Singapore Bible College

Research Paper:

The ‘Problem’ of Deborah Addressed Through Her History of Interpretation

Belinda Tan (Mailbox 212)

BS702PG: History of Intepretation (OT) Rev Dr Samuel Goh

31 May 2015

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Introduction

Joy A. Schroeder in Deborah’s Daughters: Gender Politics and Biblical

Interpretation describes the figure of Deborah in Judges 4–5 as being utilised throughout

Judaeo-Christian history for, against and by women in debates over their roles in church and

society,1 whether as wives, mothers, prophets, leaders or judges.2 According to Schroeder,

who as a female pastor and professor would have inevitably encountered such arguments,3

the reason for this is that Deborah’s story has “disruptive potential”.4 This is not only because

of Deborah’s position in the narrative as a powerful woman, but also because gaps in the

biblical text raise many questions and even result in varying translations (which are in

themselves a form of interpretation).5

Schroeder’s thesis is that the narrative involving Deborah creates problems for

interpreters, and their responses may end up revealing more about their backgrounds,

assumptions and intentions than much about the meaning of the text itself. In support, she

lays out a history of interpretation of Deborah from the perspective of gender relations,

detailing how interpreters from early Judaism and the early church to the present day have

dealt with the biblical figure and her story, together with the inferences they then drew for

women of their respective eras.

1 Joy A. Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters: Gender Politics and Biblical Interpretation (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2014), 4. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 Schroeder (PhD, Notre Dame) is a Lutheran pastor, Professor of Church History at Trinity Lutheran

Seminary and Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and holds the Bergener Chair in Theology and Religion at the latter institution. Deborah’s Daughters arose out of a seminar she gave alongside a feminist Jewish colleague, Rachel Ben Dor.

4 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 3. 5 Ibid., 4–5.

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The aim of this paper is to follow Schroeder chapter by chapter, that is, period by

period, as she traces and critiques the unfolding understandings of Deborah, and in turn to

evaluate the critical history of interpretation produced by the author. With the resulting

overview of how interpreters have historically addressed the issues raised by the story of

Deborah, as well as the impact and consequences of their conclusions, the paper will propose

an approach to interpretation and consider some implications of the findings for biblical

interpretation and theology. Before continuing, the difficulties usually associated with

Deborah and her story should be enumerated.

Interpretative Issues

The following questions arising from gaps in the text of Judges 4–5 are mostly

derived from Schroeder:6 (1) What did it mean that Deborah was described as a “prophetess”

(ha'ybin>, Judg 4:4), “judging Israel” (laer"f.yI-ta, hj'p.vo, Judg 4:4), and being central in spurring

Barak in the battle against Sisera (Judg 4:4–16)? (2) Could it be said that she wielded the

same authority as a prophet, judge, or military commander did in the rest of the book of

Judges and even the OT? Did she have this authority in an official capacity or would it be an

unofficial ‘emergency’ position? Is it significant for each of her roles that she is a woman?

(3) Why is it that she could speak to Barak with such “assertiveness”?7 (4) Why is it that

Barak demanded Deborah go with him when he was already told that YHWH the God of

Israel had assured victory (Judg 4:6) — in fact, Barak refused to go if Deborah did not go

with him (Judg 4:8)?

6 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 4. 7 Ibid., 3.

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(5) Did Deborah’s name have a particular implication for the plot? HALOT describes

it as meaning “bee” or “wasp”.8 (6) If we translate one of her designations as “wife of

Lappidoth” (tAdyPil; tv,ae, Judg 4:4), then who is Lappidoth? Why is he missing from the rest of

the text? Could he be Barak? (7) What did it mean that Deborah “arose as a mother in Israel”

(laer"f.yIB. ~ae yTim.Q;v;, Judg 5:7)? Should we speculate about her children and family life, or was

“mother” a metaphorical reference to female deliverers of Israel raised by God? (8) What are

we to make of Deborah’s praise of Jael’s duplicitous killing of Sisera (Judg 4:17–22; 5:24–

27)? What are to think of Deborah when she taunts Sisera’s bereaved womenfolk (Judg 5:28–

30)?

(9) Why is Deborah not mentioned in the rest of OT? Is it significant that Samuel

mentions Barak but not her in 1 Samuel 12:11? Why is Deborah not recalled in the NT,

especially in Hebrews 11:32, which has a similar list of judges to 1 Samuel 12:11

(Jerubbaal/Gideon, Barak, Jepthath and Samuel/Samson)? Are there echoes of Deborah in the

Bible even if she is not named? (10) Finally, what are the implications of her story for men

and women who hold Scripture to be divinely inspired and thus truth that should affect the

reality of their lives?

8 “hr"AbD>”, HALOT 1:208. From the early church fathers to today, many have found allegorical meanings

in Deborah’s name. Patrick Henry Reardon gives a simple overview in “Judge Deborah: The Hebrew Prophetess in Christian Tradition”, Touchstone (April 2000), http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-03-018-f (accessed 20 May 2015).

