Deborah: Judge, Prophet, Commander -- the very interesting Judges 4
- mww
- Jan 26, 2017
- 13 min read
A lot of good things can be done if we’re not jealous of who gets credit.
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Judges 4:4-16
The primary lesson is simple: God’s leaders are expected to obey God. But we also learn that God always helps us obey Him (and keeps His promises). God will use anyone who is willing to serve Him. Who do you identify with the most in the story: Deborah? Barak? A soldier? Someone else?
Deborah, a woman who was a prophetess and the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time . . . (4:4)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
Jealousy.
The green monster. What makes jealousy so destructive to an organization? Simply put, people are so worried about getting proper credit that they cannot work together. When are times in your life that you’ve seen jealousy prevent a group (maybe at work or church or school) from getting a job done? In our passage today, one of the main characters is given the choice to continue but not get credit, or to back out of the project. He makes the right choice: continue and be a part of winning and not worry about the credit. As a result, he is forever remembered as a winning leader. Could you “swallow your pride” for the good of the group?
What Makes a Great Leader?
Tom Landry once said that a football coach was supposed to make men do what they don’t want to do in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to do. Getting a diverse group of people to work toward a common goal is extremely difficult. Who are great leaders? (I think of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, George Washington, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, FDR, and MLK.) What makes a great leader? (Forbes says have faith in their beliefs, make the hard choice, earn the respect of the team, know the team, know that people are the key to success, articulate a clear vision, push people to do their best.) Who are great leaders in our church and community and why? When you get to the end of the Bible passage for the day, you might spend some time talking about how Deborah displayed leadership; she seems to be a prototypical Forbes leader. What makes leadership hard—or, what can cause people to stop following a leader? Spend a little time talking about how those things make it difficult for the leaders in our church and community.
Great Women in History / Unlikely Heroes.
Part of the purpose of this story is showing the shame a male military commander was supposed to feel when the credit for a victory was going to go to a woman. (If you lead a men’s group, you can certainly take the discussion in that direction—where have men failed to show proper godly leadership in home, church, and society and what have been the results?) But we see throughout history that God has routinely raised up unlikely leaders when He needs them. Talk about great women leaders (or children leaders) in history: why did they have to take the role they did, and what did they accomplish?
Here are some examples that come to mind. Maybe have your group do some quick research and presentations on them. Cleopatra. Joan of Arc. Elizabeth I (Henry VIII’s daughter). Catherine the Great. Susan B. Anthony. Marie Curie. Eleanor Roosevelt. Rosa Parks. Margaret Thatcher. Oprah Winfrey. Malala Yousafzai (this is the girl who was shot for demanding equal rights for girls in Taliban regions). To say that they faced sexist-driven opposition would be an understatement. What made them leaders? How or why did they succeed?
Then spread it out a bit: “who are the most influential women in your life?” If everyone says mom or wife, then force them to come up with a different answer. What made them so influential on you? What made their influence different than that of the influential men in your life?
This Week's Big Idea: God’s Spirit and the Judges
One of the great controversies of the Book of Judges is the role of God’s Spirit. People who are anti-Bible look at the examples of the Judges and say that God must be a vengeful, violent deity because He empowered those people to do some pretty violent things. The way your Bible Project video explains this is that God can only work with what He has, and He didn’t have much to work with.
Frankly, that’s not far off from my understanding of this dilemma. Today, we say that Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit and that we’ve even been given spiritual gifts for the purpose of serving God. But I can look at my own life to see that I have behaved badly and even used my spiritual gifts for selfish purposes. Can I blame God for that? Of course not. God did not turn me into a robot or puppet when His Spirit came upon me. He allows me to tap into His glorious riches for my life but gives me autonomy to do the wrong thing with them. God does not give me impunity, but He respects by autonomy. It’s on me if I use God’s gifts for a bad purpose (and God does seem to intervene to protect His name).
