A Mother in Israel (Part 3) - Song of Deborah
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger, and we’ve been talking about the Song of Deborah.
We’re in this series called A Mother in Israel, because that’s what Deborah calls herself. We started this story back at the Battle of Megiddo, how it began, what the situation was. We followed it to the end of Sisera’s life at the hands of Jael. I don’t know what the feminine equivalent of home boy would be.
I don’t know. I think that’s a different connotation. In any case, we heard about Jael last week and now we’re coming back to look at the Song of Deborah. She emphasizes a few different things in her song, the first of which is the nature of the battle. This is not merely political. There are darker forces at work here. We’re talking about the oppression of the people of God and the potential obliteration of the Messianic line. Am I on the right track here, Greg?
Yes, given that the Bible is about Jesus. That may have come across the wrong way because there are a lot of Christians who don’t actually quite get that, in many cases because they’ve never been instructed. They look at the Bible and it’s a big long thick book.
Kind of like Les Mis. We start off with these chapters that have nothing to do with Jean Valjean, and there’s no music in it at all. People don’t burst out in song.
The priest I always thought was a great character. I’m sorry to see him go, and realize he’s not even a main character.
That brings us to Genesis, oddly enough, where you spend multiple chapters with some of these people, and then they die. My daughter, when she was two, I was reading Genesis with her, and this of course was brand new to her in the most literal sense, but we’d been reading a little bit every night. I asked her one night, “So what happened last night, Emily?” and she said, “Daddy, Abraham…he died!” but that’s real literary experience. She had gotten familiar with this guy and didn’t realize that there’s a lot to the book that goes way beyond this, but Jesus is never absent from its pages in one way or another.
He’s the one speaking, of course, something we need to remember. It’s the Spirit of Christ who inspired the prophets, and he’s the theme and there are countless literary and historical allusions to him. Historically the book is moving toward his coming, and everything along the way is preparing the way for his coming. So when we come to this we don’t necessarily need to have big flashing road signs that say “Messiah ahead.” We just need to remember what this book is about.
There’s this promised seed, but there’s also this serpent, and the serpent wants to possess the woman and bring forth his own seed through her and wants to devour the promised seed, whereas the mother wants to preserve the seed until he can reach maturity and crush the living daylights out of the serpent.
That’s kind of what we have here. Usually the focus of the prophets is on some male hero – a prophet, a king, a priest, a judge, or some combination – and we see them imitating Christ, preparing the way for Christ, but always falling short of the measure of Christ because none of them is right.
But every now and then, God throws the spotlight over on the woman, both as a rebuke to men in their faithlessness, their immaturity, and their laziness, but also in true praise of godly women everywhere of what they can do and in fact do as they honor their callings. We’ve already seen Deborah and Jael.
“They were honoring their callings? But this woman was a judge. What’s with that?”
“And Jael, she got all violent and physical with a hammer and a tent spike!”
“Those were her normal everyday tools, no different from a woman picking up an iron skillet in her kitchen and smashing a rapist who just climbed through the window.”
But the issues are much, much higher. We’re dealing with this Canaanite culture.
At this point Israel is divided among the 10 tribes. Down towards the south, Judah has its own problem with the Philistines, so Judah is not going to come into this storyline. Of course Judah carries the promise, but Judah is not going to stand up to everybody on their own, so although what happens in the north isn’t as directly a threat, if the north goes down, Judah is going to be hemmed in by the Philistines on one side, the Canaanites on the other, and things are not looking good here. So we are fighting for the promise.
The other thing we need to remember about Canaanite culture is that it was truly demonic. We’re used to using those words flippantly, and we sometime need to go through all the references in the law and the psalms and in Paul that say in no uncertain terms, “No, they worshipped demons. It’s not just that it was really bad, and we’re going to use the word demonic because it was so bad.”
Yeah. No, these are fallen angels posing as gods, sometimes working miracles or presenting false oracles by which they con the local natives into all kinds of wicked behavior, including child sacrifice, self-mutilation and all kinds of weird gross things, but particularly at this point the demons see, “Oh, the promise! This person is supposed to come and crush us all. He’s in the womb of one of these women. If we can wipe them out…oh, and we have handy tools. These Canaanites are mean and nasty and have no regard for women anyway, so we’ve got this one.”
And here we have Deborah and Barak – an older woman, a judge, a prophetess, in an unusual but not prohibitive role by any means.
Can I pause and just pick up something you put right there? God didn’t hide his plan from Satan. He announced it to him in the very beginning. So then when Jesus comes you have all these demons saying, “Oh, we know who you are.”
