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

I was going to write about Deborah and Barak, but then I noticed something about the story of Gideon that we do not often pay any attention.  After the story of Deborah, Jael, and Barak, the writer tells us that the people of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and that they were oppressed by the Midianites for seven years.  As a result they called out to the Lord for help.  Then the writer goes into the account of Gideon, as he did for previous judges.  But before going into the account of Gideon the writer tells us that God sent a prophet who reminded the people about what God had done for their ancestors and about how they had failed to be faithful.

Now, why is that important?  Because, I believe, Gideon had heard that prophet and listening to him had led him to ask the questions he first asked when the angel came to him.  I imagine Gideon having the following conversation with a friend who also loved the Lord, or possibly even that prophet:
Gideon: “If the Lord is with us, why did this happen to us?  Where are the wonders that our ancestors told us about?”
Friend: “Because our people worship Baal, and other gods of our heathen neighbors.”
Gideon: “Well, I don’t and you don’t.  Why does God let us suffer?”
Friend: “Well what have you done about the idolatry?  Your own father has an altar to Baal!”
Gideon” “But my father thinks I’m just a boy, he won’t listen to me!”

I imagine that conversation going on regularly, interspersed with Gideon crying out to God, until God sent His messenger.  So, maybe we aren’t called to be Gideon, maybe we are called to be that prophet (or Gideon’s friend, who egged him on).

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

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.

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

A month or so back I had trouble reaching the “The Bible.net” website to get my passage for the day, so I started copying it from last year’s post.  Which means that I see the “headline” I gave the post and that influences my thinking about the passage.  I have yet to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I love the story of Gideon because there is so much there.  As a result, we rarely pay attention to the beginning of his story.  Gideon’s story begins with the preaching of a prophet who is never named.  That prophet called the Israelites to put aside their idols and return to worship of the Lord.  The context of the story leads me to believe that it was this prophet who made Gideon open to the message from the angel.  Before I write my next thoughts I want to point out that the Hebrew word translated as “angel” means “messenger”.  So, I sometimes wonder if Gideon had felt called by that prophet and began talking about how if the Israelites would only turn back to God, God would perform mighty deeds for them.  Then, one time when he was going on one of his rants, a friend of his, presented here as a “messenger of God”, challenged him to act on what he claimed to believe.  Or maybe his friend was the one who was inspired by the prophet and went on rants, telling Gideon he should act.  Perhaps the “angel” was indeed a supernatural messenger as one would conclude with a casual reading of this passage.  I created that scenario because, while I believe that sometimes God sends supernatural messengers to deliver His messages, I know that sometimes God’s messengers are ordinary people (well, OK, not ordinary in that moment, but not supernatural, or necessarily someone who stands out as righteous).

That last paragraph concluded with an important point, but that’s not where I was going.  When Gideon felt God’s call, he started out local.  He did not start out by raising an army to drive the foreign oppressors out of the land.  He started out by calling his family, friends, and neighbors to stop worshiping Baal and return to worshiping God.  Gideon started in his backyard with the people who knew him best and called Israel to give up its idolatry and return to worshiping God.  It was only after they did so, that God called Gideon to drive out those oppressing the people.  Today people are crying out because of the terrible things going on.  The answer is not to mount a political movement to change our government, although that may come later.  Step one is to mount a spiritual movement by tearing down the altars at which we worship “gods” other than God.  For most of us those altars are in our hearts, not physical manifestations, but there are physical manifestations as well.

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

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

As I mentioned yesterday, early Israel was governed much the way in which libertarians imagine that government should work.  Today’s passage illustrates this.  For all intents and purposes, Deborah was the ruler over Israel at this time, but she did not command any troops.  She ruled by virtue of the fact that the people of Israel trusted her decisions and came to her to settle disputes among them.  She was someone blessed by God with the ability to make good decisions.  The passage does not tell us how she knew to do so, but in God’s name she ordered Barak to take men from Zebulun and Napthali and confront Sisera, who was commanding the army oppressing the Israelites at the time.  Barak was unwilling to do so unless she went with him.  Deborah’s response suggests that if Barak had not insisted on her going with him, he would have been on this list as one of the judges, instead of merely as a war commander.  This tells us two things.  First, that Deborah was probably not unique in being a woman who led the Israelites.  In the cases of the other women, there was either no major battle fought while they led the nation, or the war commander they called upon to act did so without asking them to go to war with them.  Second, if Barak had been willing to take Deborah’s instruction and go to war without her, he would likely have become the leader of Israel after the defeat of Sisera.

We often miss an important aspect of the story of Gideon.  The passage almost glosses over it, but before it introduces us to Gideon it tells us that a prophet arose among the Israelites.  The prophet called upon the people to repent of their sin and return to worshiping God.  Gideon did not act in a vacuum.  There was already a revival occurring in Israel when God spoke to Gideon.  If you look at the history of great changes in history, almost always there had been a revival before the point typically identified as the beginning of the change.  Perhaps the prophet mentioned here was to Gideon as Deborah was to Barak, except that Gideon was willing to lead without leaning on him as a crutch (it is worth noting that this prophet, who was almost certainly a man, appears to have had the role which Deborah would have had if Barak had been willing to go to war without her).

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

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

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

The story of Gideon in today’s passage contains a lot of things for us to learn from.  As a result, I generally write about that rather than about Deborah.  However, despite not containing as many inspirational points as the story of Gideon, the story of Deborah told here contains some very important things.  I love how the story of Deborah shows us that women can, and do, play just as critical of a role in God’s plans as men do.  In this story we have Jael.  Jael was called on to fill a critical role in this story because Barak was unwilling to lead the Israelite army against Sisera without Deborah there to hold his hand.  In fact, it seems likely that we may never have heard of either Jael or Deborah if Barak had been willing to assume a true leadership role when Deborah gave him God’s instructions.  That does not mean that Deborah would not have played an important role in that case.  What it means is that there are probably many other women who played a role similar to Deborah’s of whom we have never heard because the man she spoke to stepped up and fulfilled the leadership role for which God intended him.  I am sure there are also many men who filled a similar role to Deborah’s.  However, we are not as tempted to dismiss the role men play in important events.