Theology in the Raw - Understanding Deborah (Judges 4): Prophetess, Judge, and Military Leader: Dr. Sandy Richter

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Dr. Sandra Richter (Ph.D. Harvard University) is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College and has formerly taught at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wesley Biblical Seminary, and Wheaton College. She’s the author of several books including one of my absolute favorite books on the Bible: The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. Sandy is also coming out with a fascinating study called Deborah: Unlikely Heroes and the Book of Judges, which becomes the basis for our scintillating conversation. Register for the Austin conference on sexualtiy (Sept 17-18) here: https://www.centerforfaith.com/programs/leadership-forums/faith-sexuality-and-gender-conference-live-in-austin-or-stream-online Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash ymx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw. We do have our two-day exiles conference in Denver happening October 4th to 5th. If you haven't registered and you want to attend, please do so. ASAP space is filling up. All the info is at theology in the raw.com. It's gonna be an awesome conference. Can't wait to see you there. My guest today is my good friend, Dr. Sandy Richter, who has a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Wheaton College, and currently serves as the Robert H. Gundrew Chair of Biblical Studies

at Westmont University. She is the author of one of my favorite all-time books on the Bible called The Epic of Eden, a Christian entry into the Old Testament. It's absolutely outstanding. And also, she's coming out with a forthcoming study called Deborah, Unlikely Heroes and the Book of Judges. It's a Bible study with a streaming video and that becomes the content of our conversation. We dig deep into Judges chapter four and chapter five to some extent, look at the story of the judge and prophetess Deborah, and then we ask broader questions about female prophets in the Old Testament and what implications that has for understanding women in leadership as a whole.

Please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Sandy Richter. Sandy Richter, first of all, you crushed it again at Exiles. That session I feel like on women powered of use, and we'll move on to what we're talking about today, but I just felt like that went so well just with how each talk followed with each other. Did you enjoy being there? Well, first of all, I'm so glad to hear that because I know I say this and I'm not stroking or anything.

You guys do such a good job. You really do. In doing that such a good job, you've got the ear of this generation and you've got the ear of this generation with a hermeneutic that cares more about what Jesus says we ought to be than what we say we ought to be. And I'm so grateful. So I'm really glad to hear you thought the session went well. I really enjoyed being there.

I always love the people I get to meet. And the audience is so responsive and getting to talk about women being human. Hey, it was fun. Don't you love like the audience is very energetic and yet they're very, they want the depth. It's almost like a blend being the best of like an academic world with the best of like a church world, I think, because it's just such a, such an intellectual audience, but they're not all, but they want like clear teaching and power and they want to be motivated and challenged. Yeah, when people start shouting amen and hallelujah when they recognize the parallel between Anuma Elish and Genesis Thornton, you just, you got to go for it. And that's honestly the other thing I love so much about exiles is, and about theology

and the raw, is that's what you're doing. You're taking the real meat of the issue and you're offering it to the lay person. And as you know, one of my greatest frustrations about academia is we only talk to each other. That doesn't serve the church. So I just find that vortex between the serious layperson and solid academic research. I mean that's my happy space. Well your book Epic of Eden, I mean that's how I first heard about you. I'm like oh my word this is so good. And my book, the reason why I cite, I was teaching Old Testament, I think I've done this many times, teaching Old Testament survey at

CWL University and I've like, there's some really good textbooks out there that do a good job giving the information. But at 19 year old is just going to be like slugging their way through it. They're going to skim through, you know, like, but your book was so engaging. I'm like, oh my word, this is not only giving the kind of content I want them to get, but it's a book that's so readable, especially for college students.

Thank you. It needs a second edition. It's in the queue. Is it still only the first edition? Yeah. Has this still sold well over the years? Like, do people use it as textbooks? I mean, that's good.

It's actually only escalating, which is kind of- Really? Yeah. And there's, like some of the illustrations have gone out of Vogue and some of the anthropological data is outdated, especially in the first chapter. The core issue of how to put your Bible together doesn't really change.

So- Right, right. Oh, it's so good. 2008, 2009? Yeah. So it's only 15 years old, wow. Don't remind me, because like if IVP is listening,

they're like, will you hurry up and do that second edition? I've never done a second edition. I don't know, that'd be hard for me. I feel like once I write a book, I don't, I want to move on to something else, not clean up my previous mess. I do too.

And I also agonize over every word. So if someone comes back and wants me to change a clause, I'm like, no. You're one of those. Yeah, I am one of those. All right. So you're coming out with a curriculum. Yep. What's the title? Is it,

I know it's on the book of Judges and Deborah in particular, right? Or what's the title of it? So all of these curriculums are titled Epic of Eden because it launched from the Epic of Eden. And then the subtitle, Deborah in the book of judges, unlikely heroes and the book of judges. They might've changed that to unlikely leaders. We'll see.

Unlikely leaders. I kind of like that a little bit. I kind of do too. Yeah. Hero is a little bit vague. Sansa the hero is not a good dude, but heroic things, I guess. And that's what I think is so interesting about the book of Judges in general is in the curriculum, I'll compare the era anthropologically to the wild west in American history. What I found so interesting in researching this book is that anthropological era, liminal space between one organized society and the next organized society is classically this time of kind of moral chaos

where the good guys and the bad guys are like three inches apart. You know, like shoot out at the OK Corral, who are actually the good guys? Or Tony Stark, you know, good guy, bad guy, the Hulk, that sort of thing. And it's actually a very repeated historical thing. So you say that the historical presentation

in the book of judges actually matches the historical data for what we know, like these kinds of things were happening, it's not just a literary kind of presentation. Yes, absolutely. And although we've got the literary presentation for sure, 12 judges, 12 cycles, and as we all know so well, that cycle just keeps repeating, which makes you sick to your stomach. You know, you wind up wanting to grab them by the shirt collar and say, well, you guys

just get it together. If you obey God, you'll keep the land and life will be ducky. But no, you keep wandering after other gods. That cycle is definitely given to us in a literary presentation. But this idea of times of transition, liminal space, going from one era of organized leadership, which for them was the pastoral nomadic experience under Moses' really strong leadership, and then entering into the time of monarchy, which will emerge under David's very strong leadership. That in-between era where you've got a lot of societal chaos, we can recreate that in

pretty much every civilization on the planet. Especially during this era, you're saying. Is this Iron Age 2? Oh, I forgot my- No, actually, you can reproduce it in the 19th century in the United States. You reproduce it in the transition from the clans of Scotland to the British monarchy.