“Oh, it’s you. We’ve been waiting for you, and unfortunately you’re here. This is not good. We thought we had you earlier, and you’re here. I’m not sure what the lower-downs are saying about this one, but oh, I have to leave, do I? Okay, I’ll go screaming and kicking. Oh boy, wait till I report this back down below. I hope the boss has a plan, because this is not looking good.”
We look at Jesus casting out demons and it’s important to remember that’s the story coming into its fullness. It’s not really a new element. There have always been demons in the background. We think of Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal, where the text says that there was none to hear, none to answer. We say, “Well, of course not. Baal is not real.” That’s not the point. There were demons and God shut their mouths. So here there are demons in the background that are worshiped under the title of Baal.
They’re forces of nature, and Lewis has a whole lot to say about the time when men begin virtually worshiping the forces of nature while denying the existence of God. He said the materialist magician is Satan’s final handiwork, but since our last broadcast actually it occurs to me that that’s actually where he started. He convinced these people to be secularists and magicians at the same time. There’s no personal God. They’re just forces, but we can use magic to control them. It’s where our culture has been headed ever since the ‘60s, if not sooner. Lewis first saw it in the ‘40s, the fusion of technology and magic. So that’s what’s going on in this battle.
Most people don’t even know the Battle of Megiddo. They might know about Deborah. If their Sunday Schools even teach it they would know about Jael because it’s a nice bloody cool story, one that children are apt to remember, but often it doesn’t get taught because it’s too bloody and we don’t want our children disturbed by vicious images.
The song of Deborah, I don’t know if anybody knows that, and yet this thing gets multiple chapters, just two chapters, but it falls into two parts. It’s the initial battle and then it’s Jael taking out Sisera and then it’s the song of Deborah, which does take up an entire chapter and it’s the only chapter in scripture written by a woman. It is so long that it gets to be a chapter, so this is a huge thing in the history of redemption.
Judah is busy with the Philistines. The northern tribes have her back, one hopes, but if the north goes down, if the north doesn’t stand against the Canaanites or if the Canaanites overwhelm them, then Judah is hemmed in and the promise is hanging by a thread, and humanly speaking it would look impossible at that point. So when Deborah sings this song of victory, that’s what’s in the background and we need to understand that.
Here’s a thought. Back in the ‘60s when Vietnam was a thing, for the first time we saw on television – and I was a very small child at the time – but we saw the violence of war. American cameramen went in behind our soldiers and filmed over their shoulders, and what do you see? You see American soldiers shooting bad guys. Well, they’re bad guys if the reporters happen to mention that they’re bad guys, but we’re seeing war in all of its ugliness, and there was a revulsion against that.
The TV coverage helped the antiwar effort, for however you take that, but I think we’ve come full circle. We’ve got to the point where we see war on TV and in video presentations and video games to the point that we’ve been fighting a war – my daughter Emily asked her mom several years ago, “Mom, how long has the war been going on?” because Emily could not remember a time when we weren’t at war. It just went on and on and on.
I confess that I got anesthetized to it, dull to it, because I don’t watch normal evening news broadcasts. I don’t watch any of that kind of stuff, so for me it was very easy to forget and not make it the important priority it is. And I think in part – and this is speculation, so feel free to throw in your own perspective here – that perhaps when we come to these battle scenes, since we are a culture that has not seen war on our soil since the Civil War really, unless you live in Hawaii, we don’t get it. We don’t get what it’s like to live in a battle zone. So when Deborah is celebrating liberation from that condition of ongoing war, the enemy has been oppressing them for, what, over 20 years.
We’ve also cheapened the word ‘war,’ because we’ve got the war on drugs and we’ve got the war on poverty. A friend of mine once said, “Hold on. There’s war and then there’s poverty.” Those are two different scales of fighting for survival – not that poverty is anything to laugh at. It’s not fun, sure.
But it’s not addressed the same way or by the same means. You can’t spend money and make it go away, although you would think you could. “It’s poverty. Let’s just give everybody money.” It turns out it doesn’t work that way. But that’s a topic for another time.
So with that then, we come to Deborah, singing. It says that Deborah and Barak sang, but all of the speaking verbs are feminine, so apparently she’s doing the singing. It’s her song. It’s inspired by an inspiration. Barak is probably either providing musical accompaniment – he’s the Levite, from a Levitical city – or maybe doing some background harmony, whatever it was, antiphonal responses.
