BibleProject - Women Who Slayed Dragons – Chaos Dragon E6

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

In today’s episode, we once again encounter a theme that’s becoming all too familiar: humans becoming chaos monsters. Jabin, king of Canaan, and Sisera, the commander of his army, are depicted as serpents in Judges 4, and the humans who overcome these two dragons are two women, Deborah and Jael. Join Tim and Jon as they explore the theme of the dragon in the scroll of Judges.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-11:44)Part two (11:44-28:25)Part three (28:25-42:07)Part four (42:07-50:01)Referenced ResourcesThe Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob StammInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAll additional music breaks by Patrick MurphyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and mix the podcast. We've been exploring a theme called the Chaos Dragon, and because it's such a big theme, we've decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the first Q&R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by September 13th and send it into us at infoatbibelproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, and try to keep your question to about 20 seconds. And please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team.

We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the Bible. Dragon is a symbol representing chaos and death. These are forces that God controls and subdues when he orders creation in Genesis chapter 1. And then these are forces that got up points, both angels and humans, to rule over on God's behalf. But the story of the Bible is about how God's creatures don't rule over the chaos, and instead become chaos monsters themselves. The snake in the garden that deceives Adam and Eve is a spiritual being becoming a snakey monster. Adam and Eve's son Cain becomes a snakey monster. In the School of Exodus, King Pharaoh is depicted as a snakey monster. But behind all of this is this prophecy

that a future human will not be overcome by the snake, but instead will crush the head of the snake. In today's episode, we're gonna look at a story in the School of Judges. It's the story of the prophetess Deborah. She's a human, mouthpiece for God. She embodies God's rule over the people, judging and leading them,

and she loves to sit under a tree between high place and house of God on the mountain of fruitfulness. Deborah is a new Eve tasked with striking down the bad guys of the story, who are a crafty king and a sneaky commander. But the story is not just about Deborah. It's also about a non-Israelite woman, a canine named JL. Through the female prophet, God's going to raise up a female deliverer. JL lures the snakey commander into her tents, and as he sleeps, she drives a tent stake through his skull.

She countered deceived the deceiver, and she kills him. Smashes his head. This is all Genesis 315 seed of the woman, smashing the head of the snake, but in this case the seed of the woman is a woman. Today, Tim Mackey and I look at the story of Deborah and JL in the scroll of Judges. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. John, hello.

Hello again. Hello again. We're making our way through the story of the Bible. Focusing in on the theme of the dragon. There's dragons of the Bible. There's dragons. However, it's not merely about, wow, isn't that cool that there's the Bible talks about dragons and why. It is, that is that. But as we dug in, we realized it's actually more about what does it mean for creatures to fight against God's creation and become creatures that want to drag creation back

into nothingness into its de-creation state. And I mean, that's horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Think about. That's also pretty intuitive. I mean, my kids on a regular basis are dragging our house back into a state of de-creation. We both have two boys. They're now in like, you know, a pre-adolescent. And, you know, a pre-adolescent, and, uh, wow, man, a lot of stuff gets broken at my house. Needlessly, just from just curiosity and carelessness. You know what I mean? I'm just thinking yesterday, my kids,

it was a sunny day in February, in Portland, yesterday, and my kids spent the whole afternoon outside, and I walked out and they had brought out a card table, and they were playing card games, and they had made a a card table and they were playing card games and they had made a big fire in a, we have like a metal fire pit thing in our backyard. And they were just burning so much stuff, but like they felt the need to shatter it all

before they put it in the fire. So they just had hammers. Oh wow. Just breaking wooden stuff apart. Thanks. And I was just thinking like, that's what they want to do They just want to break stuff and then burn it and that's where my kids are at right now Do you know what I'm talking about just that impulse to take do your kids have that take stuff apart?

I and break it Maybe not as much Maybe I haven't given them enough opportunity to break stuff. Perhaps. That's on a silly level, but there's something parabolic about that where we just kinda, we make stuff and we break stuff. Yeah.

And that's just somehow this paradox in our nature. Anyway. There's people who pointed out that I have a characteristic personality trait in which I like to kind of poke at things. Like if something starts to become a little bit chaotic, I like to kind of just start prodding at it and be like, well, where's it going to break? We're most people are like, back up! That thing's kind of like, I have this intuition to be like, what's, let's see what this thing is really made of. I have experienced this. You want?