Interesting. Interesting. Wow. I remember when I was teaching Old Testament Survey, I've got limited time to study every book. I've got 39 to get through. Perfect. But judges, I spent a lot of time with judges. I just found it on a literary level, so intentional, so creative.

And again, that's not the takeaway from the historicity, but just the way the author presents things are so little subtle things. You know, I mean, was it Daniel Block who said the theme is the Canaanization of Israel? You didn't drive out the Canaanites and now you're becoming like them. And then you have

the horrible incident in chapter 19 where it's basically they're doing worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Right. I don't know if Dan said that but that sounds very Dan Block-ish for sure. I find this very true as well that the book is so intentional. The literary structure is so solid. Twelve cycles. People always ask me too, does that mean there were only 12 judges? The answer is heck no. There were probably many,

many more in the several hundred years of this transitionary period. But our narrator chooses 12 to represent not only different eras, but to represent the different regions as well. If you look at the judges themselves on a map, every region of the promised land is represented. Of course, we know that 12 is one of our numbers. And we also wind up, as you've already alluded to, with not only the repeating cycle, like, oh my gosh, team, you know, obey God, gain territory, disobey God, lose territory. How clearer can I be? We also wind up with this cycle, you know, the siphon going down the drain and judges 19 is where the stuff hits the fan.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's go into chapter four. I got my Bible open and if anybody else wants to open the Bible as they can. Yeah. Why don't you just give us an overview of how Deborah is presented and how we should, we're going to go, I guess, probably begin deep in the text and then our kind of wider angle lens will be looking at how women are viewed and presented in the Old Testament,

specifically women prophets. Okay. Really have a lot of questions about that and then we'll see where that goes. How's that? Okay. Well, a lot of, a first question we could go with is, you know, Deborah herself. And Deborah winds up a very controversial figure

in current studies. I know that you're working on women in leadership and just came off this cool little sabbatical at Tyndale House. She's a really interesting character to pull out of the Old Testament because she is every inch a leader, and every inch a leader in a society that was actually much more resistant to leadership than ours is, female leadership than ours is, and much more resistant to female leadership than the New Testament was. Because we're looking at a patriarchal, patrilineal,

patrilocal culture, women don't lead publicly in Israel's societal structure. And yet Deborah comes shooting forward as this rock star. Yeah? And a lot of folk don't realize that she actually leads Israel for 45 years. And she's already a wife, she's already a mother, she's probably widowed by the time we pick up Judges Chapter 4. So this is not a new gig for her. She's not a flash in the pan. And she's also the only other judge besides Samuel, who is the rock star of rock stars, who is identified as a prophet. So she's a pretty cool kind of gal. In fact, in the curriculum, I compare her to Antiochie Wonder Woman. I don't really like the whole movie because I get bored of superheroes trying to kill

each other with supernatural powers because like what is the point? But the first like 10 minutes when the Amazons come riding out, 50-year-old women who look like, you know, professional athletes. I love it. You said a few things that I, uh, so my biggest question is if women in this kind of leadership role were very unique, if not would have been contested, how is she just, she just comes on the scene as if business as usual, like, oh yeah, by the way Deborah was judging Israel, not like, let me explain

why this is, you know, like, so just from a historical level and this is probably gonna involve some speculation, like how would a woman, Deborah, come to a place in this patriarchal-ish society where people are coming, well, I just read Carol Myers, almost screwed up. Oh, okay. Okay. It's the bad heterarchy.

Anyway, we're getting off track. Yeah, how'd she get there? Yeah, like just on a historical level, how would she come to a place where men are coming to her saying, hey, Debra, tell us what to do and we will submit to your leadership. Yeah.

And the business of her circuit, right, she has the palm tree of Deborah. Some of her detractors like to say that since she was meeting under a palm tree, she wasn't actually giving public advice. The logic of that escapes me. We've got lots of narrative in the Old Testament where a particular tree becomes a landmark. You know, Jacob and Abraham and Isaac are revisiting the oaks of Moriah, etc. So yeah, if you've ever seen Middle Eastern men argue about anything, 40 years of

dealing with water rights and border disputes and whose animal fell in a ditch, oh my gosh. Yeah, she's a tough chick. So that's part of the story that I love and I hope I elevate appropriately in the curriculum, she is not seen as an anomaly in the text. In fact, her position in the cycle of 12, think about this Preston, if she were an anomaly, if she were an affirmative action hire, she would be three, seven, ten, or twelve, right? Those are our numbers. She's four. There's nothing about four. She's just regular business. So what makes that possible? And one of the answers is that she is prophet and judge. In the Old Testament theocracy, we have God's hereditary offices and then we've got charismatic offices. And by charismatic, I don't simply mean speaking in tongues in your local congregation. I mean Holy Spirit authorized and empowered leaders. So in Israel's theocracy, we've got prophet,

priest, and king, right? The king is hereditary, the priest is hereditary, the prophet is not. The prophet's charismatic. Out of those three offices, the one that moves forward most fluidly into the New Covenant is prophet. Why? Because it's Holy Spirit-empowered. You can't be born a Christian and you can't be born a prophet. You have to be chosen and empowered. And once the Holy Spirit says, this one is mine, once the Holy Spirit says, I'm filling this one with my Holy Spirit in order to lead direct fight, who's going to argue? Yeah? So she is both prophet and judge, both charismatic rules. She is filled and empowered with the Holy Spirit. And even in the Iron Age, Israel

recognizes it and recognizes it, I'm going to assume because she's so effective. So get me back on track. That's one thing that- This is so incredibly helpful because I know we're going to start to get to more questions with women of leadership down the road, but that distinction between King, priest being hereditary, charismatic office being the prophet would fit within there. I've never heard that distinction that makes so much sense. And even as you carry those into the New Testament,