It is important to remember it is prophecy, because New Testament Christians come and look at this and say, “This does not sound like my Jesus.” Well, that may tell you something about your Jesus then, because not only is Jesus Jehovah God, who keeps getting referred to, it’s also the angel of the Lord who says something very shocking at one point, and we’ll get to that eventually.
We should tell people that Bryan is still alive. He’s just not with us tonight.
We wish him well and hope that he will be back before too long. I don’t know how many times you may have watched a TV series, when suddenly some major character just vanishes without explanation.
Yeah, and then they replace it with somebody inferior. It’s annoying. That happened more times than I can count in the Andy Griffith Show, to be honest, in the only five seasons that exist.
I remember on one of my mom’s soap operas when they literally kept the character and switched out the actor. The only acknowledgement was, “Today the role of blah-blah will be played by blah-blah-blah.” That was it, and from there on they told us we have to accept it and that’s that. You always wonder, “Was there some ill will? Did he do something horrible? Did he rob a bank or conspire against the government?” and no one ever tells you.
Have you seen the A&E Wooster and Jeeves with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry? They do that. That has only three or four seasons, but they keep recycling the side characters – all the same actors, but they play different roles. But it’s so funny because you get to the final season and it’s like, “Ah, everybody is finally where they should be character-wise.” Anyway, that’s the counter example that proves the rule.
And all that had to do with Bryan, so just letting people know that we are not on the outs with Bryan. Bryan is fine and we’re hoping he comes back. But if married life proves too difficult, we will tell you that and he will not simply vanish into the sunset.
“The role of Bryan will now be played by…” That would not go well. There’s no replacing Bryan.
God’s people have been wronged most egregiously by these Canaanites, and God has stepped in as the Kinsman Redeemer or as the avenger of blood. He has that covenant relationship with his people and he’s going after their enemies.
This is not the petty kind of vengeance that we sometimes feel. “I need to get even. He slighted me. I must repay.” This is God’s holy justice and this is God’s redeeming love saying, “They’re my people. You don’t get to do that to them.
God is at work. God is the initiator. God is sovereign, and yet because of that – not in spite of that – many of God’s people willingly offered themselves for battle.
In the wake of 9/11, we had a lot of young men and young women who willingly volunteered for the military, and that’s kept up to some extent, but that didn’t used to be the way. After Vietnam no one wanted to join the military because the war had left such a black eye on the whole idea of war and of military service. There was a long time there where in our culture you didn’t become a soldier. If you did, you were really weird and questionable.
Exactly. “Don’t you want a future?” But in the wake of 9/11, there was this change. “Is there not a cause?” as David would say.
She’s talking to the Canaanite nations round about – the Canaanites proper, but then the Moabites, the Amorites, the Ammonites, even the Philistines. Everyone will eventually hear this.
I, even I, will sing unto the Lord. I will sing praise to the Lord God of Israel.
This is the focus of her song. This is not to brag about how great she is or Barak or even Israel. This is not, “Our nation is so tough – woo woo woo.”
It’s not a national anthem. It’s praise to God. The word Lord throughout here in in the King James is in all caps and that means it’s Jehovah or Yahweh – I Am, the covenant name of God, which is important. This is God who is faithful and keeps his promises and doesn’t change.
Lord, when though wentest out of Seir, when though marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled and the heavens dropped. The clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.
She’s going back to the giving of the law, to the original as it were incorporation of Israel into a kingdom as opposed to a patriarchy/chieftain kind of thing, as a kingdom of priests. When Israel looked, apparently they saw the shekinah glory coming from due north, which would be from Canaan through Edom and settling on Mount Sinai. That’s the references to Seir and Edom. It was spectacular. It was like the very heavens were bowing down.
There was rain, which is something that isn’t mentioned in most of the passage. We’re told about tempest and wind, but there was apparently rain. Again, remember Baal worship. Baal is supposedly the god of nature, thunderstorms, lightning and all that. It’s like here’s Baal doing his little thing, and then here’s God [blast sound]. Let’s just remember who we’re dealing with here, shall we?
We talked about him a little last time. He gets one verse in the end of chapter 3.
And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad. And he also delivered Israel.
He’s in the list of judges, so presumably a judge, Spirit-filled. We’re not told whether he killed those 600 at one time or in groups and pieces over some period of weeks or months, and it doesn’t matter. The fact is, he looked innocent. He looked harmless. He’s a farmer. He’s just moving his oxen along with a goad until the soldiers passed, and then with their backs safely turned he goes after them and shish-kabobs them.
It does say 600 men, and I’m glad it has the units of what 600 there were, because I always remember the fairytale of “7 at one blow” and the man who was famous for killing 7 at one blow, and it was 7 flies with a flick of his handkerchief – so 600 men.