Yeah. Well, I have one vivid memory of it. I think the first time. Oh, really? Yeah. Do you remember? We were with a friend who had like a really powerful four wheeler. Oh.

This is really, really cool. And there is this real, it was wet like spring, northwest day up in some woods. And there is this really, really steep muddy forest road. And we tried to go up it, and it just got stuck and spun out, and you reversed back. And I thought like, we're gonna just back up and go away. And then you're like, let's try it again! It was so, but we made it up.

But it was, I thought but we made it up. But it was, I thought we were gonna tip over. Embrace the chaos. Embrace the chaos is the guess the... Okay, but we're talking about the kind of chaos that we should be really afraid of. Like, it's the kind of chaos that we're, when Cain is angry at his brother.

Yes, yes. It's the chaos that God says, that's a monster. And it wants to devour you. But he says you can rule it. You can rule it. That's right. And then in the last conversation we talked about how in the story of Exodus, where you've got Pharaoh as this tyrant king and Slaven Israel, he's depicted as the chaos monster.

He is the snake. He is the Tannin. But then Moses, who's the deliverer, the new Adam, what Cain could have been, he is told by God to throw down his staff, the staff becomes the snake, and then when he grabs it again, he tames it. Yeah, yes, power over it.

And then it's that staff. It's also not just the snake, it's the Tannin when he throws it in front of Pharaoh. It's that staff that he uses that God has him use to split the waters. Split the chaos waters, to order the chaos waters so that land can emerge, so that they can walk into liberation. And then we just stopped and we were like,

what does that mean? That an image of God, a new human could not just like get the snake out of the field or get out of the garden back into the field or like crush the snake, but actually like grab it by its tail and use it as like an instrument for order. That's right. Yeah. So we back up to the portrait of the snake in the garden, to creature. That's good, but that used its wisdom to cause the downfall of God's human images,

so that they now die. And so that snake, which didn't begin as bad, we're told in the Seven Decoration narrative, the Seamonstra was a part of God's good world. So, it through its choices and folly becomes an agent of chaos, and then humans who listen to the voice of the snake instead of ruling it become agents of chaos. So, the scene at the parting of the waters in the Exodus story is about a human image of God with power over the snake versus a human Pharaoh who's caught in the web of lies of the snake. And so the arm of Yahweh shatters the head of the sea monster. That's how Isaiah remembered the story, as Eri told the Exodus story. But what actually happened was the waters themselves caused the downfall of the human snake agent. So that story sets up kind of a key paradigm for many of the stories to follow.

So we could choose many, basically the way the biblical story works is we're just going to keep cycling through this core idea and each generation is going to replay its own version of that, a many of the Exodus story. And the players are going to swap and each iteration of the pattern gives us deeper insight into the ways of God, into the ways of the snake, and into the nature of the human heart. And this whole thing becomes a mirror for self-reflection, but also a window into the wisdom of God and where he's taking creation. So where I want to take us is to a story. When this became clear to me what's going on in this story was just like, just a great day. So what story? This is the story of Barack and Debra and Cicera, the evil captain in the story of judges, chapters four and five.

Okay. So the book of judges begins after Joshua has led the Israelites into the land, promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Again through the chaos waters, right? You read them through. Yeah, the waters of the Jordan. Yeah. That's right. Yep. That flow from Mount Hermone in the north. What we're told is that the Israelites go into the land

and they keep giving their allegiance to foreign gods, and that each time this happens, God hands them over, gives them over into the hands of oppressors around them. Once the Mover gives them over into the hands of oppressors around them. And essentially, this cycle in the book of Judges, idolatry leading to oppression, and then they cry out to the Lord and God raises up a deliverer and then they're rescued. This is the Exodus story in terms of oppression, crying out, raising up a deliverer, rescuing, except the reason why they end up back in oppression again is because of their own sins. And I guess in a way, the way the Israelites ended up in Egypt was because of the sins of Joseph's brothers against him.

That's how they got down there. So just judges itself is already set on analogy to the basic plotline of the Exodus story And even the vocabulary of the Israelites crying out and God raising up a deliverer is right from the Exodus story And remember the Exodus story was all set on analogy to the Eden story Humans flourishing in a garden. You got a sneaky figure Deceives them that results in slavery and death in the field from which God is going to raise up a seed of the woman to stomp on the snake.