That said, it is interesting to read the wording carefully. For example, Ehud is never said to have been empowered by the Spirit. Gideon is not actually the prophet; the Spirit of the Lord only comes upon him when it is time to rally the Israelites to battle. In fact, the only times we see Spirit of the Lord come on anyone (Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah) is when they are about to lead the people into a great war to save the Israelites and pass judgment on God’s enemies. The strange exception is Samson who has the Spirit with him throughout his life. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with Samson, who uses the Lord’s strength to do things that we would strongly disapprove of.
Bonus Idea: The Importance of Deborah in History
Let’s clarify what we don’t know about Deborah. We don’t know how she was called to be a judge, or how long she judged, or her jurisdiction, or the methods and procedures of her “court”, or what her relationships were like with the existing male leadership (not everybody responded to her summons, but I think that had more to do with geography and other priorities than the fact that she was a woman), or how much of the 40 years of peace happened under her leadership. That’s a lot. In other words, we just don’t know if we should put her more in the category of Moses/Samuel or John/Agabus. But the fact that she was a woman has been inspirational to women throughout history. One of the most important and controversial such figures is Joan of Arc. We know from records that churchmen validated her mission (which has a lot of parallels with Deborah’s) by citing the biblical examples of Esther, Judith, and Deborah. Judith’s story comes from the apocrypha, so we don’t really pay any attention to it. Deborah in particular, who had military victory as a commander and agent of God’s vengeance, was cited specifically to give Joan legitimacy. One of Joan’s contemporaries, Christine de Pizan, put Joan and Deborah in the very unique category of female warrior (both Esther and Judith used their femininity to their advantage; Deborah did not seem to do that), claiming Joan’s preeminence.
Related: “prophet” vs. “Prophet”
You’ll notice that Deborah was called a “prophetess” (which I don’t think is as significant as her role as judge); there are only 5 women labelled such: Miriam (Exod 15:20), Deborah, Huldah (2 Ki 22:14), Noadiah (Neh 6:14), and Anna (Luke 2:36). The Bible treats prophets in a range. There are the classical “Prophets” like Elijah and Isaiah who served in a long and public ministry. There are other prophets who delivered a message, and there are schools of prophets who followed other prophets. Sometimes they were given predictive powers, and sometimes they just declared what God had already said (like Nathan’s role for King David). And sometimes we’re not sure what they did (remember when Saul started prophesying in 1 Sam 10 with the other prophets? We really don’t know what they were doing that identified them as prophets). Well, we know that Deborah functioned as a more classical “prophet” in the sense that she mediated disputes, ostensibly through the Word of God, and she delivered an oracle from God that was true, plus that little male-female clause that also came true, plus the clear fact of God’s miraculous intervention in supporting her military strategy. Finally, she composed a great song of victory that we have recorded in the Bible. For those reasons, we have to include Deborah in the camp of the serious prophets, as opposed to those who simply have the name by extension. Furthermore, she is one of only three people in the Bible to serve as prophet, judge, and military commander (with Moses and Samuel)—and the only person in the book of Judges to lead as a prophet (through decision and persuasion).
Where We Are in Judges
Here’s a quick summary of the highlights. We see that God enabled the people the Israelites left in the land to become strong for the purpose of testing them. Cycle 1 includes an invasion from northern Iraq and deliverance by Othniel, Caleb’s younger brother. Cycle 2 includes the perennial foe Moab and deliverance by Ehud, a lefty. The fact that Moab occupied the ruins of Jericho means that they had already defeated the Transjordan tribes. Ehud was from Benjamin, which was the nearest tribe to Jericho. Being left-handed meant that his sword would have been hidden in an irregular place, making it easier for him to fool the guards. Following him was Shamgar who used an ox-goad as a weapon. That’s important because it implies that the Philistines had already begun the process of disarming the Israelites. Cycle 3 (at the very beginning of chapter 4) includes more Canaanites and their superior technology which they used to subdue the valley of Jezreel.