So Deborah points to Shamgar, who was working in the south in the tribe of Judah. The word Anath is the name of a pagan fertility goddess, which suggests that he was a convert perhaps, or from a town that was still heavily into Canaanite demon worship. Somehow he’s been rescued out of that – he or his family – and he presents as the unexpected. So much of Judges is about the unexpected, the unlikely, the surprise hero that comes out of nowhere, like Jael. They both use sharp pointy things, as you pointed out last time.
So it’s the days of Shamgar – everyone knew about Shamgar – and in the days of Jael, so she takes Jael and elevates her to the level of this judge and names the era after her as well. One in the south, one in the north. She doesn’t call it “my age.” She was a prophetess and she could have done that without vanity or pride. She doesn’t assign it to Barak, although he performed great service in all of this as a general. She singles out Jael, who delivered the blow and crushed the serpent’s head.
That’s not to say that Jael is a type of Christ, but she is the woman that God uses, and there is much in scripture about the Bride also crushing the serpent’s head. Christ does the definitive crushing, and yet Paul writes to the church in Rome, “May God crush Satan under your heel shortly.” So we follow him in the crushing, and here she is doing that as a mom, as a wife, as one of the women who is very loyal and very brave, even though she’s an outsider. She’s not genetically descended from Israel, although is from Abraham.
So with Jael, am I right in looking at this and saying Ja is Ya and El is El?
You would think, but as I remember, no. I think it’s an outside name, but we could check for next time.
The highways were unoccupied and the travellers walked through byways. The inhabitants of the villages ceased. They ceased in Israel.
So it’s a time when pagan oppression is so strong that people are afraid to go out and travel the roads. Commerce has died off. People are sneaking along through back ways. The black market prospers in forest glens and in back corners, because you don’t want to take your stuff out in the open because the Canaanite soldiers are going to come steal it.
I am reminded of some of Agatha Christie’s novels set during the rationing in Britain. There’s a plot point in one of her books where people are sneaking out at night into the shed in the back, and who knows what they’re doing? What they’re doing is buying sugar and chocolate from under the [inaudible 24:02] because it’s illegal because of the rationing.
There’s our title. She does not hesitate to give herself her own due. God has used her and it’s not wrong to say, “Yeah, God did this thing, and by the way I was in fact the instrument at this point at this time,” not taking glory away from God but simply recognizing that God used this person to a degree here and there.
A mother in Israel - we’ll continue to talk about this today and talk about it more next week, what it means to be a mother. At the very least it means to nurture the next generation. It means a whole lot more than that, but let’s just keep that in mind as we go toward the end, and we see Deborah as one sort of mother, and we see Sisera’s mom as a very different sort of mother, and the difference. What kind of mom you are makes for the future.
Israel was not faithful. When the powerful people are in authority and they’re oppressing and crushing you, it’s easy to switch over to their side and adopt their values – like we’ve never seen anything like that in America in recent years, where Christians actually switch sides and start using the language of unbelievers – I wish.
The Canaanites had deliberately disarmed Israel. We see this later in Judah in the book of Samuel, where the Philistines made sure that Judah had no iron weapons, no swords and spears and things. The first step of tyrants is, “Get rid of their weapons. Make sure that they are not an effective fighting force.”
My heart is toward the governors of Israel that offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the Lord.
Again she comes to this idea that there were some people who saw the conflict, saw the need, and willingly offered themselves, and some of them became what we would think of as common footmen in a war, although they had clubs and not swords, but some of them were governors, were rulers. They could have stayed back and said, “Yeah, you guys go attack, go fight. We’re with you, sort of. We’re all in this together, but you go fight and we’ll stay here.” They actually all were in it together. They actually got involved in the messy battle, according to their skill, we’re going to see.
Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment and walk by the way.
Those are rulers. They’re the ones who drive around in limousines – white donkeys.
They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, even the righteous acts toward the inhabitants of his villages in Israel. Then shall the people of the Lord go down to the gates.
She’s predicting that in the future at the watering holes, when the women go out to get the water and do what people do when they’re sharing common tasks, they’re going to talk but it’s not going to be gossip. They’re going to go out there and say, “Have you heard the great thing that God did for us?”
“Yeah, my husband was in that battle. He said that this storm came out of nowhere! Isn’t God great? He’s so much greater than Baal!”
That’s the kind of talk that’s going to go on at the watering holes. And part of the talk is going to be, “Yes, wasn’t it great that our tribe was there? Yeah, it’s too bad that other tribe wasn’t.”