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Schroeder’s History of Interpretation of Deborah

The following is a survey of the history of interpretation described by Schroeder,

which comprises myriad attempts to answer the prior interpretive questions. It will be seen

that responses from earlier periods are recycled and become enshrined as tradition in later

periods. It will also be seen that cultural expectations not necessarily formed by the biblical

worldview have an undeniable influence on biblical interpretation. This section will end with

an evaluation of Schroeder’s findings.

Chapter 1: Early Judaism and Early Christianity

Contrasting interpretations of Deborah already existed in the first century through

retellings, and are represented by Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical

Antiquities.9 Josephus retells the biblical narrative in a way that reduces Deborah’s role and

words, and amplifies and redeems Barak. This may be because he found the depiction of

Deborah lacking when pitted against the firm boundaries of Graeco-Roman gender roles, and

so the biblical figure had to be conformed to his context. Pseudo-Philo, on the other hand,

elevates Deborah by structuring and adding to the text in such a manner that many parallels

can be drawn between her and Moses. Also in the first century, a biblical writer decided to

omit Deborah from the list of judges in Hebrews 11:32–35.

The first three centuries produced documents that detailed “women’s oracles, ecstatic

utterances, and divinely inspired speech”.10 There arose the question of whether women

could be in the same line of prophets as those of ancient Israel. The documents should be

9 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 7–9. 10 Ibid., 10.

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read with this question in mind, with Deborah becoming a biblical “warrant” for women to be

prophets.11

While some patristic authors such as Origen championed the “spiritual equality” of

women based on the story of Deborah,12 the overall attitude was that women as the weaker

sex was the defining element of her story. That is, since God chooses what is weak to shame

the strong (1 Cor 1:27), it is the woman-ness and hence weakness of Deborah that shows the

strength of God all the more in the biblical narrative. This attitude will be consistently taken

as we move forward in the history of interpretation.

Those who took Deborah as a precedent for females in public authority were

countered with an attempt to push Deborah into the private sphere.13 In the battle against the

Montanists, who argued for female prophetesses based on the example of Deborah, it was

argued that Deborah “retroactively” came under Paul’s command that women had to be

veiled while prophesying (1 Cor 11:5).14 The veil is metaphorical and the evidence was that

biblical women’s words did not come in a book named after them, but under the ‘covering’ of

male or neutral names.15

The “exegetical creativity” of the church fathers was also applied to the

“domestication” of Deborah.16 She became an example of how good women should behave,

whether as a wife ‘advising’ her husband (Barak in the role of husband), or a good widow

marshalling her resources (Barak in the role of son) for the community instead of relying

upon it. The original text is read in a way that serves the agenda of the interpreter —

Deborah’s directness towards Barak and the actual facts of the narrative (he is neither

described as her husband nor her son) are set aside.

11 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 11. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 14. 14 Ibid., 15. 15 The book of Esther is conveniently set aside here. 16 Schroeder, Daughter’s Daughters, 17.

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Rabbinic interpretation of Deborah in late antiquity tried to address rather than avoid

gaps in the text, but in so doing revealed their gender bias.17 The rabbis criticised Deborah for

behaviour they described as commanding (to Barak) and self-aggrandising (in her apparent

praise of herself in Judges 5). Deborah was thought to be proud and presumptuous. This was

a marked difference from Christian interpretation. Even so, the public role of these women

was readily recognised by Jewish but not Christian interpreters of the time. The palm tree

was taken by rabbis to be proof of her public ministry (and also her modesty, as speaking to

men in private would have sullied her name). At the same time, the rabbis criticised Barak for

giving up his role as leader to a woman. In another difference from Christian tradition, the

Babylonian Talmud Tractate Megillah 14a interprets tAdyPil; tv,ae as “a woman of flames”, that

is, someone who made wicks for the lights in the Temple. The question was not who or

where Lappidoth was. Deborah was an independent woman.18

Deborah was invoked in ordination prayers for deaconesses, even as their role was

debated in the early church.19 Yet, as Schroeder notes, the Christian praise of Deborah may

be restricted to her confirming and “reinforcing” the male interpreters’ ideals concerning

women’s roles.20 The biblical figure in the text is not meant to be emulated — the biblical

figure as presented by the interpreters, however ‘disfigured’, is the one to imitate. Be that as

it may, the story of Deborah set alongside the teaching of there being “no male and female”

in Christ (Gal 3:28) also reminded some interpreters of the gifts and contributions of women.

Schroeder ends the chapter stating that the “dissonance” of the text and the attempts to

“tame” it shows the symbolic power of Deborah.21

17 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 23. 18 Jerome’s Vulgate translation fixes Deborah in place as uxor Lappidoth, that is, wife of Lappidoth,

but the LXX’s γυνὴ Λαφιδωθ leaves it open as to whether she is wife of Lappidoth or woman of a possible place named Lappidoth. See Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 4–5.

19 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 25–27. 20 Ibid., 28. 21 Ibid.

