/ preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2216 These seven verses are an introduction to the larger story of Deborah, Barak, and Sisera, and to the larger themes in the book of Judges. In particular, this text introduces the theme of how God responds to -- and works through -- humans. As an introduction, this lectionary selection leaves out quite a bit of the larger story, but the raw material is present. The book of Judges can be characterized by a repeated cycle, as follows: the Israelites do evil and abandon God, so God delivers them into the hand of foreign leaders who oppress them. Then, the Israelites cry out to God, who hears their cry and raises up a judge to deliver them. The judge -- also a military leader -- is successful, and the Israelites enjoy peace, but when the judge dies the people forget about following God, and the cycle begins again. This cycle can also be traced as a downward spiral in the book, with the final chapters describing a situation of complete moral chaos and civil war. Deborah s story occurs toward the beginning of the book, when things are not yet so bad in Israel. We are told three things about Deborah in 4:4: first, she is a prophet, second, she is married, and third, she is a judge. The New Living Translation changes the order from the Hebrew so her married status is the first thing mentioned about her, maybe to highlight that as Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!3
We all interpret everything we read or see, including (and not just) sacred texts. Yet there is a misperception (sic) that texts especially religious texts are independent of interpretation, that their meaning is whatever the literal text says, with no nuance or room for interpretation. Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. first in importance. But some have argued that she is not even married at all. The Hebrew expression, wife of Lappidoth could also be woman of Lappidoth, referring to where she comes from. Or, that phrase could be a description of Deborah s character; the word lappidoth means torch, or lightning, so Deborah could be a fiery woman. In contrast to the potential ambiguity about Deborah s marital status, her roles as prophet and judge are clear. And while the judges were leaders, mostly in military battles, Deborah is also a judge in the sense of adjudicating disputes, according to 4:5. In fact, exactly who is the judge in this story may be up for dispute. Though Deborah is described as judge, she seems to be functioning more in the legal world than the military one, and she is the first -- and only -- female judge in the book. Barak seems to be another possible contender for the role when his name is mentioned in 4:6 and Deborah tells him the command of the Lord, to go forth and fight. Deborah clearly speaks for God, as is indicated by the direct quote in verses 6-7. The lectionary ends with the promise that God will give the Canaanite general, Sisera, into Barak s hands. This selection, however, leaves out Barak s response to Deborah in verse 8, saying, If you go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go. Deborah answers in verse 9 by telling him that she will go, but Barak will not gain glory because God will have a woman defeat Sisera. Some suggest that Sisera so respects Deborah s leadership that he is loath to venture forth without her at his side. Others believe that Sisera is placing conditions on God s call, or at least, indicating his fearfulness. Deborah s response is then seen as a rebuke, and that God will deliver Sisera into the hand of a woman is seen as a punishment. Of course, that woman will not be Deborah, as would be natural to expect, but Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, about whom little else is known. Again, while the larger story obviously continues beyond where the lectionary selection ends, two things in these seven verses are noteworthy. First is how God responds to people s actions. The first two verses in the chapter narrate it almost in a matter-of-fact way, The Israelites again did evil in the Lord s eyes so the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin in Canaan God does not ignore what God s people do. And, God does not arbitrarily punish them. Their oppression by the Canaanite king is because they did evil, and God responded. God also responds to the people s cries in verse 3. At first, this may seem indirect, especially when contrasted with the people s action in verse 1, and God s response -- when Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!4
God is the subject -- in verse 2. After the people cried out to the Lord, we have to wait through verses 4-5, with their descriptions of Deborah, before God again is the subject in verse 6, commanding through Deborah what Barak is to do. But this, too, is how God acts: in response to cries for help by speaking and working through other people. And again, in this story, God works not only through one person but three -- Deborah, Barak, and Jael -- to deliver God s people. The second noteworthy point in this lectionary selection is God s use of a woman to lead the Israelites. Deborah is the only female judge, and she is also a prophet. She hears and speaks for God. The gospel lesson for today is the parable of the talents, in Matthew, where Jesus warns against burying a gift that God has given. Deborah is an example of someone who seems to put her gifts to work in surprising, creative, and inspiring ways. A Bit of Midrash about the Persons of Deborah the Judge & Jael the Patriot by Frederick Buechner http://frederickbuechner.com/content/deborah http://frederickbuechner.com/content/jael Deborah Deborah was Israel's only woman judge. She looked like Golda Meir and did business under a palm tree. Her business consisted of more than just stepping in and settling things when people got in a wrangle. Like all the other judges of