Awake, awake, Deborah. Awake, awake, utter a song. Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.
Then he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles among the people. The Lord made me have dominion over the mighty.
God put Deborah in charge. It was time – “For such a time as this.” And that brings us, of course, back to Queen Esther, who again at a crucial moment put herself out there to save God’s people.
…After thee, Benjamin, among thy people. Out of Machir [Manasseh] came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, even Issachar, and also Barak. He was sent on foot into the valley.
So a number of tribes got involved real fast. Now, Issachar was the lead tribe because that was Barak’s tribe. It’s also where Deborah was living at the time, so they’re involved, but the others came too. We’re told those of Zebulun who handled the pen of a writer – you know, you need scribes. War runs on paper. That’s the reality of it. So these guys may not have been great in the battlefield, but they came and gave what they had. They were the office officials and they were the recorders and they were the messengers and they were the ones who drew up the maps and whatever else had to be done to make this thing work, and Deborah puts them among everybody else.
That reminds me of Hamilton. One of the big points of the musical or artistic flare is that they’re equating the bullets firing across the battlefield with the letters that are shooting back and forth.
Then she turns to the tribe of Reuben. Reuben was descended from Jacob’s first-born son Reuben, and the Reubenites had always kind of wanted to be the lead, because first-born and all that. But because of Reuben’s personal sin (incest with his stepmom, Jacob’s concubine) he got demoted. There are a few times when Reuben tries to be aggressive and tries to take the lead, and it never works. Reuben is too incompetent even to rebel really, which is fine. Once you realize your limitations it just all works out, but God can still use you. But here they got too wrapped up. They wanted to be profound, and failed.
They thought really hard about this one. They meditated. You can think of the Second Continental Congress and the arguments back and forth about “Do we fight or don’t we?”
“Do we call a pastor or will that convince everybody that we’re divided?” So they’re going back and forth, and she goes on.
Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.
They’re still sitting there trying to figure out what they should do. They are thinking hard about this one. They are arguing it, they’re meditating on it, and they’re doing absolutely nothing, and this is what’s going to be recited at the watering holes for the next generations. It’s a nice warning. Not everybody gets warned that you have ancestors who were complete compromisers. Don’t be like them. Of course we would have liked the other, but we can’t go back and rewrite our ancestors, but we can learn from them and their failures.
Gilead abode beyond Jordan, and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the seashore and abode in his breaches. Zebulun and Naphtali…
Again, those were the tribes that didn’t do anything, and their names and their failures are going to be recited in this song at the watering holes, night entertainments, folk festivals and all that from now on. You couldn’t go to court and get an injunction and say, “They’re saying nasty things about me. Can you make them stop?” No, this is the word of the Lord. In fact, this may have been sung in synagogues as well. It happened. Deal with the historical reality.
Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeopardized their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.
I said earlier that Barak was from Issachar. Deborah I think was from Issachar, at least she’s connected with them. Barak was from Naphtali, which is where his city is. It was a Levitical city. These tribes were the boundary tribes of the Sea of Galilee to the south. We’ve already seen Isaiah’s prophecy that this has messianic overtones. In the land around Galilee there was this flash of light. Historically it was Barak, who comes and delivers the people from Canaanites and rescues the promise.
Of course, in the New Testament that finds final fulfillment in Jesus, who begins his ministry in Galilee. He was actually conceived in Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and all that, but he begins his ministry there, and Matthew records that people who sat in darkness saw a great light, quoting from Isaiah chapter 9, so we’re to think of that.
Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.
So she praises the tribes who were right there. It’s okay to praise the people who did right. We can’t say, “Oh, you should be humble enough not to be praised.” God’s people need encouragement and we need to be told, “These are the guys who did it right.”
The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. They took no gain of money.
They weren’t in it for the money. They were in it to exterminate God’s people, because now God’s people had raised their heads and now they’re going to stomp them down real good once and for all, so this was a fight to the death.
That’s an ambiguous passage and probably deliberately so. Does it mean that there were meteor showers that rained down on the enemy? That’s a possibility. In one fictional account I was describing to someone I used it that way, but it may be a little more remote. It just means that the whole cosmos was orchestrated against Sisera.
Astarte, Ashtaroth, is supposed to be the star Venus, the brightest of stars, but here no. The stars are not on your side. Nature is not on your side. Nature is not a thing. There is God and his providential control of creation, and God is using everything against you.
It’s possible that when we get to heaven and hear the stories of this battle, we may find out that there was a whole lot more in nature that warred against Sisera than we have any conception of. “Ow, where did that root come from? Ow, that raindrop hit me right in the eye! Wow, that mud puddle wasn’t there a minute ago!” The whole world was against them in the most literal sense, because when God is your enemy there’s no place to hide.