That's Eden's story. We saw it in the last conversation. Now, the Exodus story has been mapped on to all that. So now, in this story, in judges, that's just on replay. But in this particular story, I don't know why it brings so much delight to me the way. So both the Exodus story and the Eden story are gonna be echoed here.

And I want us to just look for the snake. Look for where you see the snake appear in the story. It's a snake-finding mission. Snake-finding mission. And Judges 4, verse 1. And again, the Israelites did bad or evil in the eyes of Yahweh. Okay. And whatever they did. They did something bad. Yeah, it's a signal for idolatry.

But it keeps happening over and over again. So now all that's all the narrator has to say. And you just go, oh yeah, okay. Yeah, we're speaking of the gods. Golden calf, you know, that kind of thing. And A-hood, the guy who was the last judge, who stabbed King of Moab in the stomach, that whole story.

He died. This is just like in how Exodus begins, when Joseph died, the past generation dies. Verse two, so Yahweh sold them into the hand of Yavin, the king of Kenan who reigned as in Hatsur. Yavin, it's the word for discernment, Binn, Bina, discernment, understanding. Oh, this is a wisdom word.

Yeah. Yeah. He sold them into the hand of Wisdom the wise king or skillful one the understanding King. Yeah, he's the crafty. Yeah craft king now You should know the captain of his army was named sis Really Ssra. Really? Really? Okay, here's what's fascinating.

This is not a Hebrew name. Ssisra. In other words, it's not a Semitic word. Is that a transliteration? It's a transliteration. Ssisra. Ssisra. Yeah.

It's either Luvian, which is a language spoken by Hurrian neighbors up to the north of Israel, but Luian is not a Semitic language, but it's Sisra. And you know, it's a name for this guy, and then also way later in Ezra, Nehemiah, there's Sisra that's among the exiles that return to Israel. So it's not clear what this name means, at least in Colder Baumgartner's Hebrew Air Maxx Continental Testament, which is the most kind of up-to-date language with the etymology of Hebrew words. So I could be making this up entirely.

You think it's used because it's got a hissing quality, right? I don't know. Maybe. I can't prove it. It's just going to say, just wait for how the story works out. So we got the crafty king. Yep, we've got a crafty king. And we got the hissing king. And his commander.

His commander, the hissing commander. Yep, that's right. Yep. So he was living in Harusheth Hagoim. Harusheth is the word for handi work, like referring literally to if you like make a stone statue or a wooden table, then you would call that your Hago'i'im. So the working of the nations, the word Hago'im is the nations.

So this guy represents some sort of wise, skillful king who with a commander whose name sounds like the hissing of a reptile. And he lives in the land of the craftsmanship, the crafty working of the nations. You almost imagine the person building the tower to the sky, building the city, like the empire. Yeah, you know what the nations do? They rage. Okay, so that's the Empire. Yeah, you know what the nations do? They rage. Yeah, okay.

So that's the introduction of these guys. So the Israelites, they cried out to Yahweh. You're like, oh yeah, the exact vocabulary used for Abel's blood crying out from the ground. And this is what the Israelites do when they cry out to Yahweh from their slavery. Because he, that is Yavine, had 900 iron chariots. Oh, chariots. chariots. You remember the last guy who had a lot of chariots? Oh yeah, Pharaoh. chariots. Was that the last set of chariots? No, there have been some chariot armies in Joshua

that were all actually also hyperlinked to Pharaoh. And he, that is Yavine with his chariots and Cicera, Captain oppressed the Israelites with cruelty for 20 years. Okay. Cicepalm the Pharaoh move. Paul and a Pharaoh. This is the exact word used in the Exodus story. Okay, so that's the setup.

Verse 4, Pivot. Now, here's something reader that you should know. Around that time, Debra, the prophetess, the wife of Lapi Doth, was the judge in Israel. Okay, so she was the one, kind of was risen up at that time to be the... Yep, the spirit-empowered tribal chieftain. Now, she's the wife of a guy named Flame. Deva means B, like honeybee. Oh. Yep, sting like a bee.

Which is going to do in this story. Yeah, so B, the wife of Flame, was the judge of Israel. So this is rad. You have this prophetess who's like the honored judge and leader of the people in this season. And you know, she loved to go sit under that palm tree of Deborah, you know, between high place and the house of God, Ramon Bethel. She had her own little garden. In the hill country of Ephraim, fruitfulness.