Part 1: An Updated Request (4:4-7)
Deborah, a woman who was a prophetess and the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. It was her custom to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her for judgment. She summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “Hasn’t the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you: ‘Go, deploy the troops on Mount Tabor, and take with you 10,000 men from the Naphtalites and Zebulunites? Then I will lure Sisera commander of Jabin’s forces, his chariots, and his army at the Wadi Kishon to fight against you, and I will hand him over to you.”
This is an amazing passage once you remember that Jewish culture was very male-centric. The fact that we even know her name is significant. Deborah is calling the shots. People are going to her for judgment and listening to her (this is why I say later that her role as judge is even more significant than her role as prophet). You can speculate that “a woman being in charge” was proof of the failure of Israel (at the very least it implies a dearth of qualified men), but the text speaks of her positively. Note that she is the only judge of which we know a day-to-day role. She held an open-air court because large buildings had very few windows (structural stability). Moses told the Israelites to have a judge in every town (Deut 16:18); her location between towns might indicate a regional responsibility. Barak was apparently the foremost military commander of the day, and he was up in Kedesh. Deborah let him know that the next battle would take place on Mt. Tabor, and he needed to raise an army to be ready for it.
It is important that Barak was supposed to know about this already. We get the sense that Barak is a bit of a worry-wart who needs prodding; it would be Deborah, the woman, pushing along Barak, the male war leader. Sisera was apparently King Jabin’s general. Wadis were dry riverbeds that could fill very quickly in a flash storm, so mentioning it here was clear indication of God’s plan.
The application for us is simple. When have you known what God wanted you to do but still needed someone to push you along? Or—when have you received godly counsel on a problem you couldn’t solve? How did God use other people to help you, and what difference has that made in your walk with Christ?
Aside: The Role of Technology
You might remember this from our time in 1 Samuel, but let’s be safe. Bronze was the dominant metal of war in the region for a long time until the coastal peoples imported the technology for iron, which was harder to work but much more abundant. The Philistines used this technology to suppress the Israelites for a very long time. Judges 4 gives us a unique window into Israel’s mindset. It specifically points out the Canaanite iron chariots which King Jabin used to defeat the Israelites for 20 years. They would have been stronger than anything Israel could have fielded, including heavy platforms with quivers, cases for swords and axes and bows, and room for multiple men to stand—often one driver, one fighter, and one defender. We have drawings in Egypt from this era showing the chariot’s ability to flank and harass even large groups of infantry (Egyptian chariots could be built with a quick-mount floor or with hip-high walls for protection). They also explain why we tend to find distance weapons in the Jewish dig sites (arrows and lances) because close-combat would have been suicide for the poorly-equipped Jewish infantry, so they emphasized long-range technology. The only defense Israel had against such power was the terrain, particularly the fact that in a sudden rainstorm the heaviness of the chariot would become a huge liability (indeed, that’s exactly what happened for the Israelites, further example of God directly fighting for His people). That’s also why we don’t see the Israelites ever fully embracing the chariot in their own arsenal, even during the reigns of David and Solomon.
Part 2: A Deal Struck (4:8-10)
Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.” “I will go with you,” she said, “but you will receive no honor on the road you are about to take, because the Lord will sell Sisera into a woman’s hand.” So Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh. Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; 10,000 men followed him, and Deborah also.
Barak doesn’t look good in this story. Either he was scared, he was simply unwilling to obey God, or he thought that Deborah had to be present for God to fight for him. Each possibility makes sense based on Israel’s apostasy. Deborah was bold enough to rebuke him for his request (go, girl) and gives the prophesy about Sisera. The readers assume Deborah will kill the man, which makes the twist involving the “random” woman Jael (note that we skip the verse that explains how Jael and her husband Heber and their location by the great tree comes into play) so satisfying. We are frequently reminded of the regional nature of Israel, that only certain tribes would be involved. The tribes most directly affected (Issachar is included in Deborah’s song in the next chapter) were the ones contributing troops to the battle.