And notice they fought against Sisera, not just against the Canaanite army. It’s personified here. Yeah, they’re all guilty to some extent, but there’s one guy who is the anti-Christ at this moment. There’s one guy who is the enemy, and the whole universe is orchestrated against him. How’s that, to be the one man who, for a moment, the whole universe turns on and says, “We’re out to get you and we’re coming now.” He’s supposed to be really afraid. Of course, he’s dead by now so it doesn’t matter.
We weren’t told earlier exactly what happened, but now we begin to understand that God dumped an awful lot of water into that river plain and the waters just overwhelmed the Canaanites with their chariots, miring the chariots and the horses. The horses went crazy. The chariots wouldn’t move. The horses began to stomp and stamp wherever they could.
O my soul, thou has trodden down strength. Then were the horsehoofs broken by the means of the pransings, the pransings of their mighty ones.
We don’t know exactly what or where Meroz was. It was apparently a village or town somewhere near the battlefield. It was Israelite. The angel of the Lord says –
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.
Surely the Lord doesn’t need our help, so we shouldn’t have to lift a finger.
“God’s got this covered. We could just stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, right?” There are times when God tells you to do that, and other times where he says, “Get out there and fight.” A general summons to war had been given. They knew better, they just didn’t want to. It was scary, they could die, and there’s no record that every Israelite who went out faithfully came back alive. People die in war, and sometimes the good people die in war.
These people just didn’t want to be part of that, so they were just going to sit it out, and they’ll inherit whatever they inherit on the other side. If the bad guys win they could say, “Hey, we didn’t do anything.” If the good guys win, “Isn’t it great to be an Israelite? Isn’t God wonderful, how he raises up people to rescue us,” and God’s response is, “No.”
What’s more stinging is not simply that God said it or that the prophetess said it – if it was just the prophetess, people would try to find ways around it – but she says, “The angel of the Lord.” Anybody who’s studied Old Testament theology knows the angel of the Lord is Messiah. It’s Jesus, the son of God in his pre-incarnate revelation as the angel or messenger of the covenant, so this is not some random angel. This is not Deborah with an attitude after a bad day. This is Jesus saying, “Curse this village because they didn’t help when they were supposed to.”
We’re not told what the outworking of that curse is exactly, but it’s significant enough that Jesus places it in scripture to let us know that there are times when if you’re not with him you’re against him, words he will use himself when he’s on earth.
When it’s a battle between Christ and demons, you have to pick a side. You don’t get to be neutral. You don’t get to wait it out and see who wins. You don’t get to let other people fight your battles. You must be involved to the level of your ability. We saw with the people of Zebulun that some of them could only write. God used that. God honored that. They did what they could, and God honored it.
Here was a village, and we don’t know that they could have done much, but they refused to try to do anything when the fate of the world was hanging in the balance, so Jesus curses them through his prophetess.
Now we come to the description of two women. We’ve already seen one of them, Jael, so a lot of this is repetitive for us.
Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be. Blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
As we saw last week, there’s only one other woman in all of scripture and all of history of whom God has ever said that, and that’s the virgin Mary. When Gabriel pronounced those words, he knew the text. More to the point, God knew the text, having inspired Deborah to say it, and the connection is deliberate. It won’t do to say, “Well, Deborah felt that way but God had different ideas.” No, this is divine prophecy. You wouldn’t do that to any other prophet. You wouldn’t treat Isaiah or Jeremiah that way.
Jael, for her active obedience, for actively siding against the enemy – think of Rahab – changing sides, committing treason, and in this case defying her husband and his poor political choices and poor religious commitments, because that’s ultimately what political choice was then and now. It just was a little more obvious then. So she’s honored, and no other woman gets this kind of accolade until Mary, who also suffered from a great deal of misunderstanding and persecution.
“I always thought she was a little too good for…” and all that, the gossip over the fences in Nazareth, and the sword that would pierce her own heart when her son died. But now back to Jael.
Water, in the tradition of the day, would have sealed her responsibility as a hostess. Now, she could still defy tradition, obviously, but rather than give the water she gives milk, yogurt. She treats him like a baby. She gives him baby food.
Also you could say, “Well, it’s more nutritious,” but it also got her out of that situation where she was committing herself as a host. It’s heaping burning coals in a way.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer, and with the hammer she smote Sisera. She smote off his head when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.
At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down. At her feet he bowed he fell. Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.