Come on. Come on. So you've got a prophetess, which means she's a human mouthpiece for God. She's an image of God, because what she says is a representation of what God wants to say. She embodies God's rule over the people judging and leading them, and she loves to sit under a tree between high place and house of God on the mountain of fruitfulness. Isn't that clever? Yeah. I just this is a great example of how the biblical authors this so hidden in the English. Yeah, but this is how they do it. This is how they I mean the palm trees are there. Pantry. Yeah, but Rama and Bethel. Yeah, you have to know what's... It's a high place and how so got... Bethel is how so got, that's locked in now.

Yeah, but... Hill Country is just the word mountains. Oh, is it? Oh yeah, okay. The mountains of Ephraim. And you know from Genesis that Ephraim is a word plan, fruitfulness, from the blessing that Jacob gives to Ephraim. Okay.

So, if you've been using your concordance to look up names, names, all these names are always significant, but we're painting an Eden scene here also. And the Exodus scene is with the. They're oppressed. Like the snake king and his chariots and his oppression and so on. Okay. So she sent and she called for a guy named Lightning. Barak. Lightning. The son of my father is delightful. Avinoam.

From the holy place, Kedash of Naftali. And she said to him, hasn't Yahweh the God of Israel commanded you? Go. March to Mount Tabor and take 10,000 men from the descendants of Naftali and Zevolun. She's speaking on God's behalf here. I, that is God, will draw out Sisra, the commander of Yavine's army with his chariots and troops to the Wadi of Kishon, so Wadi is a seasonal, torrential streambed. So it's dry because it's in the desert, but when it rains up in the hills, it'll turn

into a river. Flash flood. Yeah. There, at the place of the flood, the flood waters, there I'll give him into your hand. So all of a sudden, now, this female prophet speaks God's word to lightning, son of my father is delight. And now this guy has a choice. What's he going to do?

He just heard God's word. Barack said to her, mm, you know, if you go with me, I'll go. But if you don't come with me, Debra, no, I'm not gonna go. Okay. Okay. I need a co-pilot. Yeah, yeah. Now you could take that as positive of like I need a teammate.

Yeah. You could take it as a lack of trust. Right, in the word of God. Yeah, he's adding a condition. Yeah, so you as a lack of trust. Right. We're in the word of God. Yeah. He's adding a condition. Yeah. So you have a man and a woman now debating about what did God say? What did God say? That's interesting. That's interesting. She said, all right, I'll go with you. However, there will be no glory for you in the path that you are taking. Okay.

So it's definitely a concession. Yeah. She makes it clear that she just didn't trust in the word of Yahweh. Mm-hmm. So, okay. All right. You didn't want to trust in the word of Yahweh that I would give him into your hands. That's what God said.

Mm-hmm. So, there'll be no glory, no honor for you in the path you're taking, because Yahweh always going to sell Cicera into the hand of a woman and Deborah stood up and went with Barack to Kettish So Barack should have been the one to crush the snake But he gave up his chance by forfeiting right forfeiting that chance and so now Through the female prophet, God's going to raise up a female deliverer.

That's the word. So we're just inverting all of the stuff with Eden here, because in Eden, it was a woman first, who because of the exception of the snake doubted the word of God, and then she gave to her husband, and he ate, and presumably, I mean, that sets up the logic chain that he accepted the deception and disobeyed, too. But here it's inverted. And so now it's going to be, it's the female who represents the voice of God, and it's

the female who's going to be the deliverer. So we're at, how We're just inverting it. So Barak summons, Zevolon, these are tribes, and Naftali, Takedesh, they went up with him, 10,000 men, verse 12, when they reported to Sisra that Barak, the son of Avinoam had gone up to Mount Teyver, Sisra got all his charrots. Oh, I just, somebody. It's actually really common in a story where if something important happens and then it'll be just be and it was told to so and so. Okay. And you're just like, well, who? Okay. Yeah. So just doesn't say. So probably sister as like crew like his army, someone there. So sister has summered all his chariots, all 900 iron chariots, the whole army that was with him from the Chaurasheth Hagoim, the

working of the nations. And they went to that little flood torrent playing of Kishon. Stravying out the snake. The den of snakes. Stravying them out. Yeah. In the form of chariots. So Deborah, so B said the lightning, get up.