I'm just thinking out loud here. Yep. King, Jesus, right? That points to Jesus. Priest, we all become a kingdom of priests. Prophet kind of carries over in this similar function. You don't get the impression, and I know Wayne Grudem would probably disagree with this. He's done a lot of work on it. I interact with it. I don't quite agree with him on it, but I do think there's a lot more continuity

in the way the prophet is presented in the Old Testament and in the New. He wants to make a strong distinction between those. And I just, I don't, the way the prophets are presented in the New, beginning with even some women of the book, you know, Anna and others. And Luke's gospel, Philip's daughters,

and women prophesying in 1 Corinthians. You still get the sense that this is something categorically different than the Old Testament. And for me, my take is that the theocratic office of prophet concludes with the theocracy. You know, we don't wind up with another Moses or his spiritual offspring. In fact, every good Christian cult we know of, all of them claim that their leader is somehow carrying the theocratic office of the prophet. But I would argue, and you're the New Testament guy, so you have to correct me on this, that the office of the prophet gets translated into the office of the apostle in the New Testament, and that the gift of prophecy, and we do have the gift versus the office in the Old Covenant.

We've got Saul, who once he's filled with the Holy Spirit to carry out his functional role as king, he gives verbal utterance. We've got the elders under Moses back in Numbers 11. They're filled with the Holy Spirit. They give verbal utterance. That gift definitely carries forward. And 1 Corinthians 12-14 talks all about it. I think the office gets translated. You might be right. I guess, and I know we're getting off track, but I'll just, you know, we could put a little bow on this. That do have, you do, yeah, that distinction between the office of prophet versus people who prophesy. You get the impression in Corinthians that anybody could prophesy.

Um, while you do have, I mean, like in Ephesians four, two, three, and four, actually, where you have prophets and apostles, it seems like he's talking about office, some kind of listed side by side, and they're not synonymous. And you do have a few, and again, I've been only looking at it through the lens of women because that's the question I'm after, but you do have clearly women prophesying

along with pretty much loads of people, but you still do have women called prophets in a sense that seems like it is more of an office. Again, Philip's daughters. Yeah. I got to go back and look at the Greek. I don't know if it says who prophesied or who were prophets. I think that might be worth distinguishing.

You clearly have Anna, right? And Luke is a prophetess, not just, yeah. So what we would need to be able to do, I think, is recognize that the theocratic office of prophets in the Old Testament is going to have to transform in the new in some fashion because the theocracy closes. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. But we've still got that kind of authority and that kind of authority coming from the Holy Spirit, which is the backbone of my theology of women in leadership, that once we move to the new covenant, that the Holy Spirit declares loud and clear, I am the Lord of the church. I'm the one who distributes the gifts. Once I distribute a gift, your

job, O Church of mine, is to recognize, disciple, and deploy. That's your job. And if I choose a woman, I choose woman. And if I choose a man, I choose a man. If I choose a child, I choose a child. So knock yourselves out, team. I'm in charge. That's just a different angle that people often begin with rather than, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

Well, we'll come back to that. Let's keep going in Judges 4. So you also made a statement that she's married. I know there's a debate about the translation. Was she the wife of Lapidote or a woman of torches, a woman of fire, a fiery woman, as one scholar said. Can you maybe explain that debate just to people? Because they're looking at their English translation. They're like, I don't see the debate.

Yeah, I honestly don't see a debate there either. It would be a standard introductory formula for any woman in the ancient world to tell you who her husband was. Just like it would be a standard introduction of a man being raised to an office to tell you who his father was, right? Because again, it's a patrilineal society. And for a woman, once she transfers from her father's fiduciary responsibility, she becomes her husband's fiduciary responsibility. That's the structure of their society. Now the Holy Spirit, as we know well, can work inside the structure of any society. So for our narrator to announce that she's the wife of Lapidote, I think is completely predictable. What I do like about his name though, the torches,

I think there's a bit of a wordplay going on between Baruch and Lapidote. If you go over to Nahum and read the prophet's words about the charging chariots of Assyria that are wiping out the nations. The prophet speaks of the wheels of the chariots with both terms, flashes of light, lightning, sparks of metal wheels against the stones. I think, sorry, I said Baruch, for both Barak and Lapidote, they've got military names. And I would even dare speculate that she is a military widow. It's total speculation, but I like it all the same.

So she's, when you asked me about her being unusual, she always an unlikely leader. And that's why I wanted that in the title. Because when I offer curriculum like this to the church, I want to remind everyone sitting in the pew that the Holy Spirit can choose them just as much as he's chosen you or he's chosen me. And that's how the empowerment of the Holy Spirit works. Ultimately, we're all unlikely leaders. And yes, she is unlikely. And for her to step forward and have that type of authority type of authority is pretty cool. She's also being introduced as a wife. Unless she's infertile, she is also a mother in this ancient world. And that kind of makes her the ultimate working mom too. So we've got Deborah, who's busy telling the nation how to run itself. Then we're going to have JL as well,

who is another radically unlikely leader. Then we're going to have a cameo appearance from Cicera's mother, who is yet another intriguing female character. This episode is sponsored by the Pore Over podcast. Oh, my word. I love the Pore Over podcast. It is a trustworthy news resource guiding people toward eternal hope. It's not Republican, it's not Democrat, it's not conservative, it's not liberal. Instead, it is a Christ-centered summary of the major events going on in politics and in culture. Like most of you, I am so tired of news outlets that are so clearly biased toward the right or to the left.