Aside: Strange Names
Just FYI. Hazor was once the largest city in Palestine. Joshua had previously defeated a King Jabin of Hazor (Josh 11), and this guy wanted revenge. There are multiple burn layers in its ruins which might line up with the different times Israel destroyed it. Jabin’s general Sisera lived in a different city—Harosheth of the Nations, which has not been located with certainty (though the dot on the map is a common suggestion). “Deborah” means “honeybee”, and “Lappidoth” means “torches”, leading some to say that Deborah was a fiery personality. “Kishon” means “curving”, implying difficult terrain.
Part 3: Orders Issued (4:12-14)
It was reported to Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up Mount Tabor. Sisera summoned all his 900 iron chariots and all the people who were with him from Harosheth of the Nations to the Wadi Kishon. Then Deborah said to Barak, “Move on, for this is the day the Lord has handed Sisera over to you. Hasn’t the Lord gone before you?” So Barak came down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him.
This was absolutely a suicide mission for the Israelites—a hastily-gathered infantry against heavy cavalry? Plus a large softening force? Deborah’s army had no chance. But here are the clues that explain Deborah’s confidence: (1) she lay in between Sisera and Jabin, meaning Jabin would not find out about Sisera’s movements. (2) She saw storm clouds coming, literally. We learn from her song that God sent thunder and lightning and rain, so she “saw” God marching ahead of them into battle. And the people had enough faith in her to follow her crazy lead.
Part 4: The Victory Won (4:15-16)
The Lord threw Sisera, all his charioteers, and all his army into confusion with the sword before Barak. Sisera left his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth of the Nations, and the whole army of Sisera fell by the sword; not a single man was left.
The word for “confusion” was also used of Pharaoh’s men in the Red Sea (Ex 14:24) and the Philistines before Samuel (1 Sam 7:10). The cause for such confusion was likely the worship of Baal, the storm-god. The Canaanites would have been confused then despondent as they realized that the storm was coming against them, that Baal was powerless to help them. It implies that the battle was fought sometime in the summer after the rains were supposed to quit (Sisera would not have been a fool). The Jewish light infantry would have overwhelmed the stuck chariots, breaking the military advantage of the Canaanites permanently. They never again formed a threat to the Jews. The Philistines filled that vacuum, however, as did other migratory peoples coming into the region.
Here are some questions from the Serendipity Bible that I like. (1) What made Deborah a leader in a man’s world? [] her ability to settle disputes [] her courage [] her military mind [] her strong faith [] the gifts God gave her. (2) How do you think the Israelite men felt about the honor of victory going to a woman? [] embarrassed [] ashamed [] just glad for a victory [] okay with it because they liked Deborah. (3) What quality of Deborah’s would you most like to have? [] mediation skills [] faith [] confidence [] leadership [] boldness [] inner strength. (4) If you had Deborah’s confidence, what would you attempt to do? [] make a job change [] seek a position of leadership in church or community [] develop a talent [] be more assertive in conflicts.
There is one last thing I would recommend you do: have your group read 5:1-5, the start of Deborah’s song. It is about God and God’s faithfulness to help those who obey Him. In our story, we have the heroine Deborah and the more unwilling Barak. (But at least he fought!) Put yourself into this story right now; who would you be? Where do you need to be challenged to more fully obey God? What can your group do to inspire or push you? In what way does your group need to work together to serve your church or stop a problem in your church or community? What promise of God are you hesitant to believe, and what kind of assurance would you need?
Closing Thoughts: The Armor of God
We will forever know the armor of the Roman military through its counterpart in the “armor of God”. But it’s important to realize that though the technology had improved in 1,000 years, the function of armor really hadn’t changed since the time of the Judges. What was the Canaanite advantage? They had stronger armor (and the horsepower to overcome it’s heavier weight). Is that any different today? Isn’t the advantage of the police that they have body armor that can stop a bullet and the bad guys don’t? We appreciate the importance of armor. So why don’t we take the time to strengthen our own armor against the very real attacks we face every day? Take this lesson as an opportunity to encourage your group to take seriously Paul’s command to “put on the armor of God”.