DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: 

Deborah Leads Israel 

 Judges 4:1-5:31 

We'll look at three of the Judges of Israel this week: Deborah, Gideon and Samson. The first is, in my opinion, the most interesting. Deborah is the only woman listed among the judges, and is the first example we have of a judge appointed on a permanent basis. 

Israel was in the midst of another of the cycles we talked about yesterday. Ehud (his name means "lefty"- he was left-handed) had delivered Israel from Eglon and the combined armies of the Moabites, Ammonites and Amalekites who held God's people in bondage for eighteen years. During Ehud's time God raised up another judge, Shamgar, to answer a threat from the Philistines. The people were grateful and served the Lord while Ehud lived. But then he died and it was back to serving Baal and the other gods of the land. Then Jabin the Canaanite king of Hazor, came with a vast army with 900 chariots and oppressed Israel for twenty years.

This is where Deborah comes in. Deborah was from the Tribe of Ephraim, the wife of a man named Lappidoth. She was also a prophetess. We'll look at the office and role of prophet in more detail as we go forward with our study. We often think that prophecy is a foretelling of the future. Sometimes it is. But more than that, a prophet is one who speaks forth (the word comes from two Greek words, pro- for or forth, and phemi, to speak) the word of God. The prophet declares a message from God to His people. The Lord gave her extraordinary wisdom. The people came from all over Israel to seek her guidance. 

Deborah called for Barak from the tribe of Naphtali. The Lord told Barak to gather the combined armies of his tribe and of the neighboring tribe of Zebulun. He would draw out Jabin's army, under the leadership of General Sisera, and He would give Israel the victory. Did Barak "man up" and head out to call the other men to action? No. He told Deborah that he wouldn't go unless she went with him. Deborah said fine. But you're missing out on the glory God intended for you. A woman is going to get credit for killing Sisera.

Deborah went with Barak as he amassed 10,000 of the men of Naphtali and Zebulun at Mt. Tabor. Sisera heard about this act of rebellion against King Jabin and he took his vastly superior army to the Plain of Jezreel at the foot of Mt. Tabor to crush Israel as he had before. But this time the Lord was with His people, and He gave Barak a tremendous victory! By the end of the day not a single soldier from the Canaanite army was left. 

General Sisera, when he saw that all was lost, fled the battle field. He came to the home of Heber the Kenite (the Kenites were descendants of Moses' father-in-law Jethro) and thought that he had found refuge. Heber's wife Jael took Sisera in and hid him under a rug. This mighty warrior is now cowering under a rug! Sisera was very thirsty and asked Jael for some water. She went one better and brought him some milk. Between the milk and his exhaustion Sisera soon fell asleep. Jael walked over to him with a tent peg and mallet in her hands. She drove that tent peg right through Sisera's head and into the ground! 

When Barak finally arrived in pursuit of Sisera, Jael invited him into the tent to see this great enemy of God's people. As Deborah said, the glory of killing Sisera went to a woman. With his army destroyed, Jabin's kingdom fell and Israel was once again free!

On the way back Deborah composed a song to celebrate this tremendous victory. "Awake, awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, break out in a song! Arise, Barak, lead away your captives, O son of Abinoam." (v. 12) She also shamed the other tribes that didn't help, "Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Why did you sit still among the sheepfolds, to hear the whistling for the flocks?... Gilead (in the territory of Manasseh) stayed beyond the Jordan; and Dan, why did he stay with the ships? Asher sat still at the coast of the sea, staying by his landings." (vv. 15-17) "Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed." (v. 24) The song ends with these words, "So may all your enemies perish, O Lord! But your friends be like the sun as he rises in his might."

All is well for now. Israel is at the top of the cycle, faithful once again to the Lord who delivered them yet again from the hand of their oppressors. But it won't last. Tomorrow we'll see another of the judges, Gideon, and how God uses this timid man to free his people.

Deborah is an example of a woman who was also a leader. The Bible doesn't list many women leaders, but Deborah shows that God can and does use women as well as men. This is especially true when men don't step up and lead. Deborah had to call Barak, and even after he hard the Lord's word to him he was still afraid to go and face Sisera. We read of four other women who were prophetesses: Miriam, Moses and Aaron's older sister (Exodus 15); Huldah (2 Kings 22); Noadaiah (Nehemiah 6) and Isaiah's wife, whose name is not recorded (Isaiah 8).

There are some who teach that women should not be elders or deacons, and definitely should not preach God's Word. And a surface reading of the New Testament seems to support that, just as it also appears to back baptism for believers only and not for their children. But dig deeper and see just what the Bible really says about women in church leadership. Read this short book, Women Elders: Called By God? by Richard and Catherine Kroeger. The link is for the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s online store. They want you to buy it for $2.50, but I'll e-mail it to anyone who wants to read it. They do an excellent job with the original languages, and this book, more than any other, convinced me that the Bible teaches that women can serve as leaders in the church.

I always loved reading to my children. This video is the reading of a children's book on Deborah. Get some kids around you and watch it! Once again I couldn't find it with Blogger's search engine (I'm going to tell them about this), so here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ETZBMR028