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Chapter 2: Middle Ages

In the medieval period, the debate was over the public role of women. The default

stance was that women should not teach in public due to an innate susceptibility to sin and

the doubt as to whether they could indeed “receive a prophetic word by grace”.22 Allegorical

gymnastics were performed to explain Deborah’s relationship with Barak (seen to be the

same person as Lappidoth and thus her husband), to find Christ in her story, and to describe

her as a type for the church and the Virgin Mary.23 The spirit of prophecy was explained as a

way to “compensate” for Deborah’s “deficiencies in reason and other natural abilities” as a

woman.24 Her double office as prophet and judge was seen as a way to put her authority

beyond doubt — a standard male prophets did not have to meet.25 Symbolically or

figuratively, Deborah was not perceived as breaking out of gender expectations of the time.26

Some writings to women exhorted them to be like Deborah, praising her as a holy

woman or a warrior woman. But based on the conviction that women could not play a

judicial role, Deborah was a figure whose authority was to be dismissed as an exception to

the rule.27 Medieval theologians like Aquinas applied themselves to arguments concerning

the ordination of women with the foregone conclusion that it was impossible.28 Whatever

teaching women could do was to be in private; whatever authority they were given was a

unique case (for Deborah to “shame the men of her day”),29 not to be taken as a standard for

all women. Women may have “temporal”, that is, secular, but not spiritual power over men.30

22 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 29. 23 Ibid., 42. 24 Ibid., 40. 25 Ibid., 40–41. 26 Ibid., 43. 27 Ibid., 47–49. 28 Ibid., 50. 29 Ibid., 55. 30 Ibid., 54.

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From the eleventh and especially the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, literature by

women mystics like Hildegard of Bingen thrived. They did not see a model in Deborah, but

rather male figures like Moses, Paul, and John of Patmos.31 It was their male supporters who

understood them in terms of Deborah and other biblical women, and promoted them as such.

Deborah became a name on a general list of biblical women of renown, losing her and

the text’s particularity. For the agenda of promoting women’s writing and prophecies, she

was no longer depicted as being chosen by God because the male leaders were unworthy, but

rather was chosen in the presence of learned men like the priests and Levites — yet for the

same purpose of having what was weak in the world show up what was strong.32 Deborah

was used to praise women who participated honorably in military endeavours, and was

depicted in medieval art as indisputably leading battles.33 Christine de Pizan in the querelle

des femmes, the “Renaissance debate about the moral and intellectual qualities of women”

that continued in the centuries after,34 enlisted Deborah in her Book of the City of Ladies.

Schroeder finishes this chapter with the observation that Deborah only served as

biblical support for women to be active in the public sphere when male supporters

“personally knew extraordinary women” of “piety, learning, and spiritual gifts”.35 She also

emphasises how Deborah was seen to be not so much an example for women to follow but a

biblical figure to engage with. This was because the NT injunctions against women having

authority in church (1 Cor 14:34; 1 Tim 2:12) were seen to end the argument and

interpretation of the word of God was usually mediated with respect to “gender and

station”.36

31 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 55. 32 Ibid., 60–61. 33 Ibid., 62–67. 34 Ibid., 71. 35 Ibid., 68. 36 Ibid., 69.

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Chapter 3: Sixteenth Century

For the Protestant reformers and interpreters in the sixteenth century, the key issue

continued to be whether women could participate in the public sphere, whether political or

religious. Deborah and other female biblical figures were used by both male and female

interpreters in support of women taking on public roles like teaching and

preaching/prophesying. Conservatism generally prevailed. The assumption was that the NT

injunctions against women in authority signalled the end of the debate and that the natural

order without question was for men to command and women to submit.37

There were interpreters, however, like Peter Martyr Vermigli whose “respect for a

literal-reading of the text gave him the openness to imaginatively enter into a biblical

worldview that allowed for remarkable prophetic women”.38 Hence, though he thought

women in power should only be allowed under extraordinary circumstances, Vermigli could

see the biblical warrant for it. He was persuaded also by his particular “extraordinary

circumstances” in the person of Queen Elizabeth I. She, like other female rulers would do,

styled herself as a kind of Deborah.

The sixteenth century was a time when biographies of women in the Bible and church

history were published by men, mostly to warn against wicked behaviour, but also to

encourage what is praiseworthy. Deborah in The Monument of Matrones by Thomas Bentley

is depicted as an obedient and submissive wife, though one who had an undeniably public

ministry. At least her victory song was not ignored in Bentley’s retelling, as often happened

in other biographies, where the violence in Judges 5 did not fit the biography writers’

narratives about Deborah.

37 See for example the vitriolic 1558 attack against women in power by John Knox in The First Blast of

the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (discussed in Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 86–92). 38 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 94.

