(Judges 4.1-16)
17 November 2019 – © Neil Millar
Well, here we are, parachuted into another episode in early Israel’s tumultuous history. Tell me, as you heard the reading, did you feel a touch of déja vû? Verse 1: ‘The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord’. Sound familiar?? It’s how last week’s story began; it’s how all these stories begin and maybe you recognize this repetition in your own experience? Then, as now, it is easy to slip, so difficult to remain constant and faithful. And then, as now, such compromise inevitably to complications. Verse 2: ‘So, the Lord handed them over to King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, and the commander of his army was Sisera, and he lived in Harosheth-Goiim’.
So, we’re back into the cycle I recounted last week – the characteristic pattern of every episode in the Book of Judges. Phase 1 – Israel ‘does evil in the eyes of the Lord’. Phase 2 – they suffer at the hands of an enemy. Do you remember what comes next? [They cry out for help]. And, did they need it!! For their oppressors were powerful. Sisera, we’re told (Jabin’s commander) had ‘nine hundred chariots of iron’, and had been oppressing them cruelly for twenty years. Okay, then what happens? … Phase 4, a leader emerges. Verse 4: ‘At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel’.
Ahh, and this is where it gets interesting! Last week, it was an all-male affair, that’s what we’re used to when it comes to violence, men fighting, but here’s something unexpected – a woman judge! But how does anyone, male or female, liberate a weak and oppressed group like Israel from such a powerful foe?
With Deborah, it begins with listening. When she’s introduced, she is sitting under her tree offering judgment (wisdom, advice, a word) to those who came. It strikes me as a very contemplative picture. There’s no rushing around here, she’s still, stable and receptive. And, the effect? Well, she notices things, hears things, …including things from God. In verse 6 we’re told that she summoned Barak and tells him that the Lord has commanded him to muster troops at Mt Tabor, though she warns him that this will not lead to his glory, ‘for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman’ (9). More of that in a moment!!
So, the scene is set and the action begins. Barak summons his troops and heads for Mt Tabor. Deborah goes with him. Meanwhile, Sisera musters his chariots and troops out on the plain. In the midst of this rallying, and the building tension, the story takes a strange (and somewhat deflating turn). We’re delayed by a seemingly unrelated narrative intrusion. Verse 11: ‘Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the other Kenites, that is the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, and had encamped as far away as Elon-bezaanannim, near Kadesh.’ What? Who’s he? This seems irrelevant. What’s going on?? All I can say is, stay tuned, for in these stories, details matter.
Okay, so the armies are assembled and Deborah gives the word (14): ‘Up! For this is the day on which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The Lord is indeed going before you.’ Barak’s troops charge out onto the plain and, it says, ‘the Lord threw Sisera … and all his army into a panic’ (15). So, what happened? Sisera is well prepared, he’s powerful (900 iron chariots), why this panic??
I think we’re given a clue in the next chapter (5), which consists of a poem titled The Song of Deborah. In verse 4, it says, ‘Lord, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the region of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens poured, the clouds indeed poured water.’ This sounds like a storm to me, a mighty thunderstorm. Now remember where this battle is being waged, in the Wadi Kishon. Sisera has chariots, he’s in the box seat. But then it pours with rain and that dusty plain becomes a quagmire, and the chariots are getting bogged. And, all of a sudden, Barak’s foot soldiers have an advantage. Sisera’s troops panic and flee, and the routing begins. All are destroyed except for Sisera, who’s scarpered in the other direction.
So, where does Sisera end up? Surprise, surprise, it’s in the camp of Heber the (seemingly irrelevant) Kenite!! We didn’t hear this bit of the story in our reading, but let me fill out what happened – how Israel’s deliverance from this particular round of oppression was finally effected.