This is the day that Yahweh has given Sistra into your hand. Hasn't Yahweh gone out before you? So Barack went out from Mount Tavur with 10,000 following him. Yahweh threw Sistra and all his chariots and army into confusion. This is a nerdy hyperlink, but this word confusion, this is describes what Yahweh did to Fros chariots once they got into this, whatever the sea bed, see every it's same verb. Okay. Yeah. But here they were thrown into confusion before the edge of Baroque sword. So Cicera had to get out of his chariot and he just ran on foot. He's just, just, just, get out of here. He's booking it.

So, because the chariot's got stuck. It's chariot's got stuck. Yep. Or confused or something. Something. So Barak, he just sees the chariots, you know, get confused and he goes after the chariots. That's what we're told. But Cicera went, he'd abandoned his army.

Hmm. What a snake. What's a snake in there? He's crawled away. So we're told that all of Sysra's army fell to the edge of the sword. No one was left. But Sysra, he got away. So he fled on foot and he ended up at the tent of this woman, Yael.

Yeah, it's the name of like a mountain goat, like a deer of the mountains. Ya'el. Mountain goat. Mountain goat. Yeah, mountain goat. So he fled on foot to the tent of Ya'el, the goat of the mountains. She was the wife of Chever, you know, from the line of Cain. Oh, no interesting. Okay. So she goes into the wife of Ganym Hever who's a descendant of Cain. So this gets spelled with a K in our English translations canite, but it's Cain's name as a family description. Hmm. Remind me how his line is preserved to post the flood? Well, it's kind of a mystery because in theory, Cain and his line are all washed away in the flood. But then you just meet this people group later on the biblical story who were called the Caneites. Yeah, okay. You just got to deal with it. Just deal with it. So,

you're thinking, well, she's a Cainite. How's this this gonna go? Like, it could go a few ways, you know? You should know that there was peace between Yavin, the king of Khatsur, and the house of Hever, the canine in those days. Oh, that makes sense why, right, the tent out there. So Yael came out to meet Sysra and she said to him, oh, turn to side, my lord, come on, don't be afraid, come inside. So, he went into her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

Hmm, she's hiding him. Oh, interesting. And he said to her, oh, man, I'm so thirsty. Could you please get me a drink of water? So, she opened up a little bottle, like a leather bottle of milk, and she gave him a drink, and she covered him up. And he said, listen, could you stand at the doorway of the tent? And if anybody comes and asks you and says, is anyone here, will you lie? You lie? And you must say no. So it's this little scene at the tent and now J.L.

this woman is standing at the door and she's guarding him and she's supposed to use deception. He wants her to be a snake. Yeah, he's true. Yeah. So, Yael, the wife of Hever the canine, took in her hand a tent peg, and a hammer. And she went quietly or softly to him. So he's hiding under the blanket. So she sneaks in, and his tummy's all full of warm milk. So he's all, you know, maybe he's napping. I mean, he just escaped a battle. You know what I mean?

Yeah, he must be exhausted. And so she sneaks in, She thinks that she's guarding her. And she sneaks in and she just imagine it. Like, where's his head in this blanket? I see the round mass. And she went through and just drove the peg right through his temple. It went through his head and into the grounds.

Oh, he was asleep, because he was exhausted. And of course, you should know that he died. It all, that'll happen. It's a side effect. Yeah, she crushes the head. She crushed his head. She crushed his head. Huh.

Yeah. Just some random woman out in her tent. Mountain snake at the snake found. Yep. Yeah. So the snakey captain of the crafty kings army was trying to get her to deceive. The one God, you know, God's chosen leader, who baroque,

but in fact, it's through the hand of this woman who does a counter deception. She countered deceives the deceiver and she kills him. Smashes his head. Where this is all Genesis 315, seed of the woman, smashing the head of the snake, but in this case, the seed of hero woman is Deborah. Yeah. But then it just shifts because the battle happens, cis-reflees, and now it's a new woman. Yeah, that's right.

Who ends up finishing him off? J.L. Yep, that's right. The mountain goat. Yep, yeah. Wife of a descendant of Cain. A descendant of... Oh yeah, what's the significance of that?

Well, part of it is that once you go, do you remember Cain had a choice? Yeah. He's not the embodiment of evil. Right. He's a fool of human who made a bad choice. And if you do good, you too will be exalted. Exactly.