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Schroeder concludes the chapter by highlighting how respect for the actual details of

the text (as practised by Vermigli) and the exercise of imagination (Johannes Brenz described

women as actually suffering unfairly Eve’s curse) breathed fresh air into interpretation. She

also underlines how, at this point in the history of interpretation, Deborah was lauded not so

much for her skills and qualities, but for the fact that she was sent by God.39

Chapter 4: Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries

From the seventeenth century, women themselves wrote about Deborah in

exponential numbers. She was not seen as the exception to the rule concerning the ability of

women to lead, but rather as proof. Moreover, the growing literacy of women thanks to the

Protestant emphasis on reading the Bible for oneself led to an increasing number of works by

male and female writers with women readers in mind. In extensive writings by women like

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Deborah was named in defence against misogynistic attacks of the

querelles des femmes. She was the reason why women should be educated, speak in religious

assemblies and take up political leadership. Some praised Deborah as one of the “masculine

spirited Viragoes”.40 This was not to encourage emulation, but to shame male leaders who

were perceived as weak and cowardly (in lacking that masculine spirit). Deborah’s name

rather than her actual story was used to encourage women to seemly behaviour.

Biblical commentators such as Matthew Henry, John Wesley and Robert Lowth gave

credit to Deborah, though the main perception was again that God’s strength was revealed in

this woman’s weakness. Praise for Deborah flowed in music such as the libretto of Handel’s

Deborah. Opinions on Barak were divided between him as an equal companion to her and

him as a coward. Attempts to paint Deborah as a submissive companion to Barak continued.

39 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 105. 40 Ibid., 119.

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Schroeder closes the chapter stressing the debate over gender roles in the early

modern period. When Deborah was used to claim a space for women beyond the spiritual-

religious sphere, the counter-argument was the expectation to conform to gender roles.

Deborah was not only scriptural proof of women in leadership, albeit by divine appointment,

but also inspiration for those who had to hold their own against misogynistic attacks.

Chapter 5: Nineteenth Century

In the early nineteenth century, Deborah’s story was used by women to “argue for

their right to preach, lecture publicly, vote in elections, petition congress, hold political

office, and enter the political sphere as men’s equals”.41 Female prophets were used in

apologetics for women preachers,42 who always had to defend their ministry. The NT

injunctions were no longer seen to rule (or overrule) the OT. The “new dispensation” under

Christ was interpreted to mean that the walls of gender and race had been felled so that the

gospel could be preached to the world.43 If Deborah had been called upon to speak and act in

public for the benefit of God’s people, how much more should her ‘daughters’ do so today?

In arguments, the NT injunctions were set against Gal 3:28 and the presence of women

leaders in the OT. In the same period, the term “mother in Israel” began to be used to praise

“women who offered charity, hospitality, and spiritual leadership in their community”.44

The explosion of women in publishing led to a great number of works on the Bible by

women. Deborah was a mainstay in “collective biographies”,45 which featured inspirational

role models for women. The writers’ engagement with their times and imaginative

engagement with the text (through fictional details and sometimes grandiose claims) became

41 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 139. 42 Ibid., 144. 43 Ibid., 149. 44 Ibid., 159. 45 Ibid., 160.

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part of these biographies. When women were not welcome to produce exegetical or

theological works, these collective biographies were ways to express their opinions. They

explained, for example, that Deborah’s womanhood did not strain her leadership, but rather

made her a natural leader.46 The position of women during Deborah’s day was not deemed to

be as low as it was in the nineteenth century. Her song was seen as a remnant of lost literature

by women. Her troubling trumpeting of Jael (Judg 5:24) was taken to be praise for preventing

rape (inferring from Judges 5:30 that Sisera had or would have raped prisoners of war).

The rise of historical criticism in the nineteenth century was only reflected by a

minority of writers who used Judges 4–5 to comment on gender relations. For those who did

absorb historical critical methods, the later dating of Judges 4 versus the earlier Judges 5 led

to the conclusion that the older poetry section was more “historically reliable” than the prose

section,47 and thus could be used to reconstruct culture and society at the time. It was

acknowledged there was a historical Deborah who was a judge in the same sense as Samson

and Gideon, that is, a deliverer of Israel raised up by God. However, her judging Israel and

holding court under a palm tree were confused additions by later redactors.48 The historical

critic’s attitude towards Deborah’s praise of Jael was accepting, unburdened by having to

hold the biblical figures up to the standards of nineteenth century ethics and gender

expectations. The composer of the Song of Deborah was no longer assumed to be Deborah,

but rather a male redactor. This threw into question the assumption that there were words of

this woman in the Bible. Art depicting Deborah began to place her in her historical context,

rather than put her in the garb of the artist’s milieu. The Woman’s Bible put together by

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was published to much controversy. While it relied heavily on

interpretations of Deborah by men, it questioned the motives of the biblical writers.

46 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 161. 47 Ibid., 174. 48 Ibid.

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Schroeder’s conclusion to the chapter reiterates the easy connection made to Deborah

by men and women agitating for women to be able to vote and preach publicly in their time.

The tendency by opponents to domesticate Deborah continued in the nineteenth century, with

writers omitting mention of Deborah, or pointing out that other female figures in the Bible

were more worthy of emulation because of their femininity. Women writers agreed that

Deborah was an inspiration, but some also sought to make her more palatable because of

their discomfort with her “vengeful and arguably bloodthirsty language”.49

Chapter 6: Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

In the early twentieth century, Deborah continued to be used as precedent and reason

for why women should participate in the political process. From the late 1970s on, as women

continued to join the workforce and the second and third waves of feminism influenced

culture and society, gender bias, biblical precedent and pragmatism were in tension.

