04.01. Deborah & Barak: Example for Women or Embarrassment for Men?

Deborah & Barak: Example for Women or Embarrassment for Men?^[1]

1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Deborah an Example? Does Deborah provide us with an example about the place and function of women in marriage, in church and in society? There are those who think so. Donna Strom, professor at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Dehra Dun, Northern India, laments that women have, in the main, been involved only in increasing the human population, and done so little ("except for a rare Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi") to join men in ruling the earth.^[2] So she writes of Deborah: "What Deborah’s example obviously teaches is that women should not be excluded from any levels of decision-making, religious or political."^[3] Because Professor Strom sees men hindering women in taking positions of leadership, she writes: "Many have asked, ’Where are the Deborahs?’ But a more relevant question today is: where are the Baraks, Lapidoths, and 10,000 men who will allow God to use His Deborahs?"^[4] Is it really true that God provides us in Deborah with a model for how He would have women to act? Ought the brothers of God’s church to recondition their thinking to "allow God to us His Deborahs"? The answer of our contemporary world is distinctly Yes, we should. Does the Lord agree? Should you as wives and mothers make it your business to encourage your husbands and sons to be willing to let God use the women in positions of leadership? In our feminist age, what picture should we strive to place in the minds of our children about the place of the woman? By implication: in our age of weak men, should we seek to encourage all our sons to be leaders?

1.2 What do we want to Prove?

It is for us to listen carefully to what the Lord says in His Word. In the climate of our day, our lives -both as men and as women- are to be conformable to God’s Word, so that in turn we live as lights in this world. As I set out this morning in my attempt to lay before you what the Lord says about the place He has assigned to the woman, I choose to take as starting point what the Lord says to us in Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:1-31 about Deborah and Barak. However, if we are to hear what the Lord says in these chapters, we shall need to read this passage without preconceived ideas about the place of the woman. I say this since it’s not difficult to prove from these two chapters just about anything you want to prove about the place of the woman.^[5] For example:

• If you want to prove on the basis of Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:1-31 that women should be prophetesses in the Church today, you can make a strong argument with an appeal to Judges 4:4, where we read that Deborah was a prophetess.

• If you want to argue that the place of the woman is beside her husband, submissive to her husband, you can make a strong case out of it with reference to Deborah, for in Judges 4:4 she is identified by her husband’s name: "Deborah, ... the wife of Lapidoth."

• If you want to prove that one can be happily married, take up one’s place in the family, and at the same time have a leading place in society, you can prove it from Judges 4:1-24. After all, this woman Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, was at the same time a Judge.

My point is: the feminist can appeal to Judges 4:1-24 to find Scriptural justification for her position. So can the ’traditionalist’. But then we do not listen to the Scripture, but to ourselves! We therefore need to set aside our own thoughts, and listen to what Scripture says. We need to read the passage for what it is without any preconceived ideas and -as much as possible- without the baggage we’ve inherited from our fathers or received from our contemporary society.

1.3 Descriptive or Prescriptive?

One more introductory item that needs to be mentioned is the distinction between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive. Judges 4:1-24 is descriptive; it describes what Deborah did. Does this description of what Deborah did in her day boil down to a prescription for us? That is: does Judges 4:1-24, which describes Deborah’s conduct years ago, prescribe how we should act today?^[6] In various places in the Bible a given action is described and yet we’re convinced that we ought not to follow that example. One may think of Judah’s conduct with the harlot he met along the road.^[7] We agree that the Bible describes for us what Judah did, but that it does not prescribe that we should do the same thing. After all, in the seventh commandment the Lord told us not to commit adultery. Judah’s action is clearly descriptive of his sin, but not prescriptive for our conduct. Well now: are Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:1-31 descriptive? Certainly, they are. Are they also prescriptive? That is: do these chapters set the norm for how our women (and men) ought to behalf? Does the appearance of Deborah as leader in the land (prophetess and judge) indicate that our daughters may/must aspire to positions of leadership? The only way to answer this question is to go back into God’s revelation in order to find out what God has commanded us.

1.4 Outline

Before we go back into God’s revelation to learn His norm for us, we first spend some time reading what the Lord tells us about Deborah in Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:1-31. This forms Section 2 of this paper. In Section 3 we look at the material God had to revealed to Israel on the subject by the time of Deborah’s day. Section 4 sets before us what God revealed to His people after the time of Deborah. We’re interested specifically in discerning whether there has been a change in God’s revelation after the time of Judges 4:1-24. A final section draws out conclusions for us today.

----- Footnotes -----

^[1] Text of an address prepared for the Women’s League Day, held on October 29, 1997, in the Free Reformed Church of Kelmscott. I express my appreciation to Johanna vanderPlas for taking copious notes and so ably putting to paper what I said.

^[2] Donna Strom, "Where are the Deborahs and Baraks?" in Evangelical Review of Theology (Vol 10/1), pg 19.

^[3] Ibid, pg 23.

^[4] Ibid, pg 25.

^[5] A deSnoo in Vrouw, wie ben je? (Uitgave van de Bond van Gereformeerde Meisjesverenigingen in Nederland, 1988), pg 43.

^[6] cf Miriam and Huldah ^[7] Genesis 38:1-30; Genesis 2:1-25. Who was Deborah?