Yeah. So as you go out and you meet the Cainites later on in the story, they split off and you have good Cainites who become allies with Israel, like in this story. And then you and you have good canites who become allies with Israel, like in this story. And then you also have stories of bad canites. You know what I was thinking about, when we were talking last time about Moses is, can kills his brother, is cast out into the wilderness in exile, but is given a sign of protection

by God. Yeah, right. Yeah. And Cain could have, I mean, the story is so opaque in a way. It's like, you know, what is the sign and what was he supposed to do with it? What he does is he builds a city. And later meditation, we did this in the theme of the city, because we talked about how building a city was him protecting himself. Yes. The sign was saying, God saying, I'll protect you. Right.

Complete protection. It's a sevenfold protection. And then I was thinking about with Moses, Moses kills a guy. Yes, he does. Yeah. It's a cane move. It's a totally a cane move. Yeah. Kills, he can now, it's not his brother. It's an Egyptian. Well, but Moses grew up with the Egyptian.

Moses is both an Egyptian and is related by that point. So it's kind of his brother. Yes, yes. He's exiled and God, we're not told he's given a sign, but he encounters God out in the wilderness. And what Moses does, what maybe you can imagine Cain could have done, which is out in the wilderness, like embrace this identity of going,

okay, I screwed up, I murdered my brother, but like I still want to do the right thing, and there was still more to the story for him. And now you get to this story where it's like, yeah, there's more to the story, the Canaanites, it's not over for him. Yeah, Canaanites. Canaanites. Canaanites. Yeah, it's hard. Sorry more of the story, the Canaanites. It's not over for them. Canaanites. Canaanites. Yeah, it's hard to say. Yeah, because there's Canaanites.

Who come from Ham? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's Canaanites. Canaanites. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, this is kind of a, it's a redemption of Canaan's line as it were. But what's interesting is it happens through, happens through a murder.

Right. Through killing. Right. But it's through killing a snake. It's as if she's doing, well, it's interesting is it happens through murder, through killing, but it's through killing a snake. It's as if she's doing, well, it's all being creatively inverted in many ways. But you're right, it's a descendant of Cain's house who actually becomes the snake crushing woman seed of the woman. So you're saying the story on its surface,

it's like, okay, so a woman graphically kills the bad guy. That's a cool story. Of course, I'm gonna pass that on to my kids. Like, that's a great story. Yeah. Now, I want to show a couple more things in this story, though, but tell me what you're feeling at the moment. Well, at the moment, you're just saying,

hey, she's crushing the head of the sneaky guy. The sneaky guy. She's doing crushing the head of the snake. The snake you got. She's doing what the seed of the woman was called to do. And so Yavin and Cicera are yet another iteration. They give us another image of the snake, of humans as agents of the snake. In this case, it's a multi-kingdom alliance to enslave and oppress another people group in their land.

And these deception and military might to do so. So this story comes to a partial conclusion by just saying in verse 23, on that day God subdued Yavin king of Canaan before the Israelites, the hand of the Israelites pressed harder and harder on Yavin until they destroyed him. You know, Karei. And just circle back, they were being enslaved by this guy. So in a way, they're finding their freedom.

Yeah, totally. They're just, they're just, they're, they're the exodus story. Yeah. That's the end of the story. Okay. Judges five comes back around and it retells that story in a poem. It's just like the Exodus Deliverance, where Exodus 14 is the story of the deliverance

through the waters, Exodus 15 is the poetic version. So even that itself is modeled after the Exodus story. And so it's a long complicated poem that there's actually a very lot of really archaic difficult to translate parts of the Hebrew. I just want to highlight a couple points in the story. In verse 19 of Judges 5, it focuses in on the battle, and this is how it retails the story. It says, the kings came, they fought. The kings of Canaan fought at Tottenach by the waters of Megidow, and they got no plunder and silver.

Megidow, that's not where they were though, right? Oh, yes, yeah. Mount Tavor and Megidow are not that far from each other. And there's Watties there? Well, there's a big plane, the planes of Megidoke, and that lead further east and then south, and it's a big plane, Mount Tabor as a mountain. Basically, it's a big plane with mountains surrounding it to make it a big mountain.

Like Valley. Valley. And Tabor, I'm trying to use my mental map, right now. So you have all of these steep ravines that go down into the valley, that if it rains up in the hills, the water will rush down, and that's the Wadi Kishon.

Okay. Okay. So the kings are fighting down in the valley. And then verse 20 says, the stars fought from heaven, from their courses, they fought against Cicero. So this was the idea of the God confused them, like the poet is saying, yeah, what was going on with that?

