Modesty. The word, for me, typically conjures up mental images of women wearing turtlenecks, floor length skirts (with no slit, of course), and knee length socks.

I’m kidding. Sort of.

While we might all differ slightly on our interpretation of what, exactly, modest dressing is, we all understand that there are certain things that are appropriate and inappropriate in various situations. I might not be wearing a floor length skirt with coordinating turtleneck to church, but I also am not going to wear my swimming suit.

I dress modestly because it is a protection for me, shows respect for the unique relationship I have with my husband, honors the God who made my body, and guards against inappropriate thoughts and behavior with others.

Lately I have been pondering an interesting phenomenon I see everywhere in the online world – facebook status updates, tweets, and blog posts are brimming with something I call “emotional immodesty.” These online venues have given us an uncensored outlet, a place to share things that often should not be said, with a veneer of privacy as we sit alone with our laptop or iphone and share our every thought with thousands of strangers. To make this even trickier, we often do it and call it “being real,” as though it was a virtue.

Click over to Gather inSpirit to read the rest of this post…

After taking a look at Deborah and whether or not her role argues for men and women being interchangeable in ministry, we’re back to the story. Deborah tells Barak that because he won’t go without her, the honor of killing Sisera will be given to a woman. Enter Jael and her deadly nails.

Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my Lord , come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she put a covering over him.

“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.

“Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say ‘No.’ ”

But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. (4:18-21)

Lovely. Now let’s think about this…

Sisera is exhausted and thirsty. She meets him and comforts him, offering him a place to rest. He asks for water, but she gives him milk and covers him up.

What is she doing? She’s using her feminine capacity for nurturing and giving life, but she’s doing it in order to kill him. And this is no quick easy murder!

Notice that she doesn’t just kill him – she drives the tent peg (not some little roofing nail. A TENT PEG.) all the way through his head into the ground.

Now, if you flip to chapter five, you’ll find a little song that Deborah and Barak sang about this battle. I’m sure you’ll want to sing it to your children at bedtime tonight.

“Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk; in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
Her hand reached for the tent peg, her right hand for the workman’s hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head, she shattered and pierced his temple.
At her feet he sank, he fell; there he lay. At her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell-dead.
Through the window peered Sisera’s mother; behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
The wisest of her ladies answer her; indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils: a girl or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera, colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck— all this as plunder?’” (5:24-30)

Obviously, this is a glorification of Jael’s violent victory over Sisera. There is another more coarse element to this song, as well. Toward the end of that passage quoted, they begin to mock Sisera’s mother. She’s looking through the window, wondering where her son is. They say that the wisest of her ladies (note the sarcasm there) assures her that they’re just out enjoying the plunder – “boys will be boys.”

Dr. Miller, my OT survey professor from Cedarville, pointed out when teaching this text that the Hebrew text is so coarse that it is not literally translated here in English – the text actually uses body parts to describe the “girl or two for every man.” In other words, ”You think your son is raping and pillaging our women? Guess what – he’ in a woman’s tent, all right… nailed to the ground.” This is not a pretty look at Israel’s culture.

Now, remember our questions to consider as we go through Judges:

*Progress from one story to the next, or what changes take place
We’ve moved from the gross story of Ehud to something much worse. This is a glorification of brutality. And it’s not men inflicting it. It’s the women.

*How does each story make you feel? This book is supposed to evoke an affective response.
It’s not a good take away feeling on my end, that’s for sure!

*How does the treatment of women and the roles they take in each story relate to the main theme?
Deborah is put in a difficult position and pushed to fill a male role. Jael uses her feminine abilities to nurture and give life in order to savagely take life. Bad guy or not, it wasn’t a pretty picture.

I won’t go in depth with personal application on this (again, we’ll fill in the blanks more as we get the picture of Judges put together more), but I do want to point out the applications in the story of Jael.

Women were designed by God with a powerful capacity and ability to give life. Biologically, socially, emotionally… we were intended to be nurturers and caretakers. The more coarse and ungodly a culture becomes, the more women turn into destroyers.

