Not Often Heard: Deborah and Jael
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
February 23, 2003
Judges 4; Mark 2:1-12

[Read the Text of Judges 4 here.]

This is the third in a series of sermons entitled "Texts Not Often Heard". It is an attempt to bring into the regular life of the church, those portions of Scripture that we either unfamiliar with, uncomfortable with, or have little experience with. Another odd text awaits us tonight...

I. INTRODUCTION

This is a a book called A Child's Garden of Bible Stories. It was published in 1947 or so. I got this as a kid and it has some watered-down version of all the Bible stories: it has some cute pictures--all the people look very Anglo-Saxon. It's sort of a sweet and innocent little thing. Surprisingly, this story that we heard in Judges is not in here. I looked. It ought to be somewhere between Ruth and Samuel, but it's not. I looked in other children's Bible books: it's not there either. In fact, I'm pretty certain I've never heard this story in church before.

It's a strange and weird story. It's one of those things that we might tend to write off as one of those bizarre Old Testament-y stories that have no relation to us now. It's complicated by the fact that it's full of place names that we can't pronounce and characters that we too easily loose track of and forget their relationship to each other.

But there's something about this story that holds my attention and that I think makes it worthy of reading in church.

II. THE TEXT

This story fits the basic pattern of all the stories in the book of Judges: Israel does something wrong; God lets a foreign king dominate them by way of punishment; they cry out to the Lord for deliverance; God raises up a judge--a charismatic leadership figure--who by cunning or military skill, delivers the people of Israel from their oppression; and then we are told that the land will have peace for 40 years. This story fits the basic pattern and sure enough, aat the beginning of our story the Israelites are under the thumb of King Jabin of the Canaanites.

Now, the part that we don't appreciate has to do with the level of oppression. Jabin's "chariots of iron" were the bronze age equivalent of stealth technology--it gave Jabin a decisive military edge. If you had chariots of iron they could last a lot longer in battle, with an already powerful weapon of war--fast and ruthless. And we are told King Jabin had 900 of such chariots. The Israelites cry out and we are told there is a prophetess named Deborah, who is judging Israel. The word "judging" though that is its literal meaning, is probably better translated "ruling" or "leading." Deborah is the judge of Israel, the leader. She tells Barak what he has to do--to engage the Canaanite general Sisera. And he tells her "I'll go if you will." It's almost like he thinks of Deborah as his good luck charm, as though he's afraid to go into battle without her. Deborah says that she'll go, but warns Barak that he is not going to achieve his own glory, for "God is going to deliver your enemy into the hand of a woman."

At this point in the story, there is no reason for anyone to think that she is talking about anyone but herself. That would certainly be the pattern--the judge is the military hero of the story. The judge leads the troops into battle. But in a strange twist, Barak does engage the Canaanite army, Many of them retreat and the leader, Sisera, flees into safe territory, the land of people who are friends and allies of his King,. And there is Jael, a woman of this tribe and the wife of one of the leaders of this tribe. And she says, 'Come on into my tent. Turn aside and come on in.' And he does. She offers him hospitality and he takes her up on it. And he lays down and asks for some water--she does better than water, she gives him milk. He's feeling relaxed--it's what happens when you have milk late at night: it puts you to sleep. And while he's sleeping, she takes a tent peg and nails him through the head with it. That's the part where the hospitality thing begins to break down.

We don't really see it coming. There's nothing about the story that prepares us for this to happen. He's gone into the tent of an ally. She's invited him in, she's given him milk. And then surprisingly she does this bizarre act and nails his head to the ground. What are we to make of a story like this?

III. JAEL'S CONDUCT

There's a lot of questions of interpretation as to what went on in that tent actually. The language that we read is fairly ambiguous: she covers him up with a blanket. There are a number of interpretations that suggest that she gave him more than a place to sleep. And it's not really clear from the situation. The rabbis in medieval times assumed that she seduced him. A married woman, seduces a military leader, abuses her hospitality, and murders him in his sleep. They assumed that this is what she did. But they exonerate her. They basically cut her some slack.

Now, hospitality is one of the most important things in the ancient world. In the ancient near eat, hospitality was seen as an absolute requirement. Some interpreters even claim that the story of Sodom and Gemorrah was less about sexual immorality than it was about a lack of hospitality. The way Sodom and Gomorroah treated visitors was more a question of inhospitality than anything else, and that is why God punished them. When Jesus sends out the disciples and talks to them about the cities they visit, of the ones that will not receive the disciples, Jesus tells them:

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. (Matt. 10:14-15)

This leads some people to think that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, even in Jesus' eyes, was about hospitality. So what does Jael do? She manipulates Sisera with a promise of hospitality: 'It's safe here. Have some milk. Get some rest.' And for this the rabbis exonerate her.

Of course they're looking at it for a particular perspective. They're looking at it as her furthering the will of God. We know from the beginning of the story that Deborah prophesizes that Israel's enemy would be delivered into the hand of a woman. This is the plan. This is how it spells itself out. And given that the Israelites were being oppressed by a mighty army, this is what it took. Actually, even more interesting, Jael is not an Israelite and so we don't even know what her motivation is for this. It's a surprise to us in this story.