Stars were fighting. Yeah, heaven and earth. The battle on the land had some mirror of what was happening up in heaven. So even the stars, remember stars are the sons of Elohim, the host of heaven. We're participating in this battle against the sneaky armies of the working of the nations. So the Wadi torrent of Kishon swept them away. The raging Wadi torrent, Wadi torrent of Kishon. Sorry, are the stars fighting on behalf of Israel or on behalf of Cicero?

They're fighting against Cicero. Against, yeah, yeah. So I just want to notice the stars and then these flood waters, these raging torrential waters come against Cystria, heaven and Merin Genesis 1. So this is what I'm saying, like when you come to places later in the Hebrew Bible, so the Israelites fight against Cystria, but now we're being told that also the stars in the darkness above and these flood waters unleashed from them the mountains come raging into the valley and they were also fighting against Cicera. The forces of Chaos, just like the waters of the Sea of Reads,

were used to fight against Pharaoh to defeat him in the waters. So now Cicera is being defeated by the flood waters and by the stars. And just like Moses could take the Cicerpment in his hand, which is the staff, and use it as an instrument, like the stars which are often thought of as and can become these chaos creatures are actually fighting on their behalf. Yeah, yeah. So it's just the poem. It's almost as if the poem goes back and retells the story to give it a more cosmic frame,

cosmic layers of meaning using our classic chaos images from the story so far, darkness and flood waters. But in this case, the waters and the stars and the darkness are agents of Yahweh to defeat the sea dragon or the snake. Now, there's no word plays I can find in the story on any of the words for snake or dragon. But the Eden echoes were there, the chariots, the Pharaoh. Well, there was just being called a king. Oh, the wise king. The wise king. I mean, that is a bit of a hyperlink to the snake. Okay. All right. So check this out. Okay. So we made a video about Psalm 148, UNI and Kresa. Liftifting the horn, I saw this.

Yeah, a few years ago, she did the voice for that. And there was a couple, Jesse and Lea Roberts, who are the band, poor Bishop Hooper, who at that time they were going through and making a song, an original song for all of the 150 songs. And so we got to commission them to make Psalm 148 out of order. Out of order. Because they were only to like, I don't know, 92 or something. So they did that

for us. And I love listening to their renditions of the Psalms. I haven't listened to them when I run. And I remember the day I first heard their rendition of Psalm 83, and I was like, oh my gosh. And this is so rad. Okay. So watch how Psalm 83 works. Oh God, do not be silent. Don't keep silent or be still, oh God. For look, your enemies are roaring. Those who hate you lift up their head. They devise cunning schemes against your people. This is the exact same word used to describe the snake in the Garden of Rome. They consult together against those whom you protect. They say, come, let us annihilate them from being a nation. So the name of Israel is remembered no more.

They consult together with one purpose. They make a covenant against you. That's babbling, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, together as one. Yes, yep. Now who are we talking about here? We're talking about the tense of Edom,

the descendant of Issa, the Yishmailites, that's Ishmael, Moab, that's the son of Lot, Hagrites, that is the sons of Haggar. These are all of the rival siblings from Genesis, Ammon, who's from a son of Lot, on the leg who's the descendant of Issa, Felistia who come from the line of ham, and Tyre who are Canaanites living up on a island fortress. A Syria also has joined them, also a son of ham. It's a ten. Ten nations, and you met all of them in Genesis as rival siblings who respond with hostility to God's chosen one. Due to them, like you did to Midian, due as you did with Sisra and Yavin at the Wadi of Kishon, they were destroyed at Aindor, that is the fountain or the spring of door, which is also

spelled with letters of Eden, swapped around. They become like dung on the ground. Make them like oreb and zeb, and their chiefs like Zeva and Zalmanah. These were the enemies of Gideon. Oh, in the next story in judges. They said, let us take as our possession the pastures of God. Oh my God make them like tumbleweed, like chaff before the wind, like fire burns a forest and flame sets mountains on fire. Pursue them with your storm. Your tempest terrify them with your storm. Fill their faces with shame so that they may seek your name. Wait, what? How does that work? You destroy them so that they can seek your name. Is there destruction somehow? It's not permanent. Let them be ashamed and terrified.

Let them be humiliated and perish so that they may know that you, whose name is Yahweh, are most high over all the earth. That's the only thing. These are the Psalms that I'm just like, man, this is the deep end of the pool. I can't skip these. Yeah. I just start can't skip these. Yeah. I just, I start knowing these.