I wanna stay informed with what's going on, but I hate how traditional news outlets shape my heart and try to win me to a certain side. I mean, if you don't believe me, just ask yourself this question. After listening I mean, if you don't believe me, just ask yourself this question. After listening to say, I don't know, CNN or Fox News for like 30 minutes,

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who might vote differently than you. Instead, check out and subscribe to the Pore Over podcast in your favorite podcast app. Is there any significance to Deborah being called a mother in Israel in chapter five? Does that point to her motherhood or is that saying she, is that convey, what's that, well, yeah, what's that trying to convey? What does that mean? Well, it's poetry, right? Because as you know, Chapter 4 is a just the facts, ma'am kind of approach to telling

the story. And then unlike any other judge's tale, we have this beautiful piece of old poetry, this epic presentation. And epic meaning like Beowulf, kind of epic, and it's beautiful. And in the curriculum, they actually hired two professional voice actors to reenact the poem, and that was fun. I hope it gets traction the way it did in the studio. It's really quite beautiful. Okay, so Mother in Israel, I think it is a patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal, tribal celebration of certainly who she is, but also this,

and again, I'm speculating a bit, this grizzly bear presentation of a mother's stance toward her children. And you're a dad, and I'm sure you've seen Chris take that posture once or twice. That's a tough one. I have a somewhat famous story in family lore of literally leaping in front of a truck. Wow.

It was, yeah, if you want that story, I'll tell it. Wait, is you leaping in front of a truck? Yeah. So there I was in the Walmart parking lot, doing what moms do, right? I've done the weekly grocery shopping. I've got a cart loaded out the wazoo. I've got my six-year-old on one side, and her instructions are, don't let go of the grocery cart.

You've been there. And then I've got my three-year-old holding my hand on the other side, and I'm pushing the cart with one hand, trying to navigate through the parking lot. And in order to get my three and six-year-old through the grocery shopping experience, I bought them both a can of Flarp. You know what Flarp is?

You know what Flarp is? Sounds like spammers. It looks like Play-Doh. It comes in this little canister. Oh, okay. But when you stick your finger in and pull it out, it makes socially inappropriate noises. My kid loved flarp. So Elise, in all of her beautiful curly-headed desk,

is gripping onto her flarp as the greatest gift of all gifts. And as she's trotting along next to me, she drops her can of Flarp. And so she breaks away from my hand and goes sprinting across the parking lot to grab her Flarp as it's rolling across the lane. At the same moment, this massive SUV comes rolling down the lane and the mom in the SUV, hopefully she would have stopped. But my kid was little, you know, below the bumper type thing. And yeah, jumped in front of the truck, arms raised, stop.

So it's kind of a famous story. So my boy. How close, how close, wait, or is it like, did it hit you or really close? It did not hit me, but I remember the moment. And I remember. But you're willing, you're willing to take the hit though. What else would you do?

Of course you would, right? Of course you would. And you wouldn't even think twice about it, which is the beauty of being a parent. One of the reasons I think that God uses that metaphor when he communicates himself to us. So, Mother in Israel is conveying the strength behind motherhood, not like, say, for instance, the nurturing or tenderness. Not that those are good virtues too, but... I mean, the whole context in chapter five or seven where it says she's a mother in Israel

is the whole seed, the whole impetus for the war. I mean, you know... Yep, absolutely. And until I arose a mother in Israel, and again, our voice actor has a British accent, so it's only better, right? So yes, I definitely see her being presented as this Margaret Thatcher, Ruth Bader Ginsburg kind of character who steps in front of her nation and rescues them from the opponent, which is the thesis of

the book of Judges. There's a cycle in the book of Judges where these people get themselves into trouble over and over again because they failed to keep the covenant. And when they failed to keep the covenant, God's promised response in that covenant is foreign oppression. And so the Moabites, the Amalekites, the, you know, the Canaanites coming from Hatsor begin to oppress the people. It finally catches their attention. They cry, they repent, they cry out for help, and God raises up a military leader to defend them. The unique thing about Deborah and our friends who were

not very supportive of women in leadership really capitalize on this is that she's not actually a military figure and that would be normative in the ancient world. Women don't go to battle. The Amazons are a fiction and he even the ancient world knew they were a fiction. There are a few female fighting forces, and I do tag them in the curriculum. But typically, women have 15, 20% less upper body strength than men. Our best service is not in handing and combat. So she doesn't actually go on the battlefield, but she is the commander in chief. And her relationship with Barack is part of why folks

question both her leadership and Barack's character, basically. which becomes, this becomes the fighting words in the story of Deborah. Yeah, I've heard people say she's not a military leader. I mean, what general of the army goes into battle in our military, you know, our commander in chief has never left his padded White House to go, I mean, not definitely, but, and also, I mean, she says, in verse seven, I will lure Sisera, commander of Yeban's army, chariots and his

infantry to fight against you. And I will, I will hand him over to you. That sounds like she's participating significantly in the battle, whether, I don't know, like to say that she's not. She's, and what, what you just quoted is the war oracle, which is the responsibility of the prophet, right? That the prophet gives the war oracle to her commanding officers, and this is Yahweh speaking. And what's fun too is the business about flooring the Canaanites out, this word gets repeated that Barak is commanded to call up his soldiers, and Yahweh says, and then I will call up Cicero's forces. So, as you said, the book is extremely well structured and the poetry is beautiful. Thank you for making the point that commander-in-chiefs do not go down on the battlefield. They're too valuable, right?

They stand up on the hill and they watch the battle and they give commands. But on top of that, even Moses, who at one point in time was a warrior, as he ages, he does not go down into the battle. But that does not diminish his leadership status. Well, just to add to, I don't see the need, if people are motivated by some moderate question about women in ministry, I just think that's not, you don't need to say she didn't go into like, even if she was a mighty warrior, that doesn't mean she should be a pastor or like that, is that you could draw a direct line to like, you know, like,

I don't think you need to say out of some theological motivation that she wasn't, you know, a military leader. It just seems like you're stretching the text in service of something that you don't need to even argue for. Well, then, as I know you know, the argument then moves forward that because she did not go to battle and Barack requested her presence in the battle, that he is somehow a coward. This is what I was actually raised on as a woman with gifting and ambitions toward leadership. The argument goes that when Barak when Barack asks her to go to accompany him into the battle, that he is expressing his cowardice, and that she is forced into a leadership position because there are no men who are willing to stand up and fight. And so when she responds, well, of course, I'll go with you, but know that the ultimate honor of this battle

is not going to be yours. And this is in Judges 4-8, that we're supposed to conclude that Barak's punishment for his cowardice is that Deborah's going to get the glory for this victory. And there are a whole bunch of folks who are still preaching this from the pulpit. So that's what's what's wrong with that reading? Because yeah, that's how I've always read the passage too. I mean, I've been rereading it more recently, just like a lot of my assumptions are kind of like being challenged recently. So good deal Okay. So, first of all, he asks Debra to go with him. So how does that scene start?

