Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 4-6.

After the death of Ehud, while Deborah was the judge of final appeal over all of Israel, the Israelites once again turned away from God.  Which tells us that even with a leader over the people, they sometimes refused to hold one another accountable.  One might conjecture that this happened because Deborah was a woman, and thus not a strong enough leader.  However, the context of the passage does not support that conclusion.  When Deborah told Barak to gather men and attack Sisera, he agreed to do so only on the condition that she accompany him.  If she was a strong enough leader that Barak wanted her presence when he went to war, her “weakness” as a woman was not the reason for Israel falling away from God.  In fact, despite the writers of the books of the Old Testament which record the history of Israel focusing on the importance of the righteousness, or lack thereof, among Israel’s leaders, reading those books leads one to conclude that the presence of good leaders reflected the desire of the people to serve God rather than the other way around.  I would also like to note that Deborah’s response to Barak’s condition suggests that if Barak had been willing to do what Deborah told him without her going with him we would not know who Deborah was and Barak would be one of the judges recorded in this book.

The Song of Deborah which is recorded here as being the victory song which Deborah and Barak sang after the death of Sisera puts a somewhat different light on events than the account given before that.  The first thing I want to note is that the song mentions Shamgar, who was mentioned in passing at the end of Chapter 3 as someone who had saved Israel.  The song suggests that Deborah and Barak lived at about the same time as Shamgar.  Perhaps, the king of Hazor, to whom Sisera owed fealty, was oppressing the Israelites from the Northeast while the Philistines were doing so from the Southwest.  But I wanted to focus on from the song is the repeated references to the Israelites not being willing to defend themselves until Deborah arose.  Then comes the line which I want to highlight, “until I arose, a mother in Israel.”  Deborah was a mother who had had enough.  As I read this song, she shamed the men of Israel into standing up for their countryfolk.  Perhaps “shamed” is the wrong word, she motivated them to do so.  The point I want to make here is that although God usually calls a man to fill the leadership role when He calls His people back to Him, He will use a woman in that role when it suits His purposes.  Or to put it another way, just because God usually calls a certain type of person for a particular role does not mean that He has not called you for that role.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.