So back to Sisera, stumbling into the camp of Heber – who is supposedly an ally of Sisera’s king, but also has a distant connection with the Israelites (Moses’ father-in-law was a Kenite). Actually, it’s Heber’s wife, Jael, who comes out to meet Sisera: ‘Turn aside, my Lord, turn aside to me’, she says, ‘do not fear’. And Sisera is taken in. He enters her tent; she covers him with a blanket and gives him milk. He warns her not to betray his presence and then, exhausted, falls asleep. He seems to have made it. But this woman isn’t as hospitable as she seems. For while he slept, Jael ‘took a tent-peg and put a mallet in her hand and drove the peg through his temple and it sunk into the ground’ (21). When Barak arrives, he finds his foe pinned to the ground, dead. And the story ends with the characteristic refrain … ‘the land was quiet for forty years’ (5.31).
So, a few years of peace, a chance to relax, before the next grisly episode. But again, what are we the reader to make of all this? Well, I will address the question of violence in a moment. But first, a couple of other noticings – subtleties in this story that we might miss amidst the gore.
I mentioned earlier that Deborah’s authority and wisdom as a judge seems to be connected to her habit of sitting under the palm tree. I described this as a form of contemplation, and I want to suggest that now as then, the practice is vital. Some people dismiss contemplation as being escapist and wasteful. We need to act, they say, to be doing something useful. But how do we discern life-giving action from life-sapping busyness and misdirected activity? And, how do we know what’s ours to do, and what’s not? And, how do we maintain strength, remain faithful in the face of discouragement and disappointment? Contemplation is about connection and deep listening – being renewed, listening for the word of the Lord, as Deborah did. It’s not an escape from action; true contemplation guides and sustains action. ‘What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action’, Meister Eckhart wrote, and this does seem to be a practice of the saints, a source of their power, and a means of participating in the story of God.
Another, thing that strikes me in this story is the part played by someone who seems totally marginalized from things. I’m talking about Jael, a woman, living in the back blocks of Israel. The person you’d least expect to play a part in this drama, and yet, here she is, drawn right in. We may have serious questions about the rights and wrongs of what she did, but the point is, she wasn’t actually marginal. When you think about it, this happens all the time in the bible (think of Hannah, Moses, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, John, Esther, Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, the widow of Zarephath… – God using those seemingly at the edges to further the action, to enable the next step. I find this encouraging, and if you’re feeling irrelevant (because of age, or health, or some other factor), maybe you will to. We are all playing a part, all the time – saints are those who remain faithful, ready whatever the circumstances, wherever they are. And who knows when the fruits of this might break to the surface.
Okay, some good news, but what about the gore?? Shady saints, you say – these people are dodgy as. There seems little difference between them and pagan nations; in Judges everyone seems opportunistic and unprincipled. Isn’t this why people reject large slabs of the Old Testament; it seems at such profound odds with Jesus’s way. How do we reconcile this?
Well, in the scriptures, there are texts that sanction violence in the name of God. There’s no getting around this. And, there’s always also a counter-perspective, a critique of this violence, an alternate vision – of hospitality and peace, of lions lying with lambs and swords beaten into ploughshares. Part of why we abhor the stories that sanction violence, is that we’ve glimpsed this counter-perspective. And even in the book of Judges, you get the sense of critique – the cycle of deception and violence being exposed as futile through parody. Israel gains peace for a while at the expense of her victims, but it’s an uneasy peace, it doesn’t last. Sooner or later it all begins again – something deeper in the human heart needs to change, some deeper faithfulness enacted.
And this is what Jesus does – enters this violent cycle, not as just another perpetrator but undergoing and breaking its power from within, showing us that this is God’s way, the way to lasting peace. And Jesus invites us to join in this same mission of unmasking and transforming the cycle of violent futility. For, in reality, the violence of the time of the Judges is alive and well in our world. Just think of the news headlines from the past week – reports of war, acts of aggression and dispossession, rape, bashings, bullying and domestic brutality. We cannot counter this with more violence –as the book of Judges shows – violence always begets more violence. The cycle goes on – deadly and boring. The only way out is the way of forgiving love – and we shady saints practise this as we are rooted, grounded in Christ. So, may the peace of Christ be with you.