IV. LESSONS

What do we do with this story? How do we change our lives on account of this story? Well, we might be a little wary of someone who invites us into their tent and has lots of extra tent pegs laying around, for one.

A. Sinning for the Sake of Heaven

There's a concept known as "sinning for the sake of heaven" and it's fairly controversial. There is a television series currently playing called 24. In it, the hero, a special government agent, has 24 hours to find the location of a nuclear weapon set to go off in downtown Los Angeles. In one episode he captures the terrorist and then shows him video of his wife and children in their home, surrounded by men in black masks. He tells the terrorist that he will give orders to begin murdering members of the terrorist's family until he gives him the location of the bomb. In one shocking scene, it actually appears that the commandos have actually shot and killed the terrorist's youngest son. It turns out that it was all camera tricks designed to fool the terrorist, but there is a point in the watching where you ask yourself, is it right to murder an innocent child to save the lives of 2 million people? Is there a sin that you would be willing to commit for the sake of heaven? What kinds of things are you willing to do to further the cause of protecting the lives of your people?

Our nation stands on the brink of war in the Middle East. It's dangerous for me to be up here and giving a sermon in which I describe all the rules you can bend and all the corners you can cut in the prosecution of a war. But it occurs to me that sinning for the sake of heaven does not only apply to military conflicts like in 24 or the Book of Judges. What are the things you are willing to do for the sake of peace? Would you be willing to sin for the cause of peace? To do the wrong thing? To break laws about demonstrations and unlawful gatherings? To defy an order to disperse from a police officer? What kind of things are you willing to do for the kingdom?

This raises a lot more questions than we can find answers for. Because the story is so strangely written and of a time beyond our experience that we grapple with how to make it relevant to us. And there is a tendency to say, 'Ah those crazy Hebrews--this is the kind of thing that happened back then, but id doesn't have any relevance for us today.'

But it does, doesn't it? We're often faced with choices not between right and wrong, but between 'wrong' and 'not as wrong'. We're often faced with choiced in which we have to weigh the lesser of two evils. Will we sin for the sake of heaven?

These ideas challenge our understandings and preconceptions. Martin Luther King spoke about following the rules and the law when he said, "We must not forget that everything the Nazis did was legal..." (The Nazis managed to get everything they did passed by their legislature, codified in German, law, and executed as part of administrative policy.) "...and everything that the Hungarian freedom fighters did was illegal." There are times we need to break the rules, whether it's a rule of hospitality, perhaps a rule of marital fidelity, for the kingdom. I don't know when those times are and I can't give you a checklist that you can use to determine when you can override standard moral presumptions for the greater good.

Even when you have a checklist it doesn't always clarify things. This afternoon I was in a discussion about just war. And most of the people who understand and interpret just war, believe that the current situation in Iraq, is not a just war. But there are those who do believe it is--because they understand the criteria differently: the criteria of imminent attack and of self-defense.

What this text does it that it challenges us to think about those things we deem necessary. Now the problem here is that the language of this text is brutal and violent and we should not take away as one of the lesson that the first opportunity we get to nail a terrorist's head to the ground we should take. Because the lesson is not really in what Jael does, it's in how it happens and what she is willing to sacrifice. One can imagine that not only she sufferes as a result, but that her people's relations with the Canaanite people would suffer as a result of this.

B. Deliverance

But there's something else going on here, too. We get suckered in this story into thinking that Deborah is going to be the heroine of it all. And it winds up being Jael. What this really reminds us is that deliverance often comes from n unexpected quarter. Our salvation often comes from sources we would not have expected, we would not have looked for, and that surprise us when they happen. We are expecting Deborah the Judge or Barak the General to be the hero. And it turns out to be some unknown woman who shows up in the last 20% of the story. God's salvation is like that sometimes. Actually, more often than not. God's salvation comes to us in ways we don't understand, we don't often look for, and often in ways the world does not encourage us to look for. Israel's deliverance came not through Barak's armies, but through one woman's actions. Our deliverance came not through a mighty king and military general, but through a carpenter who was willing to go to the cross.

God acts in ways that are surprising to us, that challenge what we think about what's right and wrong in the world and challenge what we think about how the story is supposed to work out. It may be that in our current situation, our deilverance will not be accomplished by the 101st Airborne, or the force of American might, but may lie in some small unlooked-for, humble, deliverance. God is like that. God is calling us to embrace the salvation which comes not by the wisdom or logic of the world, but in ways that are surprising to us and that challenge what we think and know.

V. CONCLUSION

What do we do with this story in the end? I'm not sure, but it's a fair statement that we should probably read it more often than once every thrity four years in church. We should become familiar with these texts and with these narratives and we should grapple with their meaning. Three out fo the past four weeks we have dealt with strange texts like this: first with Ecclesiastes, then with Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) and then this story from Judges. And what they remind us on top of all of this is that our faith is a lot more complicated than sometimes we think it is. Our faith and the witness of our spiritual ancestors is a much more diversified, much more complex story than we often like to think. It reminds us that we can't really reduce our theology down to bumper-sticker size

If anything, these stories tell us that we need to think seriously about our faith and think seriously about the things that are required of us as Christians, so that we do not fall too easily into the trap of looking for salvation as the world would have it, but finding that salvation as God would give it to us.

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Copyright © 2003. Mark A. Schaefer.

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