Women Encouraging Men

Scripture Basis: Judges 4:1–16

Central Verse: “And Deborah said unto Barak, Up: for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the Lord gone out before thee? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him.” (Judges 4:14)

We are often tempted to view scripture through eyes tainted by our generation’s biases and idiosyncrasies. This is reading anachronistically: ascribing to the text modern ideas and sentiments that would have been unheard of at the time. The adventure of the prophetess Deborah often suffers from such a reading. The fourth chapter of Judges is sometimes said to chronicle a “battle of the sexes”; for this reason you find some commentators chiding Barak for failing to meet their expectations of male authority, and others extolling Deborah as a ‘pre-feminist’ who defied the patriarchal system.

In an impartial reading, however, there is no male/female conflict evident in the relationship of Deborah and Barak. She consistently acts as his encourager and intercessor (4:6,14); he is deferential to her in acknowledgement of her spiritual office. As for the prophecy in verse 9—which is so frequently interpreted as a consequence of Barak’s insistence that the prophetess accompany him into battle—the ensuing events prove that this was not a rebuke of the warrior. Sisera was not sold into Deborah’s hands, but rather into Jael’s. We can assume this would have happened if Barak had left the prophetess under the shade of her palm tree.

Deborah at no time positions herself as a rival to Barak’s military leadership. She comes up beside him to help him fulfill his God-given mission. In this she is a type of the spiritually discerning women of the Church. The church mothers that bolster their pastor in prayer, the sisters-in-the-Lord that affirm the authority of their brethren, the wives that knit themselves to their husbands’ vision for the family… they are all operating in the spirit of this godly woman. Similarly, Barak models for men in the Church how to come subject to the spheres of authority ordained for our women.

Like the Israelites of that day, we saints have an enemy to fight. Men are still being called to battle… to provide covering for their families and their churches. Women are still expected to exhort and assist them. I recall the image of the prairie woman, who would load one musket while her frontiersman husband fired the other. Keeping the picture of that early American couple in mind may help us remember our respective stations on the battlefield. It’s no time now to get confused about our roles. And it’s no time to be disunited.

Questions:
1. How did Deborah provide encouragement and support to Barak?
2. What are the causes of fractionalization and contention between the sexes?
3. What positions of spiritual leadership are appropriate for women in the church?