Well, Debra's down on the plain of Ephraim, Benjamin. She's down south. So when she summons Barak, she is summoning him from north of the Jezreel Valley. And the Jezreel Valley is going to be the point of contest for this great battle. Each battle in the book of Judges is focused in a particular region. This battle is focused in the Jezreel, and so he's north of the valley. So when she summons him, and it's not just sending him a post-it note or something. She summons him as the commander and chief of Israel for him to cross enemy lines and appear before her. And first of all, we need

to pay attention to the fact that Barak, a seasoned military commander, responds to that summons with yes ma'am. So he crosses over Jabin and Cicero's territory to appear before her. When he appears, she gives him the war oracle, which is what every prophet does. It's what Samuel does. It's what Moses does with Joshua. It's what Isaiah does with Hezekiah. She offers the war oracle. He says, yes, ma'am. And then he requests for her to come with him. Why does he do that? That's our first question.

Does he do it because he's a coward? Well, if he does it because he's a coward, then that makes Joshua a coward. It makes Hezekiah a coward. It makes Saul and David a coward because they do the exact same thing. You invite the prophet to come with you because in the military structure of Israel, everyone knows that if Yahweh has approved this battle, we're going to win.

If Yahweh has not approved this battle, we're going down. And this particular battle, as we will see in our study of the passage, is absolutely impossible. We're going to have a volunteer army of farmers turned warriors with makeshift weaponry taking on a chariotry of 900 professional charioteers. Israel does not have a snowball's chance and Barak knows that. And yet his response to Deborah is yes ma'am. And then he asked the prophet to come with him.

That is not unusual. Then when the prophet comes with him, we're gonna see that Barak summons 10,000 men of Naftali. And that just makes my heart swell. Because the men of Naftali and Zebulun and Issachar, who should be in control of the Jezreel, and they've lost the Jezreel to the Canaanites under Jabin and Sisra, they know they don't have a snowball's chance. And yet, Barak's influence,

his leadership among these people is so profound that it kind of reminds me of the disciples, let's go to Jerusalem and die with him. Because if Barak says fight, we'll fight. And so, they gather on the backside of Mount Tabor and Deborah's in the camp. And she's in the camp because she gives the visual evidence that the prophet is here. Yahweh's with us. And when she drops the flag, we're gonna rush.

And we're gonna rush Sisera and we're all gonna go down, but we're gonna go down swinging. And I don't see cowardice anywhere in that story. What about her response in verse nine when she says, okay, I'll go with you, but you will receive no honor. Yeah. It seems to be like a punishment for something he did wrong. Right, right, right.

Okay. So is it a punishment or is it prophecy? And I'm going to say it's a prophecy. First of all, the narrator who tells his story well leads you and I thinking that, oh, Barack's not going to get the honor for this battle. It must be Deborah who's going to get the honor for this battle. But it's not Deborah who gets the honor for this battle.

Rather, in a crazy plot twist, we have this woman literally coming out of the wings. She is a pastoral nomad living among agriculturalists. She is a foreigner living among the tribes of Israel. She is the wife of a turncoat who has betrayed his allegiances to Israel and revealed their position on the backside of Mount Tabor. And she's the one who's going to step forward and use a domestic weapon.

I love this. It's like tangled in the frying pan. You know what I'm... And she takes out the most dangerous man in the country with a tent peg. Awesome. So, okay, backing up just a little bit. In this warrior culture, the death blow to the opposing commanding officer is where the great glory comes from.

So like with David and Goliath, the fact that he hit Goliath in the head is great, but the point where the armies go crazy is when he goes running over, grabs Goliath's sword from Goliath's hand, and cuts off his head. That's the death blow. The death blow of my champion against your champion. So of course, Barak wants the death blow. That's why he's chasing Sisera from the battle to find him. That's the whole point. And the prophet says, yeah, I'm going to go with you. We have Yahweh's approval. You are

going to win this battle. I promise you, although it looks absolutely impossible. But heads up, Barak, the death blow is going to come out of the wings. So, I don't see any of this as a disciplinary declaration, especially because Barak is so celebrated in chapter five. Rather, what I see here is the kind of partnership we see between Joshua and Moses, the kind of partnership we see between David and Samuel. And unlike some of our failed leaders, we see that Barack fully understands the role of the prophet. And his only response to her is, yes, ma'am, no ma'am, how high do you want me to jump ma'am? That's what I see.

So, so the people that say he's a coward, are they, is there plight that this is such an anomaly that we should never see anything normative out of it that sure, if every man is a coward, then we can have women rise up and lead. But if men are exercising their headship, their leadership, then women shouldn't be stepping up and leading. Is that kind of the byproduct of saying he's a coward? I know that what people end up reading. Cause I don't see, even if he wasn't coward, I could say two things can be true at the same time.

He is a coward and she also is a very qualified leader too. Like those could both be true. I'm not saying, you know. Yeah. No, no, no. I see your point and it's a good point to make. Yeah. The argument flows that she is an anomaly.

The business of her leading 45 years always gets kind of pushed to the side. There's only this one event, this one battle. And in that one battle, the only reason she has to step forward is because Barack won't. That's pretty much the way the argument goes. And it is true that Deborah only gets press on this one battle, but Jonah only gets press on one whale swallowing. And with that whale swallowing, it's a very big event. It deserves our recognition, but we know that Jonah was a career prophet in the Northern Kingdom. He gave slews of oracles. He interacted with the kings on a regular basis, but we don't get any of that report. All we get is this

one critical event that belongs in the canon because it becomes a story that matters. It becomes a story that is paradigmatic for the people of God as we move into our futures. And I would say that's the great payoff of the curriculum and why I want to get it into the hands of the folks sitting in the pews. If Deborah Barak, who are professionals of a sort, JL can step forward and lead, can be empowered by the Holy Spirit to push back the opponents of the kingdom

and gain territory that should belong to the kingdom and instead is in enemy hands. Well, what can we do? What can we do? That's good. That's good. Well, judges, why not six of them be female? Like, well, in a sense there is honest, just a societal level.

