But what about Deborah?!

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Whenever I speak against female rulers, someone immediately brings up Deborah.

In one sense, that’s a classic example of going straight to the edge to avoid the center. When people hate something God loves, they cast around for extraordinary cases to make it look bad. For instance, we know a person secretly hates children when their response to criminalizing abortion is, “But what about victims of rape or incest?!”

But in another sense, the question of Deborah is fair, because although she is the only case that feminists can use of a woman ruling among God’s people (cf. 2 Ki 11), it only takes one case to disprove the universal negative that women should not rule. So having noted that she is an extraordinary case, what should we make of her?

Two ways to read the text

The first thing to note is that exceptional cases in the Bible are not generally normative; quite the opposite. Isaiah walking around naked for three years doesn’t undermine the scriptural injunctions against nakedness; he actually reinforces them. He does this by calling attention to something feminists don’t well understand: shame. Isaiah was enacting a graphic living parable of Israel’s humiliation. In the same way, Hosea marrying a whore doesn’t undermine the injunctions of Proverbs against this, but rather trades on their truth to explicitly enact Israel’s dishonoring of God.

Thus, when we find an exception in scripture to male rulership, we should ask whether it draws attention in some way to a principle of order, by intentionally violating it to provoke shame.

In other words, there are two ways to read God’s raising up of Deborah—two competing hermeneutics. The first is to see it as a commendation of women rulers; the second is to see it as an indictment of them. Feminists tend to assume that because Deborah sets a good example, the first hermeneutic must be true. But this demonstrates the point I keep repeating about acculturation: the frog doesn’t know it’s being boiled. Deborah being a good ruler fits just as well with the second hermeneutic if we set it in the context of patriarchy as the proper order.

The reason for this is that, like Isaiah’s nakedness, Deborah’s rule would emphasize the very thing God would be drawing attention to in the first place: the shame of Israel. In this case, Israel’s men have abjectly failed to represent God’s father-rule into the world, dishonoring themselves and their king. Every boy reading Judges 4:8–9 instinctively knows that Barak is being shamed:

And Barak said to her, “If thou goest with me, then I shall go; and if thou goest not with me, I shall not go.” And she said, “Going I shall go with thee; only, however, no honor shall there be in the way that thou art going, for into the hand of a woman shall Yahweh sell Sisera.” Judges 4:8–9, my translation

Similarly, every boy reading Isaiah 3:12 instinctively knows that Israel is being shamed—“my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them” (ASV). Every boy is keenly acquainted with the primal shame of being made subject to women, even if it is conditioned out of him as “misogyny” by the time he is able to exegete scripture for himself.

On this interpretation, the shame of Deborah’s leadership would not be primarily because women shouldn’t lead, but because men should. Thus the good example she sets would not contradict what we read about women not ruling elsewhere in scripture; it would rather draw attention to it more acutely by increasing the contrast between the moral state of the men who should have been ruling Israel, and the woman who was. Israel is faring poorly throughout Judges, but here in chapters 4–5 there is a particular low point, in that they’re so badly off they had a woman as judge—and she did a good job. The creation order is completely inverted; Israel is thrown upside down.

We must establish this principle before reading the text itself, because if we’re already presupposing a “Deborah as glory” interpretation where she is a model for rulership, we are likely to miss some important cues.

The way the text demands to be read

Reading Judges 4–5 closely, it turns out there’s a fair amount of theological signaling, irony, and dark humor going on to clue us in that the Deborah-as-shame interpretation is indeed correct, and the Deborah-as-glory view is unsustainable. Judges 4:1–3 establishes that Israel is in ruins at the time she comes to power, and as the story unfolds, the way it presents her in relation to Barak draws special emphasis to the shame model. Finally, Deborah herself, by her own testimony, does not see her position as akin to, nor a substitute for, a male ruler.

The introduction of Deborah

And Deborah, a woman, a prophetess, the woman of Lappidoth, she was judging Israel at that time. Judges 4:4, my translation

The very beginning of the story introduces Deborah in a way that places a threefold emphasis on her being a woman. By doing so, it implicitly places her under the dual authority of God (she is a prophetess) and Lappidoth (she is a wife). Her judging is introduced in this context.

The prophecy angle is then further emphasized by the mention of the palm tree under which she judges. Trees are commonly associated with divine encounters in the Pentateuch, and so the intimation is that her judging is by prophecy, rather than by normal human wisdom. Indeed, she does not sit in the city gates, as a regular civil ruler, but in the gate of heaven. ❋ If you are not clear on how a tree is a gate of heaven, please refer to Dominic Bnonn Tennant, “The calling of Nathanael and the symbolism of trees and high places” (February 2026). https://www.truemagic.nz/p/the-calling-of-nathanael-and-the. Thus, where we see Deborah judging or leading, the text presents it as something done not in her own power—as with a patriarch—but in the power of God. She is God’s mouthpiece, and at no point in the story does she lead from her own authority, as a normal ruler would; rather, she always speaks on behalf of Yahweh.

This puts quite a damper on using her as a general model for female rulership.