Deborah was reshaped to be someone who balanced work and personal life (the

question of Deborah keeping up with her domestic duties came up), was not

“emasculating”,50 or observed the complementary roles of men and women. If Lappidoth

were her husband, then they were in a relationship of mutual submission (rather than

requiring the wife’s full submission, as in the first century). Biblical details continued to be

omitted for the sake of fitting Deborah into the narrative of a writer’s mind.51

Traditional themes continued, such as Deborah’s weakness as a woman revealing

God’s strength all the more, and Deborah as an anomaly not to be imitated. In the postwar

period, the phenomenon of women who had to go to work when men in the family were off

49 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 189. 50 Ibid., 201. 51 For example, Edith Deen in All the Women of the Bible (1955) claimed that Deborah collaborated

with rather than commanded Barak in battle, when the text shows that she was the one who directed him in battle (See Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 208).

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to war, and then returned to household duties when the men returned, was addressed by

seeing Deborah as being reluctant to lead and happy to return to being simply “wife of

Lappidoth”. There arose an evangelical feminism that sought support in Scripture, and for

which Deborah was key evidence. Some voices restricted Deborah to having civic rather than

religious authority.

Christian lectionaries traditionally omitted Deborah and many other women in the

Bible, and this began to be perceived negatively. Alternative materials were created.

Retellings of her story abounded, and most saw the need to explain her involvement in

military affairs, for example, by creating fictionalised bereavements. From the 1980s, biblical

scholarship by women on Judges 4–5 began to grow. Among the major commentaries,

Deborah’s authority as a prophet was not denied, but whether she had an official role as a

judge or military leader was called into question. Daniel I. Block in the conservative New

American Commentary, for example, pulled the focus away from a supposed triumph over

the patriarchy and back onto Deborah’s utility amongst YHWH’s plans.52

Feminist biblical interpreters approached the text with a “hermeneutics of

suspicion”.53 They did not use the narrative to defend women in leadership, and rarely

concerned themselves with whether text was literally true. Rather, they treated it as a

depository of cultural information. Many concluded that Deborah could indeed have been an

ad hoc judge (in the sense of deliverer) like Gideon and the others, because ancient Israel’s

militia was raised only when needed, and men and women were otherwise engaged in

agricultural work. The literary approach was used to consider Judges 4 and 5 as separate units

or in contrast to each other, with the conclusion that the song constituted a truer picture of

Deborah, whose warlikeness is toned down in the prose narrative. It may be that the more

52 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 231–232. 53 Ibid., 232.

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fixed form of the poetic text allowed Deborah to be described in powerful terms which would

have departed from gender expectations of the redactor’s time.54

Feminist interpreters followed the rabbinic ones in preferring to read tAdyPil; tv,ae as

describing a quality of Deborah rather than her marriage to Lappidoth.55 However, they read

the Hebrew not as a concrete but abstract description, seeing Deborah as “a woman of

flames”, that is, a “fiery woman”.56 This description is resisted by Block, who called upon

“the patricentric nature of ancient Israelite society, and the pattern of biblical narrative

generally”,57 to argue that Deborah would have been identified “with reference to the

significant man in her life”.58 A diverse debate was waged among feminist readers on the

type of motherhood Deborah represents, ranging from oppressive and violent to heroic and

just. Deborah is taken to be scriptural support both for and against females at the frontlines,

depending on whether Deborah is read as calling on Barak to take over military leadership.59

Female liberation theologians in Asia and Latin Africa take Deborah to be a biblical model

for them to seek justice and even wage war on injustice.

The question of authorship of Judges 5 brought about by historical criticism led to

mixed responses. Interpreters conservative or feminist rejected the idea of separate and

possibly male authorship based on either their view of Scripture or their resistance to the idea

that a woman could not have written the song.60 Feminist scholars laid out arguments for why

the song had to be written from a female viewpoint. Feminist retellings of the story tried to

bring out the unsettling nature of such women as Deborah and Jael, but some have departed

from the text to imply a same-sex relationship between the two.

54 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 234–235. 55 Ibid., 236. 56 Ibid., 237. 57 Quoted in Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 238. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 241. 60 Ibid., 243.

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Schroeder completes the chapter by pointing out the continued use of Deborah to

champion women in leadership, with the added function of supporting causes from women in

the workplace to radical feminism. She describes this period, with its sweeping changes, as

having the greatest diversity of interpretations of Deborah, by believers and non-believers.

An Evaluation

Schroeder makes astute observations throughout her critical history of interpretation.