It would be more of an anomaly for a woman to, I'm thinking like a parallel, a woman to climb the ranks to be so respected as a judge, as a military leader to go to summon the general, the general says, okay, like that is very unique in that culture, right? Or would it be similar to like a woman in 1939, whatever, like, pre-60ss becoming a CEO of a corporate company, you know.

It would be. I know if maybe there's an example. A Margaret. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She would have to be like, I mean, every step of the way, just excelling, like just the odds are against you, but you're just constantly proving yourself, going above and beyond the expectations in every case to be able to get to apply to where people said, well, we can't deny the effectiveness here.

Yes, and I do think that, and I do think it's unusual, but I also recognize that we, our narrator has only chosen 12 judges out of who knows how many. So it is quite possible there were other female judges and we just don't know about them. But your point is well made. She's not the normative choice. But what is also interesting in that cycle that is the book of judges, we start off with one or two who are exemplary. You know, Joshua is really the first judge. Then we have Othniel, who is this perfect image of what a judge should be. Then we have Ehud and Shamgar, who are a little dicey, but they're morally sound. And then we have Deborah, who is completely morally sound.

Debra, who is completely morally sound. Yeah. There's no flaws with Debra's right with Deborah with the other ones. He had, yeah, there's he's left hand. I'm not that immoral, but it's just kind of odd. And then he keeps running past these idols and Gilgames like, well, why are there still idols here? You know, like there's this little subtle hints that this guy is not perfect. He's good.

He's a lot better than the judges that come after, you know, but like, but Deborah doesn't have anything like that, right? No, she is given a monochromatic presentation, which is very unusual. Othniel would be the only other that gets full approval that I know of. But from that point on, our judges start getting wilder and wilder and wilder. And that's where this comparison to the Wild West comes in. We wind up with folks like Avi Mellick, like Samson, who are such a mixed bag.

And yes, they step forward in a time of crisis and we're so grateful, but just like the Hulk, maybe a little bit like Tony Stark and a bit like Wyatt Earp. Okay, we're really glad they showed up in a time of crisis, but do we really want them next door? You know? I'm glad I can call you when I need you, but I'm not inviting you for Thanksgiving. You know, that sort of person.

Now that doesn't, it almost, I always thought that each judge gets progressively worse. So if we, if we begin with Othniel, he's kind of a paradigmatic judge, right? Um, and then Eva just a little bit, you know, some shady stuff. And then you go to, let's just skip Deborah for a second. You go to Gideon and he does some shady stuff, especially the chapters. What was it, eight? The vengeance and like, I don't know.

And that is given name is Baal. You know, kind of an issue. So it, Dadwell doesn't fit that pattern. It's like we go down one step, back up, and then down, down, down, down, down, down. Morally speaking, how they're presented. Is that, is there, am I reading into that too much or? It depends who you're reading, which of the judges' guys you're reading. Some of them,

some of them see clusters of judges. Some of them see a steady decline. It could be from the narrator's perspective that if we're going to go with the decline, Ehud is a left-handed assassin. Although being left-handed, the left-handed slingers of Benjamin are elevated military men, right? They're like Green Beret. They have special skills. So in some ways, being left-handed, in many ways being left-handed is actually a

great advantage for him. Lawson Stone's got a great little JBL article on Ehud, the left-handed assassin, and he actually does the research on what type of blade he's carrying and why it can be hidden and what the death blow was. Like he talked to a trauma surgeon to figure out exactly what it's very interesting. It could be from our narrator's perspective that the fact that she's a woman is a part of this deterioration. That's what I always grew up. Not that that's a moral. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if anybody said that. That's just, and it not, not obvious, obviously not, not like that. That's a morally deficient category, but it's, it's some kind of anomaly showing.

I guess it would go back to Barak being cowardice and therefore God had to use a woman because he couldn't find a good man. So it's, it's more of a societal critique than an individual critique necessarily. Um, but again, I don't know. That's just kind of what societal critique than an individual critique necessarily. But again, I don't know. That's just kind of what was always rolling around the back of my head as I thought about the steady decline of the judges. But she demonstrates, as you said, no moral failures and no failures in leadership. Right, right.

And especially at the moment when everything matters. And I'm not going to give away the battle story. It's one of the most exciting military strategies of the entire Old Testament. I mean, the battle scene is so freaking cool because of all the stuff that takes place. But there she is on the backside of Mount Tabor. And I keep saying the backside because Cicero and his forces are south across the Jezreel. So he's got his scouts and his spies out and about. And when Barak summons 10,000 men, it's kind of hard to miss 10,000 men unless you're basically the guerrilla fighters of the Scottish Highland clans, which is what I see Israel to be. And

what they've done is they've mustered on the backside of Tabor because Sisera can only see the front side of Tabor from where he is positioned in Megiddo. And Deborah's in the camp. And the great crisis of the narrative is that this guy, Heber, which also he just comes in narratively out of left field, like, who are you? Heber, who is supposed to be an ally of the Israelites, he is a kin with Moses' in-laws, so he should be dedicated to them, has instead thrown in his lot with Jabin and Sisra. And because of his positioning, just south of the Sea of Galilee, he sees the muster, at the Sea of Galilee, he sees the muster and he reveals it to Sisera. So our team loses the element of surprise. They're already outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned.

There's no question about that. And it's like a Braveheart encounter. We're all going to die. But Deborah says, go, so we're going to go. But then they lose the element of surprise. And it's at that moment, the all is lost moment, when Sisera anticipates the charge and sends his forces out, that Deborah turns to Barak and says, now is the time. This is the moment of your glory, Captain Charge. And what I love about the story on top of a thousand other things is that Barack is a professional military

man. He's looking at the strategy. He's looking at the battlefield. He's looking at his opponent. And he's like prophetess Deborah. I respect you with every ounce of my being, but we are all going to die if I do what you tell me to do. And she basically says, is there a problem, Captain? And he says, no, ma'am. And he charges. And the 10,000 charge with him, which stirs up the battle of Gondor in my heart and Rodan riding in front of the troops to death to death. There's no way they're going to win this battle

unless Yahweh shows up. And you know, isn't that the way all of these great moments in Israelite history go? The Jordan River does not stop flowing until the priests' feet hit the water. The Red River does not stop flowing until the priest's feet hit the water. The Red Sea does not part until Pharaoh is breathing down the back of Moses' neck and Cicero's horses are not interrupted until the men of Naftali and Zebulon are already on the battlefield, ready to get trampled by his chariot forces.