The command to Barak

That Deborah is not standing in as a normal ruler is further reinforced in Judges 4:6–7. Here she enjoins Barak to lead Israel into battle to defeat their enemies:

And she sent forth and called Barak, son of Abinoam, out of Kedesh-Naphtali, and said unto him, “Hath not Yahweh, God of Israel, commanded? Go, and thou shalt draw unto mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men out of the sons of Naphtali and out of the sons of Zebulun, and I shall draw unto thee, unto the river Kishon, Sisera, principal of the host of Yabin, and his chariots and his multitude, and give him into thine hand.” Judges 4:6–7

Firstly notice that she does not order him on her own authority, but seems to speak directly from God, knowing his mind. Secondly, notice what might easily be elided in our day: this is an implicit command to take up rulership of Israel. To lead a nation into battle is something that a nation’s ruler would do. Consider the contrast between Barak and David—and David and Saul (1 Samuel 17). Although Deborah is acting in the place of a judge by merit of her prophetic office, it seems she is seeking to restore the patriarchy on behalf of God! (Again, a little awkward for a feminist role model.)

When Barak refuses to take up this mantle unless she accompanies him (Jdg 4:8–9), her remark at this point is again telling against a feminist (re)­interpretation of her role: “Going I shall go with thee; only, however, no honor shall there be in the way that thou art going, for into the hand of a woman shall Yahweh sell Sisera.” As I’ve noted, this is a shame for Barak; because he was cowardly in hiding behind a woman, his glory in battle will be sold to a woman. The dark humor of this reversal only makes sense if Judges is presupposing what Isaiah also presupposes about the seemliness of women being over men.

Deborah’s own testimony

Finally, during Deborah and Barak’s triumphal song, she herself denies that her place is one of rulership. In Judges 5:7 she describes her role as that of a mother in Israel:

Rulers forbore in Israel,
They forbore till I arose—Deborah—
I arose, a mother in Israel. Judges 5:7

Now a mother had a great deal of influence in the household, and would have been delegated responsibility and authority over that house on behalf of the father (cf. Num 36; Pr 31). But she was not the ruler of the house (cf. Num 30)—and Deborah plainly does not see herself in the position of the patriarch. She sees Barak in that position, a child she has raised up to rule; and she desires for herself a feminine role in keeping with her sex.

How other scriptures demand that we read the text

Bill Mouser, who wrote the excellent Story of Sex in Scripture, ❋ William E. Mouser and Barbara K. Mouser, The Story of Sex in Scripture (International Council for Gender Studies, 2013). https://www.amazon.com/Story-Sex-Scripture-Barbara-Mouser-ebook/dp/B00BR2PJ7O/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1V3ST8SU5ZSCV&keywords=the+story+of+sex+in+scripture. was kind enough to comment on this article and fill in some intertextual evidence I had omitted. What follows are essentially his remarks rather than my own:–

There are two further witnesses that Deborah was never considered one of the judges. The first is 1 Samuel 12, which recounts some of the recent history of the nation. When Samuel comes to the period of the book of Judges in which Deborah lived and served, this is what he said:

But they forgot the LORD their God; and he sold them into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Jabin king of Hazor … And they cried to the LORD, and said, “We have sinned, because we have forsaken the LORD … but, now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve Thee.” And the LORD sent Jerubba’al and Barak, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side; and you dwelt in safety. 1 Samuel 12:9–11

An inspection of the textual transmission of this verse shows some confusion—some mentioning Barak, others a different judge. That Barak is mentioned is supported most emphatically by the fact that the Septuagint delivers this reading, that Greek translation created by august Jewish religious authorities 2,000 years closer to the extant Hebrew texts than we moderns! But, note this: only one authority—the Syriac—names Deborah! Samuel, therefore, mentions four judges, including himself and Barak, but he does not mention Deborah.

The second witness that Deborah was never considered one of the judges is in the roll call of faith:

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms… Hebrews 11:32

In this verse, the author of Hebrews mentions four judges in a row—Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah. One of these judges is functioning at the very time Deborah is alive, and he is mentioned as the judge, not Deborah, just as Samuel had done many hundreds of years earlier.

Lastly, it is fascinating to read in Judges about Yael, the woman in Judges 4 who actually dispatched Sisera to his just reward. The encampment where Yael had her tent was in Sisera’s path of retreat after Barak had defeated his armies. When Sisera reached Yael’s tent, he was exhausted—so she invited him in and offered him feminine hospitality, a place to rest, and something soothing and relaxing to drink. She lulled Sisera into a sense of security and he fell asleep, thinking she would hide him if Barak showed up.

Instead, Yael waited until he was snoring, and then she picked up a tent peg and a mallet and drove a stake through Sisera’s temple. Yael did not wield the weapons of war. It was the ordinary tools used by the womenfolk that she picked up and used to kill Yabin’s general. For all that, men remain the ones who by design and God’s intent, are the saviors in a society. Deborah was not one of them any more than Yael was.

For more, see my sermon, “Deborah, mother of the savior”