She notes how gaps in the text are used to fulfil an interpreter’s agenda, depending on his/her

perception of gender relations. The interpretation may then depart from the biblical

worldview which, for example, would have seen a false dichotomy between the civil and

religious authority of Deborah.61 Schroeder does not shy away from the accusation that the

text could be “subjected to contortions, casuistry, and odd leaps and lapses in logic — all for

the sake of putting Deborah and the women of the author’s era into their places”.62 She is

sympathetic to the intent for women “to trace their spiritual lineage back to Deborah”.63

Schroeder surmises reasonably from her history that Deborah has either helped to

expand the imagination concerning the role of women, or the text’s meaning and possibilities

have been curtailed by limited imagination of what women can and should do. She makes the

fair conclusion that the text of Judges 4–5 is as far removed from the history of its

interpretation, as the latter is from us today, but the question of whether Deborah may be a

precedent for women’s roles remains the same. The interaction between the issue of gender

relations and Deborah will continue to stimulate debate and imagination.64

Through Schroeder, we are made aware how bias has influenced interpretation, to the

extent that interpreters have altered the text without regard for details, so as to arrive at

61 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 250. 62 Ibid., 257–258. 63 Ibid., 258. 64 Ibid.

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comfortable conclusions. It is fascinating that interpreters have felt the need to defend Barak

and assumed it was a bad thing for Deborah to have led or for victory to be given to a

woman. The text does not explicitly make it a big deal that Deborah was a woman.65 Yet,

many have tried to recast Deborah into their ideal woman for their times. Schroeder has

served to expose bias in interpretation so we can identify what ought to be expunged.

Schroeder paints an adequate picture of the diversity of views in every age, though it

is wondered whether history worked out as neatly as a progression from a monolithic

misogynism to a pluralistic diversity of opinions. Her focus on gender relations does curtail

her explanations. The perspective of changing gender expectations can produce a rich but

ultimately limited analysis of the history of interpretation of a text. To Schroeder,

interpretation of Deborah’s story most of the time has been shaped by people’s ideas of what

women should do, and some of the time has re-shaped these ideas. But examining through

gender expectations alone is reducing interpretation to one set of terms.

Going to other scholars would help our understanding of the influence of milieu.

Carol Meyers reminds us not to overlook how “social-historical conditions and ways of

thinking of later generations influenced how the Bible was interpreted.”66 With the sacred

text arriving at its canonical form, the need for interpretation was passed into the hands of a

male priesthood, whose thinking would inevitably be coloured by their gender expectations.

Hellenism brought a dualism to Jewish and early Christian thinking that would have been

alien to the biblical text — leading, for example, to women being thought of as different from

men, to the point where they were “inferior and even dangerous”.67 In addition, translations

would have meant that assumptions of the target culture would be imported into the text.68

65 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 200. 66 Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003), 205. 67 Ibid., 210. 68 Ibid., 211.

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Conclusion

The history of interpretation of Deborah’s story reveals that diverse agendas and

cultural assumptions have interacted with the text. We see then that interpretation of

Scripture can be influenced by our agendas and cultural assumptions to the extent that

exegesis reveals more about the interpreter than the text. Hence, we should encounter

interpretations with the interpreter’s bias in mind.69 At the same time, we can aim to engage

in interpretation that allows our agendas and cultural assumptions to be formed by Scripture.

This requires us to allow our assumptions to be challenged and imagination to be stretched.

The paper will conclude with some thoughts on an approach to interpreting Deborah’s story

and reflections on our practice of biblical interpretation and theologising.

An Approach to Interpreting Deborah’s Story

Perhaps readers interested in gender relations should consider that the story may not

be about Deborah and the Bible may not be about sexual equality. When we become overly

focused on what the text means for women and who can be prophets, judges, and military

leaders, we may be avoiding the text’s authority on us and how we live. We have to be wary

of our bias in the questions that we ask of the text — Why do we read Barak calling for

Deborah as weakness? And Deborah’s naming of a woman as an insult?70

Moreover, the debatable need to harmonise the Bible indicates an unwillingness to

accept that tensions exist in Christian Scripture (comprising the OT and the NT). This has led

69 We should bear in mind how Schroeder’s history of interpretation is coloured by her chosen angle of

gender relations. 70 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 168.

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to the bewildering belief that biblical women “must have obeyed the New Testament

commands even before the commands had been given”.71 One can see how critical methods

have helped us avoid such untenable positions today. At the same time, we should not be lose

perspective in the unending loop of historical critical questions. Having grasped that Judges 4

and 5 are dated differently, knowing the exact dating of each will not necessarily help our

understanding of the meaning of the text. As Block reminds us, since the biblical narrator

placed the song within the prose composition, the “present literary purpose cannot be

understood without reference to the overall agenda of the book”.72 In the wider context of

Judges, women eventually become victims of massive injustice themselves, as attested by the

fates of Jephthah’s daughter (Judg 11:34–40), the Levite’s concubine (Judg 19), the 400

young virgins from Jabesh Gilead (Judg 21:12) and the daughters of Shiloh (Judg 21:21).73

In addition, whether the book of Judges is “anti-Ephraimite”, “essentially a pro-

Judaean political tractate in defence of the Davidic monarchy”,74 or as Block thinks and

Chisholm agrees, “a prophetic work lamenting the Canaanisation of Israelite society”,75 we

should be hesitant to fall on either side of the debate. Could it not be both?