Man, you make it come alive. That's my job. It was so good. I love that. You know, and the author is just so funny. Sometimes Yale when sister is lying late, oh yeah. She hammered the peg into his temple and, and, and drove it under the ground. Oh, and he died. I'm like, yeah, you think it's just so descriptive. Okay. Fun, fun story. I test drove this curriculum, meaning I taught it in a bunch of churches before we filmed it. And that's, that's my standard practice. So a shout out to all of those wonderful churches that were willing to be guinea pigs. And one church out in Richmond, Texas, one of the women in the crowd was a trauma surgery nurse. And so it's Texas, right? So when the study's over,

we're all going to put on sundresses and heels and have barbecue, right? So we're standing out in the backyard, we're chatting, we got our little iced tea going. And she's like, okay, Sandy, got a question for you. And I notice that this woman in her sundress has got bigger biceps than I have ever been able to produce in my garage bench press. And I'm just kind of looking at this.

I haven't said anything yet. I don't really know her. And she's like, okay, this is what I do for a living. I stand in operating rooms and I assist surgeons as they open up people's skulls. That's what I do. And we use buzz saws. And the buzz saws regularly get stuck

because skulls are small is really- So hard. And she's like, so I'm thinking about this story and I'm thinking about a 10 peg. Okay, there are only a few places she could put that 10 peg through. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've just found my resource for the story.

And as she's talking, apparently the only two places, three places, she thinks the tent peg could go through. By the way, tent pegs for Bedouin tents are about 18 inches long. They're not little Coleman tent pegs. Is either through the soft spot of the temple, through the ear, or through the mouth.

Oh, don't tell me the mouth. If you do the cognate work on the word we use for skull in the Hebrew Bible, Ugaritic picks it up as well. It could be the mouth. So my translation says temple, the Hebrew word translated temple could be mouth there. It could be. It's it, it, it could really be anywhere in the head, but mouth is a very good candidate and I'm going to have confidence in my emergency room, brain surgeon, nurse and go for that.

That's like some serious mad max stuff going on here, right? Yeah. But trust me, think about this for a minute. OK, we got JL, right? She's a foreigner, so already an outsider. She's a pastoralist. Our Israelites are farmers by now. Her husband's a traitor.

Yeah? She lives her life milking sheep, wrestling her kids into obedience, weaving textiles. She's not used to being a lead character. And here she is hanging out in her kitchen one day, and the most dangerous man in the country comes sprinting to her tent, absolutely exhausted, covered in blood. He's been running for miles and demands shelter. She hides him in her tent. Is that the main tent or is it the women's tent? She puts a rug or a blanket over his head,

gives him milk because every mom knows you can save the world with yogurt, you know? And he falls asleep. I can just see this gal. She's out front of her tent. She's pacing back and forth. Yeah, I've got him. I've got him. He's in my tent asleep. Now, what am I going to do with him? Yeah. She's waiting for Barack. Barack isn't there. Her husband could come in from the field any minute.

She wants him down because I think she's a patriot. What is she going to do? And so our commander in chief of the domestic space looks over to the side of the tent and sees the domestic tool that she knows how to use. And she sees the biceps that she knows how to use. Yeah. And she grabs herself the hammer and the stake that she has used a thousand times, and she takes out the bad guy. She's a real rock star. And again, when we think about the people in the pew, I've got myself a hammer, I've

got myself a tin peg. I don't have a PhD. I don't have pastoral credentials. I'm not good at public speaking, but I see that territory that should belong to the kingdom of God and doesn't belong to the kingdom of God. And what am I going to do about it? And that's the thesis, really, of the curriculum. We're going to slow it down to one. Oh, my word, Sandy.

I want to stop here, but I have more questions because the other one, a little bit more. Oh, I just, can you, can you speak briefly to women prophets as a whole then, because this is one of a few, uh, there's four, we have four female prophets by name, Miriam, Deborah hold that and Noah, Daya people often don't recognize her. You have the unnamed prophetess in Isaiah 8.3. You have women who prophesy, Ezekiel 13.

Joel talks to her daughters who will prophesy. So there's, you know, there's not many compared to how many male prophets there are. I guess there's two ways to look at this question. One would be like, you have women prophets. Holda especially, you have, she just comes on the scene like, of course we need to go to Holda and Josiah, you know, he finds the book of the law, they're reading it, apparently they don't really like, what does this

mean? I don't know, we need to go find a prophet to tell us what it means. So he sends an entourage of five very high status leaders to go have like an elder meeting to sit at the feet of Holden and say, what does this mean? It was a prophecy. Like, thank you. You know, okay. No, no, like Deborah, there's no, like, uh, there's nothing seen as odd about the fact that Holden is a woman and she's pregnant, she's said to just

like any other male prophet. Um, at the same time, why is there only one of, why were they, you know, there's a few, not many. So what are we, there's two different angles we can look at it like, oh, well, there's only a few women prophets, but then it's like, there's a few women prophets in a patriarchal society. How do we think through this?

Okay, so I ask the same questions. And when I look at people like Debra and Hulda in particular, Hulda really actually stuns me because I know that Josiah has got Jeremiah in his back pocket. I know that Jeremiah is Josiah's professional court prophet. And I know that Hulda is spending her life essentially working in retail, right? She runs the king's wardrobe. That's her job. And yet she's recognized as having this unique gift.

And Josiah doesn't call Jeremiah, he calls Huldah. So that says something really significant about her gifting. And you know that what I do on the technical side of my life is the Deuteronomistic history. And this moment when Josiah recovers the book of the law is absolutely critical to the provenance of the book of Deuteronomy and the shape of the deuteristic history. So the fact that she's called forward as a main character at this moment should really give us pause. Deborah being called forward in the book of Judges should give us pause.