Obviously abortion in my view is a literal murder of our children. In a more subtle and insidious way, we become destroyers as we use our life-giving abilities to control and destroy others. In the study “Five Aspects of Woman,” Barbara Mouser comments on two disturbing accounts: the first is the famous story where two prostitutes come before Solomon disputing whose baby is alive and whose is dead, and Solomon determines the mother by ordering that the live baby be cut in two and divided between the women. While the false mother concedes to this plan, the actual mother steps in and says that she will allow the other woman to have the baby rather than see her child killed. In 2 Kings 6:28 there’s a more shocking story of two women who were fighting over whose children they were going to eat during a famine. She remarks:

“The point is, as people apostatize, their women become increasingly brutalized and brutal. Both of these lawsuits are shocking, but at least in the first case the women are suing to keep the baby. In the second case, the woman is suing toeat the baby. As any people turn away from God, there is a loss of the goodness of human nature; women are treated more and more harshly, and they become more and more harsh. We should note that these women are starving to death; they are in dire straits. We also have heard of women in history who starve themselves to feed their children, not eat their children to feed themselves.” (5A, 156).

A cursory glance at our culture will tell you where we are with this. Women becoming increasingly brutalized and brutal? Turn on the news. We have wandered far from the Leader, and it is taking its toll.

What happens when the men God calls won’t lead?  This question is one of the most frequently raised when I’ve been in groups of women discussing female versus male roles in leadership.  The story of Deborah is often used as an example of a female leader interchangeable with men… rightly so?  Let’s take a closer look.

The first three verses of chapter 4 show that our pattern is repeating again:

Step One: After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the LORD.

Step Two: So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years,

Step Three: they cried to the LORD for help.

So, then step four will follow: God will raise a judge to deliver them.

The first interesting thing is that the judge at this time is Deborah. Importantly, Deborah is referred to as a judge, but she calls Barak and tells him that God has called him to deliver the people from the oppression of Sisera.

Deborah is not the same type of judge as the other main characters in this book – she is described as a prophetess, and although the same word for “judge” is used for her as many of the other judges, she was not in a warfare/deliverer role. God has called a man to fill the role of deliverer.

However, when Barak is told that God wants to use him as the deliverer of Israel, he refuses to do it alone!

She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor. I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’” Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” (4:6-8)

Why does he want Deborah to come with him?  Notice that Deborah is just the mouthpiece – she is simply delivering a message to Barak from the Lord.  It is GOD who promised to lure Sisera, it is GOD who promised to deliver him into Barak’s hands.  But Barak is seeing with human eyes – he directs his request for “back-up” to Deborah, not to God.   The wording here reminds me of something we heard Moses say back in Exodus, but in very different circumstances – he, too, was begging for Someone to go with him.

Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people.” Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here...” Then Moses said, “I pray You, show me Your glory!” (Exodus 33:15-18, NASB)

Through a long process of being taught and refined by the Lord, Moses had been transformed in God’s presence. He understood that if all else failed, he just wanted to be in the presence of God!  If Barak really understood what it meant that “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you,” there is no way he’d be depending on Deborah.

I firmly believe that God made male and female with very different roles. Some have asked if Deborah was acting as judge and prophetess because a male was not close enough to God to fill that role. I’ll leave that for you to chew on as I have no clear answer on that from the text! However, it IS clear that Deborah wasn’t meant to be in battle gear leading the army – that was Barak’s job. His lack of courage and commitment apart from his female counterpart is evidence of a lack of faith in God, not an argument in favor of a feminist interpretation of Scripture.

Deborah continues to function in this account as a cheerleader of sorts, urging Barak to believe God and obey.  She tells Barak that she will accompany him, but that the honor will not be his.

So, do I believe that women can lead?  Yes, I believe we CAN.  I don’t think it’s best.  I think there are situations in which God uses women to influence His people in the right direction – and if they are godly women they try very hard to hand the reins over to male leadership.  When those men refuse, God can choose to use women to carry out His plan… but I believe this story is an illustration of the fact that this is not a good situation – it will have negative ramifications for individuals and for the group as a whole.

Because Barak refused to believe God and obey in faith, a woman was forced into battle, and another woman ended up being the one to kill Sisera.  And as we’ll discuss tomorrow, it’s never a good sign for society when women are nailing people to the ground with tent pegs!

Being a mother is hard.  It brings out our me-monsters.  And sometimes… if not every day… it’s easy to feel unappreciated, unimportant… forgotten.

Do you ever feel invisible? That your own family doesn’t notice all that you sacrifice for them?

Remember… we don’t do it for them.

I posted this video in September 0f ’09, but I wanted to share it again for Mother’s Day.  May God bless you richly today for faithfully serving and sacrificing for your families – even in ways that others don’t see! Press on, moms!

He sees.

Happy Mother’s Day.