Given what Deborah has just said, it doesn’t seem likely that he actually literally did those things because he was sleeping and she did one pound that shattered his temple, so he probably didn’t have a lot of chance to reach up and grab her robe and pull himself up and go up and down. Maybe, but it seems that Deborah is picking these words because bowing down on a woman, falling on a woman, lying with a woman – these are all words that normally are used for sexual intercourse, but in this case this man who was used to raping women gets it. Again, many people have pointed out the phallic nature of the tent peg. An eye for an eye, or something for something.
It kind of reminds us back when we were talking about the civil consequences for rape, where it’s compared to murder. The Bible says, “Because this is like killing a man, there’s no fixing it.”
Yeah. So he’s dead, and that’s what Deborah is celebrating. Jael killed him dead. It’s over. Again, there are many Christians who say, “Well, that’s not nice. That’s not loving. Shouldn’t she have witnessed to him or something?” No. Pearls before swine and all that. There are times when, yes, you try to win the enemy to Christ, and there are times when you realize, “That’s not going to happen here.”
“Yes, I understand the job. If as he’s dying he wants to call out to God, that’s great and I’ll welcome him into heaven when we get there, but in the meantime I have a job to do, and that job is to eliminate the anti-Christ from the face of the earth because I’m the one who’s here. I’m the one who has the best shot.”
Again, this was a terribly bold and brave act of hers and there was no guarantee this was going to work, and if she scuffed her feet too loud and he woke up it was all over. Not only would he kill her, but he’d probably do some really nasty things before and after, so this was a tremendously courageous act on her part. The grief she’s gotten for it from commentators is ridiculous.
Then we shift, and Deborah with prophetic vision sees what’s going on on the other side in the Canaanite city where Sisera’s mom lives.
The mother of Sisera looked out at a window and cried through the lattice, “Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?”
“Why isn’t the army back? It’s so late. How long could it take to mop up that rabble? I’m getting a little worried about him.”
…and the Hebrew word for ladies is the idea of princess or noblewomen, so these are the other noble people who would have had also sons or nephews or younger brothers or whatever in the army. They’re all together waiting for the army to return, to hear the good report.
Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself. Have they not sped?
“They’re busy doing the spoiling. They’ve already defeated those people, those nasty people, and maybe it just takes time. It’s not like they would have a lot on them. They have to search the bodies really carefully to make sure they don’t leave anything behind.” And then they say this –
In Elizabethan English that should already be shocking. The prey they’re dividing are the young girls. Now, we might sanitize that by saying, “Oh, they’re just picking out slave girls.” Well, yes, but.
Yeah, that would be bad enough if it were true, but actually the Hebrew word for damsel is not at all damsel, and there’s a very appropriate word for damsel. The word here is uterus or womb. I’m sure there are Anglo-Saxon words which I don’t know, praise God, that describe female private parts, and that’s kind of what this woman is saying. She’s reducing these Hebrew women to a piece of anatomy. In other words, they’re busy raping the women.
“You know, that takes a while. I’m sure when they’re done with that they’ll be home as soon as they can, and then we’ll have a nice round of slaves – half-Canaanite, half-Hebrew – for the next generation.” This is again the serpent trying to take possession of the Bride and bring forth his seed through her. This goes back to Genesis 3.
Again this is Deborah singing this song. This is a woman using very crude language, we would say today.
She’s being very blunt. “Well, nice women don’t talk like that.” Victorious women do. There’s no time for being nice neo-Victorian here, or pre-Victorian in her case.
To every man a damsel or two, to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil.
Notice that women are just dropped in, in the midst of, “Oh, and also I’m sure he’s bringing something pretty home too. I hear those Hebrew women do nice needlework. I bet they’ve got some of that, too. I’ll look forward to that,” and the women just become one more thing on the list – a thing to be used.
To other women, and that’s the whole point here. These are not the soldiers. This is not the anti-Christ. This is the anti-Christ’s mom, and now we understand how he got to be what he is. This was her attitude toward other women who were not of her sort.
She probably would be horrified if Canaanite women, or at least the noble Canaanite women, were treated this way, but to her it’s a matter of course that those people over there should be treated that way – that rabble, that ragtag bunch. Of course, you do that. That what war is for, isn’t it? And collecting other neat treasures.
So the stark contrast here, the sarcasm and the irony just drips off the page, and again in our sanitized generation that offends us. “That’s not loving and kind.” Get over yourselves. This is the divinely-inspired prophetess telling it like it is. These are wicked women who produce wicked sons, and God brought judgement that was final.