We should acknowledge the difficulty of pinning down the Hebrew text, and be

careful with conclusions drawn from translations (including our own) that we can only make

relatively informed choices about. For example, Wilda C. Gafney, perhaps because of her

experience as a military chaplain,76 reads Judges 4:7 as Deborah proposing “a flanking move,

71 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 71. 72 Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth, vol. 6 of The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen

(Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 177. 73 J. Clinton McCann, Judges, in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

(Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox, 2002), 23. 74 Daniel I. Block, “Deborah Among the Judges: The Perspective of the Hebrew Historian”, in Faith,

Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. A. R. Millard, James K. Hoffmeier and David W. Baker (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 231.

75 Block, “Deborah Among the Judges”, 231. See also Robert B. Chisholm, Jr., A Commentary on Judges and Ruth (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Academic, 2013), 17.

76 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 240.

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dividing the troops”.77 But a more common reading would be of hearing the direct promise of

YHWH to Barak through Deborah to draw the enemy to him — the prophet is acting as the

divine spokesperson here.

We should also be uncomfortable with attempts to explain the text to fit modern ears

and doctrine, instead of letting its strangeness, irony and surprise speak for itself. Chisholm,

as he counters Block’s argument against Deborah as a judge, notes that this very function of

Deborah in the text is in fact part of the “peculiar” picture of leadership (supported by

syntactical and semantic oddities) that casts doubt about the overall “state of Israelite

leadership”.78 Could we not look at Deborah squarely, and see that she fits the “Ideal Leader”

mould established by Moses — except for participation in the priesthood, she has his

“military, priestly, juridical, prophetic, rhetorical, and literary abilities”?79

Understanding the original social context of the text would be vital, so as to put our

own attitudes in perspective. We may marvel that the biblical text includes women like

Deborah and Huldah (2 Kgs 22:14–20) in the role of prophet, but it is true that “none of the

authors who introduce these figures into their writings gives special attention to the fact that

these prophets are women — in contrast to Old Testament commentators, who repeatedly

marvel at the fact.”80 Their rarity may well be down to the historical fact that Israelite women

would only hold prophesying (and judging?) as a “second vocation”, since the convention of

“early marriage, with its demand upon women of a primary vocation as wife and mother,

would have excluded the early cultivation of the gift of prophecy.”81 Moreover, with the fear

of Canaanisation by the Israelites would have come a general aversion to women

77 Wilda C. Gafney, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis,

Minnesota: Fortress, 2008), 91. 78 Chisholm, Commentary on Judges and Ruth, 222. 79 Athalya Brenner, The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative

(Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1985), 55. 80 Phyllis A. Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel

(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1997), 41. 81 Ibid.

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participating in the cult, which was a typical occurrence in Canaanite religion.82 If a woman

had a spiritual gift that aided the community, it appears this would have been respected.83

So, it really could be more of the interpreter’s problem that Deborah is a prophet, a

judge or even a military leader. That she is a prophet is no longer an issue in recent

evangelical commentaries, though the instinct is still to see Deborah as some kind of a

problem by virtue of her gender. Even a grammatico-historical reading would be open to this

bias,84 though of course we are aware by now that no interpretation is without bias. Chisholm

falls into the same assumption as many other interpreters that to give victory to a woman

necessarily reflected badly upon the man — “no wonder a woman had to fill the office of

judge!”85

To help break out of this traditional mode of thought, feminist and gender criticism

can be helpful in providing hidden perspectives from which to read the text.86 Deborah F.

Sawyer employs Luce Irigaray’s mimétisme (mimesis) to read biblical narratives as playing

with “constructed” ideas of masculinity and femininity, both of which are “other” to God

(there is no egalitarianism in the human-divine relationship).87 So, we should see Deborah

and Barak as individuals, and not to immediately judge them against ideas of womanhood

and manhood that may serve only to obscure our understanding of the whole narrative.

Hence, it may well be that Barak is purely seeking the presence of God when he asks

Deborah to go with him, which would also fit into the pattern of a call narrative;88 it may well

82 Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, 42. 83 Ibid., 44. 84 See Chisholm, Commentary on Judges and Ruth, 223–224 and 223n47. Chisholm begins by saying

Deborah’s designation “compels one to ask, ‘Why was a woman judging?’, but he admits that the collocation ha'ybin> hV'ai in Judges 4:4 may just be idiomatic instead of highlighting gender.

85 Chisholm, Commentary on Judges and Ruth, 228. 86 Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Grand

Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 201. 87 Deborah F. Sawyer, “Gender Criticism: A New Discipline in Biblical Studies or Feminism in

Disguise?”, in A Question of Sex? Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Deborah W. Rooke (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), 8.

88 Block, “Deborah Among the Judges”, 249.

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be that Deborah was not telling Barak that he would be shamed by a woman, but that YHWH

would confirm his divine work by giving victory through a woman’s hand.89 This would

justify the LXX, in possibly following a variant Hebrew manuscript, inserting an explanation

for why Barak needed Deborah’s presence — “for I do not know the day in which the Lord

will send his angel on a good journey with me.” (Judg 4:8 LXX NETS). That is, Deborah was

needed to tell Barak the best time to act. We do not have to reduce biblical figures to stock

characters for our agendas.