I'm like, yeah, not this one. Okay. You're looking for betters one day in your course. Yeah. Oh, that's the next song. Okay. So I made it all skip to that. Oh, okay, okay.

I'm going to do what I need. This poem is a meditation on all these cycles of humans and their tribes or nations that become agents of the snake. And their goal is to erase God's chosen images from the world. And when they do so, they become like that cunning snake in the garden. Right? They were described in the language of snake in verse three. They devised cunning schemes. Yeah. Yeah. And they're roaring like sea dragons. Wait, why like sea dragons? I mean, oh, well, roaring is a common description of either the wild animals in the wilderness, like a lion, or a lion, but then also like the wild seas, the chaos. They were.

They were. They were. Okay. And so God is going to defeat them with the flood storm. That's what verse 15 said. But then we have all of this stuff basically about, we've named every bad guy except Babylon in the list of ten nations. And what we're saying is, do to them what you did to, and then we name the stories of... I'm getting crushed.

Debra and Barak and then of Gideon. And if you look in those stories, the bad guys in those stories are all described in the language of Pharaoh or the snake. So we're backing up here. All these stories are really about one thing. They're about how humans become agents of the snake, and when they do so, they introduce chaos and de-creation into God's world. And so what God does is he unleashes the forces of de-creation on them to destroy them. The fire and the... He meets them with fire and the storm. Blood and fire are like the common de-creation motifs.

And this is the key thing in our last conversation. God uses the chaos waters of the reed sea to destroy Pharaoh, who's become an agent of the snake, who was killing people that they were killed by the God uses the chaos waters of the reed sea to destroy Pharaoh, who's become an agent of the snake, who was killing people in his own chaos waters, back throwing babies into the Nile. So it's measure for measure. God brings on the destroyer, the destruction that they have wreaked on others. But then there's that interesting little pivot at the end where it's like, destroy them forever so that they may know you and seek your name. What does that mean?

It means like those that are left, they're like, oh, I'm just the images right there. Somehow this destruction leads to a recognition even by the enemies of the name of the outweigh. So on one level, the poem makes you want to say, wow, okay, I want to be hyper aware that I don't end up in league with the snake. Take away number one. Don't ally with snakey figures. But of course, the Hebrew Bible has been telling us that everyone's gonna do it. That we all ally with the snake in large and small ways.

Yeah. So what this poem doesn't focus on is the deliver of the snake. It just describes God as the destroyer of the snake by its own destructive forces. And I think there are times when it's just good to focus on that thought and crushing the head. Yeah, that the God is on a mission to remove and deal with and bring an end to destructive human empires institutions that unleash de-creation into God's world. He won't have it.

Right. Now it raises the question of, well, who gets to call who? The snake. Right. And Jesus will have a lot to say about that as you go forward into the biblical story. But, you know, I've never had to live under an art military occupation. And so I don't actually know what it's like to pray this prayer from a place of deep feeling and solidarity with, but the people who wrote these poems lived under military occupation for centuries. And so who am I to tell them what they can't ask God to do or not or how? You're talking about this feeling of God like just wipe them out with your fire.

Turn them into chaff and tumbleweed. That in and of itself, if you are the one enslaved in the field, if you were the one being oppressed, like, you could be empathetic with that. Like, man, this violent corrupt king just needs to be taken down. But then the poem takes a weird turn as what you're saying, which is it goes, so that they will praise God. Yeah. And in what sense are they praising God?

Yeah. And the poem doesn't provide resolution to that. So that's another way of thinking about the ways of the snake in the world through humans, and a way of thinking about what God is doing and will do about it. That's judges. What we're going to look at next is a story that's really going to focus on the seed of the woman that God is going to raise up to defeat the snake on land or sea. And that's going to be in the story of David that we'll look at next. Okay.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we're talking about a famous iteration of the theme of the cast dragon. It's the story of David and Goliath. His humanness is clearly being deemphasized in his monstrous quality, sir, being brought to the fore. He has a Nechosha helmet on his head. Nechosha is the word for bronze, but it's spelled with the root letters of the word snake, and that word is going to use four times to describe Goliath. Today's episode was brought to you by our podcast team,

producer Cooper Peltz, associate producer Lindsay Ponder, lead editor, Dan Gummel, editor's Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey mixed this episode in Hannah Wu provided the annotations for our annotated podcast in Iraq. Additional music and sound design for this series were written and composed by Bible Project staff.

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