Israel, she was loaded with charisma, and whenever there was any fighting to be done, she was the one who was in charge. Even generals jumped when she snapped her fingers. Barak, for instance. She summoned him to the palm tree and told him she wanted him to take ten thousand of his best men and beat the stuffing out of the An Art History Note about Jael by Lynn Miller http://artandfaithmatters.blogspot.com/ 2014/11/mirror-art-lectionary.html Jael has been interpreted in varied and often contradictory ways in the history of art. In medieval times she served as a prefiguring of Mary, the killing of Sisera a parallel to Mary's triumph over Satan. Jael has been a deceitful killer, the personification of sin, a virtuous savior of the nation and everything in between. In the example here, there is no overt judgment or interpretation of Jael's character. [In this image framing the mirror], She simply stands in sumptuous dress, holding a hammer and nail. Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!5
Canaanite forces under a general named Sisera. Barak said he'd do it but indicated he'd feel more secure if Deborah came along. She said she would. She also said it was only fair to warn him, however, that the main glory of the day was going to be not his but a woman's because a woman was going to be the one to wipe out Sisera. In addition to her other hats, Deborah was also something of a prophet and had pronounced feminist sympathies. Her prediction turned out to be correct, of course. Barak won the battle, but Sisera was disposed of by a lady named Jael in a rather spectacular way, which can be read about later in this book, and to make sure that Jael got all the credit that was coming to her, Deborah wrote a song to help spread the word around. It is a wonderful song, full of blood and thunder with a lot of hair-raisingly bitter jibes at the end of it about how Sisera's old mother sits waiting at the window for her son to come home, not knowing that Jael has already made mincemeat of him. Deborah composed it, but she got Barak to sing it with her. Barak looked like Moshe Dayan, and it must have been quite a duet. The song brushes by Barak's role rather hastily, but it describes Jael's in lavish detail and must have gotten her all the glory a girl could possibly want. Yahweh himself gets a plug at the end "So perish all thine enemies, O Lord!" (Judges 5:31) but by and large the real hero of Deborah's song is herself. Everything was going to pot, the lyrics say, "until you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel" (5:7), and you can't help feeling that Deborah's basic message was that Mother was the one who really saved the day. And of course, with Yahweh's help, she was. It's hard not to bridle a little at the idea of her standing under the palm tree belting out her own praises like that, but after all, she had a country to run and a war to fight, and she knew that without good press she was licked from the start. Besides maybe the more selfcongratulatory parts of her song were the ones that she assigned to Barak. Jael A Canaanite warlord named Sisera had recently been trounced by an Israelite strongman named Barak and was heading for the border to save his skin. On the way, he was invited to hide out with a Kenite woman named Jael, who belonged to a tribe that had not been involved in the skirmish at all. This was his second bad break that day. Jael was all smiles as she issued her invitation and gave him the red-carpet treatment. She fixed him a drink and suggested he stretch out for a while on the couch. While he was asleep, she crept in and disposed of him by the ingenious if cumbersome technique of hammering a tent peg in one temple and out the other. The female judge Deborah wrote a song in her honor in which she referred to her as "most blessed among women" for the job she had done, and Jael has been remembered as a great hero and patriot ever since. In view of the fact that her victim (a) was her guest and (b) was asleep and (c) had never harmed a hair of either her head or her people's, it would seem that to call her deed heroic is to stretch the term to the breaking point. As for calling it patriotic, if she had done it for love of country maybe. But (a) her country had no quarrel with Sisera and (b) if she killed him for anything but kicks, it was out of love for nothing more exalted than the idea of maybe getting a payoff from the Israelites the next time they hit town. It is not the only instance, of course, of how people in wartime get medals for doing what in peacetime would get them the chair. Judges 4-5 Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!6
Questions & Thoughts What is a leader? What makes someone a leader? A judge in this context means more than someone settling civil suits or giving a legal opinion. A judge was someone recognized as speaking for God, in the same line as Moses and Joshua. The passage (nor the subsequent poem about the same events in Judges 5) talk about the origins of Deborah becoming a Judge for Israel. How do you imagine she came to this? Why do we have women in leadership at Hawfields? Why do other churches not practice this? Why do you think God placed Sisera in Jael s hands (that s they way the Biblical writers tend to think of it)? Was Deborah predicting the future in what she said to Barak or just observing the consequence of how he chose to respond to God? What are the limits on whom God can call into leadership? Make a list of what, to you, would prevent someone from being a God-chosen leader. Is there anyone on your list for which the Bible does not provide an exception? (for example: no murderers but then there s Moses; no prostitutes but then there s Rahab; no children but then there s Jeremiah; no adulterers but then there s King David; no liars but then there s Peter; no cowards but then there s Gideon; etc.) Morning Brood: November 15-16, 2014!7