Sawyer’s gender criticism may help us live with the tensions in the text. This is

because we can accept that there will be texts that are “in harmony with a hierarchical and

patriarchal society”,90 yet also those that “challenge subvert and infer the reformation of such

a society”,91 and furthermore those that “are anarchic in turning upside down expected

patterns of behaviour”.92 Just adopting one way of reading will not allow us to see the

entirety of the tension and miss exploring the text more fully. It will help us to realise that

ancient, prexilic Israel was one kind of society, that Jewish and Christian societies were not.93

Heterarchy, in which there were intersecting hierarchies not only dependent on gender, would

probably be more descriptive of ancient Israel than outright patriarchy.94 Hence, it truly is the

interpreter that may be adding his/her bias to the reading of Deborah’s story, and not the text

itself. At the same, we should not deny that the Bible is a cultural product even as it is a

sacred text. We should admit the problematic aspects as we read the Bible in our own

context, and that these may not be resolved through the “selective approach”,95 that is, the

error of prooftexting.

89 Block, “Deborah Among the Judges”, 251. 90 Sawyer, “Gender Criticism”, 9. 91 Ibid., 9. 92 Sawyer, “Gender Criticism”, 9. 93 Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 198. 94 Ibid., 196–199. 95 Watson, Text, Church and World, 201.

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Implications for Biblical Interpretation and Theology

The foregoing leads to a key question — what does it mean to have integrity as a

biblical interpreter? It seems as though it has always been easier to change Scripture to suit

our intentions than to be changed by it to suit God’s purposes. As an interpreter, we should be

aware that our own milieu matters and hence brightens or darkens our outlook accordingly.

For example, the question of women in leadership is comfortably hypothetical when there are

only male leaders, interesting when there are strong female political leaders, but contentious

and urgent and divisive and threatening to the future of the church when there are women

seeking ordination.96

With the plethora of interpretive approaches available today, we should assess each

for its bias and not forgo any of them because of our own bias, for example, against critical

scholarship or devotional writings. The history of interpretation laid out by Schroeder is an

example of another way of looking at the text that places our interpretation in the timeline of

church history, giving us pause about our claims to ‘correct’ interpretation and humility to

look forward to an even more accurate interpretation as more information and techniques

become available (as the move from the precritical to critical phase in interpretation showed).

Imagination is a factor in interpretation — it can be exercised too little (in

conformity) and too much (in radical re-interpretation to support a cause like social reform).

There is thus a real dialogue between the text, the church and the world beyond it, which an

interpreter should respect. There is a need for cultural exegesis as much as biblical exegesis.

As interpreters interpret for their times and the community of faith expects Scripture

to speak out of its context into their contexts, ‘gaps’ in the story of Deborah will continue to

be filled in a way that reflects and responds to contemporary concerns with the formula,

96 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 248.

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“Women should (not) … because Deborah ….” The figure of Deborah will continue to

feature as precedent or problematic in the debate over the roles of women in church and

society. As interpreters, we can guide the church to a better reading of the text, but we must

also engage with the issues that shift the focus away from the text. This cannot be done

honestly by forcing a theology of women out of a few prooftexts, but engaging in the hard

work of cultural and biblical exegesis, building up our OT, NT and biblical theology,

listening to the sheep and the Shepherd, and synthesising it all in a manner that edifies the

church.

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Israel. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1997. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “The Family in First Temple Israel.” In Families in Ancient Israel by

Leo G. Perdue, Joseph Blenkinsopp, John J. Collins and Carol Meyers. Edited by Don S. Browning and Ian S. Evison. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1997.

Block, Daniel I. “Deborah Among the Judges: The Perspective of the Hebrew Historian.” In

Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context. Edited by A. R. Millard, James K. Hoffmeier and David W. Baker. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1994).

Block, Daniel I. Judges, Ruth. Vol. 6 of The New American Commentary. Edited by E. Ray

Clendenen. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999. Brenner, Athaly. The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative.

Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1985. Chisholm, Robert B., Jr. A Commentary on Judges and Ruth. Grand Rapids, Michigan:

Kregel Academic, 2013. Gafney, Wilda C. Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis,

Minnesota: Fortress, 2008. McCann, J. Clinton. Judges. In Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and

Preaching. Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox, 2002. Meyers, Carol. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003. Reardon, Patrick Henry. “Judge Deborah: The Hebrew Prophetess in Christian Tradition.”

Touchstone (April 2000). http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-03-018-f (accessed 20 May 2015).

Sawyer, Deborah F. “Gender Criticism: A New Discipline in Biblical Studies or Feminism in

Disguise?”. In A Question of Sex? Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond. Edited by Deborah W. Rooke. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007.

Schroeder, Joy A. Deborah’s Daughters: Gender Politics and Biblical Interpretation. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Watson, Francis. Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1994.