Judges 4:4 (NASB)
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of
Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.
In
writing about the only female judge in the history of Israel, I looked up how
many women are prominent in the entire Bible.
What do you think? How many prominent
women are mentioned in the Bible? I
found an informative website: http://www.womeninthebible.net/ that
lists 16 women in the Old Testament and 11 women in the New Testament. Some
women are not named, e.g. Potiphar’s wife who tried to seduce Joseph, the
Samaritan woman in John 4 and Pilate’s wife.
Some women, especially in the Old Testament are highly prominent, not
only Deborah, but also Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Ruth and Esther. Prominent named women in the New Testament
are Mary, mother of Jesus, sisters Martha and Mary, and Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately some women are prominent for
negative reasons, e.g. Bathsheba, Jezebel, and Deliah in the Old Testament, the
adulterous woman in John 8.
From
these examples it is clear that God has called certain women to be in certain
places and have certain roles in the history of His people and His church. Deborah was called to be a judge, the 4th
of 13 different judges that God appointed to deliver Israel from a particular
enemy (Judges 1:16, 18). Judges were not
kings, simply ordinary people used by God to deliver Israelites over a period
of some 250 years. Other well-known
judges were Gideon, Samson and Samuel.
Deborah was used by God to lead a counterattack against the forces of
Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and his general Sisera. Israel then lived in peace for 40 years. Deborah was a great warrior as well as the
wife of Lapidoth, yet unlike other married women in the Bible, Deborah stands
out on the basis of her own merits, not as the wife of a greater man.
Judges
5:2-31 contains the first poem of the Bible called the Song of Deborah, sung by
her and Barak, her military leader, considered a victory hymn. Deborah is described as a prophetess, a
judge, and a military leader. Only two
other people in the Bible were described as having this range of responsibility
and authority---Moses and Samuel.
Why
was Deborah chosen to the highest office in the land when throughout the Bible,
it is taught that women are not to hold authority over men? Judges does not give a specific answer, but
one must deduce that Deborah was the best person available at that time in
Hebrew history who exemplified leadership and respect. In Judges 5:7 she stated “Until I, Deborah,
arose, until I arose, a mother in Israel”.
Such a statement suggests that there was no one else in Israel then who
had more godly character of whom God could appoint as a judge than Deborah. Leah Kohn wrote in Women in Judaism, “She held hope for Israel and inspired a renewed sense of
value as Yahweh's chosen people, and exhibited a woman's ability to instill
rather than impose, to invigorate rather than force, and to cultivate rather
than command.”
Deborah served a unique role for women in Jewish history. What are your thoughts about women leading in
the church today? Are you willing to
follow the leadership of a woman, either in the church and/or in the business
world? If you are a woman, are you
experiencing a strong sense that God is calling you into a leadership role as
He called Deborah?
No comments:
Post a Comment