Martha and Mary being called forward. The fact that Mary and Elizabeth are the first to testify to the incarnation of the Christ. So I agree with you that there are not a lot of women in the mix. And especially from a modern perspective, we could say that there are anomalies that could be dismissed. We could go that direction. But honestly, I think we need to go the other direction, which is in their society,

they are far more anomalous than they are in our society. So the fact that there are any women showing up should shout at us. And the fact that the narrator, this is another big thing, and I actually said this in Exiles, it's not just the fact that Deborah did, this is another big thing, and I actually said this in exiles, it's not just the fact that Deborah did this or that Huldah did this. It's the fact that the biblical narrator records this because we can be pretty darn sure that all of the biblical writers are male. The only one I have any questions about is the Book of Hebrews. And I'm still holding out for Priscilla.

You guys have a great wall on that. But otherwise, these are male writers. And the fact that a male writer, a male historian, a male professional political historian hired by King Josiah to tell the story of the nation, pulls out a backstage and puts her in front of the audience, makes sure that Deborah makes the cut of the 12. I think this says a great deal. Is there any significance?

I don't want to read too much into the text, but I don't want to read not enough out of the text either. Is there any significance that in Deuteronomic history, according to, I think it was Hugh Williamson, Deborah is the first name prophet and Holda is the last name prophet. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That is very cool.

I should send you this article. And Deborah is styled upon Samuel. Absolutely. this article and Deborah is styled upon Samuel. Yes, absolutely. And Deborah, and hold that, there's some Moses, the prophet like unto me, the prophet like unto Moses, Deuteronomy 18 stuff, because in the way the Kingsry tells that story, there's a lot of Deuteronomy, the first part of Deuteronomy 18 kind of being reversed,

like, you know, to tear you down of statues and all these things. So you have some somewhat vague or distant imagery of Moses, of Samuel, he's got a big time prophets. And if they do so, they envelope the whole prophetic corpus and do it on a history that would be, I need to double check it. I'll send you my stuff on it.

It's Hugh, you know Hugh Williamson, right? I respect everything he's written. So thank you. I would love to read that. Yeah. Yeah, it's really fascinating. Well, and I do- So I don't know if that,

that could be a subtle whisper of like, and then the first two prophetic, the main prophetic voices when the New Testament opens are- Yeah, are women. Women, you know, so I don't know. The fact that women are able to be empowered by the Holy Spirit are therefore,

through the lens of the character of God, can lead effectively. There is no moral censure of their positions of leadership. I think that speaks volumes. Are they unusual? Yes. Are women in those levels of leadership unusual in today's world?

Yes. A major reason being we're the only ones who can have babies and we've never raised them. And I'm sorry, but any mother worth her salt puts her children first, which means that career gets compromised. I'm a testimony of that. But that doesn't communicate that it is moral, that it is a violation of the kingdom, that's

a violation of God's character. Rather, the fact that these women keep showing up in these critical positions critiquing and censuring the cultures and societal norms from which they emerge should speak volumes to us. Why were priests always men? Why aren't there any female priests? I think we talked offline about we need to understand the nature of priesthood. Right. So Israel's theocracy, and that is the big difference between the Old Covenant and the New, is that we don't have a theocracy.

And the folks who are most guilty of Christian nationalism and so many other ills that beset us these days are busy trying to make the United States of America a theocracy. Okay, the new covenant, if we're a theocracy, our prophet, priest, and king, his name is Jesus and he's reigning from the right hand of the father. So in this new covenant, we do not have hereditary human officers, but in Israel's covenant, they did. So, the dynasty of David is hereditary, and this is a patrilineal culture, meaning that the inheritance comes through the male line. So, only sons could inherit the throne. The priesthood is also a hereditary covenant coming through the tribe of Levi and the high priests through Aaron, and you have to be born a priest.

And by the way, if you're going to look at the primary sources of corruption in Israel's leadership, it's the kings and the priests. The prophets who are charismatically empowered to step forward and lead, not only are they not the source of corruption, they are the ones who have the authority to call out the king. They are the most powerful figure in Israel's theocracy. Now real quick, so even if the priesthood is hereditary from the tribe of Levi, there's still women who are Levi. It's like why- Yeah. Again, there's societal norm. Everything goes through the male line.

Okay. Oh, okay. But we've got God adapting to and critiquing culture. And that's what he's doing throughout the great story of redemption. Of course, those cultures are shifting, so the critique is shifting. One of my favorite points of critique actually goes back to Genesis chapter 2. Yeah? Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, she'll be called woman because she comes out of man. So a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. Well Israelite culture, Iron Age culture, men didn't do any leaving.

The boys grew up in their father's household, they stayed in their father's household, the wives came to them. So even in this earliest declaration of a patrilineal culture where the men have all of the advantages, the Almighty is saying to that young man, hey, dude, you see that girl standing next to you? From this point forward, she is your primary kinship allegiance. And I know you're going to be tempted to continue to make your primary allegiance to your dad and of course to your mom who makes chocolate chip cookies exactly the way you like them. But from this point forward, that young woman is your primary kinship alliance. You will leave in cleave, sir. So that is a critique

right there. And there are many, many of them, like David getting chosen as king. He is the eighth born. He should be inheriting a granola bar and a juice box and done with it. And instead he's elevated to inherit the entire nation. So Yahweh is regularly critiquing this culture, but he's also working with it. Sandy, I could talk to you for hours. I feel like I need to send Harvard University a check for letting us tap into your PhD. I could talk to you all day too.

President, thank you for what you do. Thank you for what you do. Yeah, and thanks for honoring me by giving this new curriculum a plug. I do think it's a story that matters. Absolutely. And I encourage everybody to check it out. I mean, if you're at all, if you're interested, judges for, let's just say it negatively, if it wasn't peaked during this episode, then something was wrong with you. Go peeps, go check out the curriculum. I highly recommend it. Thanks so much Sandy for your work and I'll have you on again sometime soon.

Okay. I'll look forward to it. Thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.