It’s universal. If people are going to continue to oppose themselves to God and his kingdom, and to the promise of Messiah, they need to be destroyed just as officially, effectively, and permanently as Sisera and his host.
That doesn’t mean you have to go on being an enemy of God. There is repentance. There is a gospel message that though we have been enemies, we can be reconciled to God through the death of his Son, but there comes a day when time runs out. There comes a day when wisdom will no longer cry aloud. There comes a time when God will not give you repentance, and that’s a frightening time.
But let them that love him [God] be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.
It’s an image that’s used a number of times in scripture, but particularly relevant in Judges. Samson, whose name means ‘the sun’ – so we get a peek ahead to what’s coming. What she has begun here in the north, Samson is going to continue in the south. God is not done yet. The battle goes on, and it will go on until Jesus comes. Then it will be definitively won. Jesus will definitively win it, and then there will be the mopping up operation, which we’re still engaged in and which is still a war.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of that. As we have brothers and sisters in Christ across the world who are being executed and imprisoned for the name of Christ, we need to get past the point of saying, “Well, you know, it’s my religion but I wouldn’t impose it on anybody else.” Well, the rest of the world tries to impose their religion by very bloody forceful means, and we’re beginning to see it in our country. We will not maintain our freedoms long until we at least get the idea that this is life and death. It’s black and white.
And whereas the weapons of our warfare are not carnal – we’re not called to take out assault weapons or 45s and go shoot down the bad guys – we are called to stand for Christ, to draw the line in the sand and say, “This is true and that’s lies and we’re not budging. We’re going to call a spade a spade, and we’re going to call sin, sin, and we’re going to offer you the gospel plainly. And you don’t like it? We’re not surprised but it doesn’t change anything.”
So that is an optimistic note, whether we think of it that way or not. Our culture doesn’t think that that’s optimistic. “It’s not nice and pleasant. There are no puppies or rainbows.” There’s a rainbow at the end. It’s around the throne of God.
I love that. We should make that a tagline. “There’s a rainbow at the end. It’s around the throne of God.” Wonderful. Shall we close up with some recommendations?
I can recommend a short little collection of school essays, ostensibly written by about a 10-year-old girl. What is her name? I lent you the book so I don’t have it in front of me – Virginia Cary Hudson or something like that?
This was back in the days when you would go to school and the teacher would say, “All right, write on your slate an essay on this topic.” So there’s an essay on the sacraments, there’s an essay on etiquette, there’s an essay on personal appearance, and you get it all through the eyes of this 10-year-old girl who is growing up Episcopalian in the Carolinas somewhere around 1910. That makes it sound very boring, but it is a hoot and a holler.
Just imagine how children see things when they’re not explained, especially Church traditions and family traditions. Just leave it to them to figure out what in the world is going on. They come up with interesting explanations, and this young lady, so all of the sources say, was very clear in her language and very inaccurate in all that she said, but it was true from her point of view at least.
Some things she says are really great, like when she talks about certain things like how in church you don’t walk loudly down the aisle. You have to tiptoe. It’s not that Jesus minds, but other people might. I thought, “That’s very true.” So that’s my recommendation. It’s called O Ye Jigs and Juleps.
I’m going to borrow from what you mentioned earlier, Jeeves and Wooster, the made-for-television movie, I guess. It was a BBC series back in ‘80s or ‘90s?
A wonderful comedic team together, based on the works of Wodehouse. This is where the idea of the butler named Jeeves originally came from, which was a staple in my generation. This generation is probably like, “A Jeeve? Butler? What?” They don’t even know what a butler is, but we have the very efficient, very intelligent, very nearly supernaturally-equipped butler who comes to the rescue of this complete lamer who has lots of money and a title, but can’t take care of himself in the slightest way, and how they work together to get out of really ridiculous situations.
They all want to take pity on him and take him in hand and make something of him.
And then Bernie’s use of names for his friends, because what comes after that is the name of I don’t remember who, but these long nicknames for people who in fact are lords in British culture, but they have these stupid monikers that have been plastered on them, and we can’t take anybody seriously in this. It is a lot of fun and reflects the remnants of a Christian society in Britain in the early 1900s.
Okay, there we go. You get the book, you watch the movie, and enjoy the 1920s for a little while, both in England and America. It’s great weekend entertainment.
It is a phenomenal adaptation, too, and the source material – I keep saying this and I’m sure I’m accidentally quoting somebody, but P.G. Wodehouse really is the last word in English style. You can’t beat it. It’s the comedic. Everything about it is perfect.
Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. It’s nice to give some lighthearted recommendations after that conversation. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband.
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