Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

But while Deborah put Barak at the head of the army, she bravely stood by him with her counsels, her prayers, her faith, and her wholesome reproof, for Deborah was a practical and sensible woman. Her name signifies “the bee,” and she was well provided with the sting as well as the honey, and knew how to stir up Barak by wholesome severity as well as encourage him by holy inspiration. He is a very foolish man who refuses to be helped by the shrewd intuitive wisdom of a true woman, for while her head may not be so large, its quality is generally of the best; and her conclusions, though not reasoned out so elaborately, generally reach the right end by intuitions which are seldom wrong. Woman’s place is to counsel, to encourage, to pray, to believe, and pre-eminently to help. This was what Deborah did.

Barak, however, was not always weak. As soon as he had recovered himself from the surprise of the unexpected call to lead the little army of ten thousand against the myriads of Sisera, he consented on condition that the courageous Deborah go with him. By this timidity he lost not a little of the honor that he might have won, and his sharp and penetrating leader plainly told him that the victory should not be wholly to his credit, for God should deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman; and so there were really two women in this struggle for liberty, and Barak was sandwiched in between them. With Deborah in front, and Jael in the rear, and Barak in the midst, even poor, weak Barak became one of the heroes of faith who shine in the constellation of eternal stars, upon which the Holy Spirit has turned the telescope of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

How the inspiring faith of Deborah must have nerved Barak for heroic action. Her message to him is all alive with the very spirit and innermost essence of the faith that counts the things that are not as though they were. “Up,” she cries, as she rouses him by a trumpet call from his timorous inactivity; “for this is the day,” she adds, as she shakes him out of his procrastination, “in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand.” She goes on to say, as she reckons upon the victory as already won, “Is not the Lord gone out before thee?” She concludes, as she commits the whole matter into Jehovah’s hands, and bids him simply follow on and take the victory that is already given.

Is it possible for faith to speak in plainer terms, or language to express with stronger emphasis the imperative mood or the present tense of that victorious faith, for which nothing is impossible?

Again, we have here the lesson of mutual service. This victory was not all won by any single individual, but God linked together as He loves always to do, many co-operating instruments and agents in the accomplishment of His will. There was Deborah representing the spirit of faith and of prophecy. There was Barak representing obedience and executive energy. There were the people that willingly offered themselves; the volunteers of faith. There were the yet nobler hosts of Zebulun, and Naphtali, that jeoparded their lives unto the death, the martyrs who are the crowning glory of every great enterprise. And there was Jael, the poor heathen woman away out on the frontiers of Israel, who gave the finishing touch, and struck the last blow through the temples of the proud Sisera, while high above all were the forces of nature, and the unseen armies of God’s providence; for the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and the flood of the Kishon rolled down in mountain torrents and swept the astonished foe away.

Sisera’s iron chariots were broken and scattered; but his will and prowess would soon have another army in the field, more terrible than the first. To answer fully the faith that took hold of God’s strength, the Canaanitish general must die. But not by the hand of Barak. His wavering faith had forfeited that honor. That last act which should bring victory to the army of Israel would be performed through the courage of a woman. The woman who was to complete the deliverance was the wife of an Arab sheik, of a family descended from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law.

The tribe of Jael and of her husband, Heber, was encamped under the “Oak of the Wanderers.” These Arabs were on good terms with both Hebrews and Syrians; but Jael must have had the spiritual sense to see that the Lord had taken in hand the freeing of Israel, and she must use the opportunity to further His plans. So when Sisera left his unmanageable chariot and escaped from the battle on foot, he came to her tent worn out with the fatigue of the fight and flight, and she gave him the hospitality for which he begged; but while he was in the deep sleep of exhaustion, she drove a tent pin into his temple. His death made impossible the rallying of the host against God’s people. Better far that one man should die, than that thousands of both Hebrews and Syrians should fall on the battlefields of prolonged warfare.

Jael has honorable mention in Deborah’s superb song of triumph. Stanley says of that pæan of victory: “In the song of Deborah we have the only prophetic utterance that breaks the silence between Moses and Samuel. Hers is the one voice of inspiration (in the full sense of the word) that breaks out in the Book of Judges.”

Jael is the only woman mentioned in the Bible who ever took a human life. We confess that the exploit seems unwomanly, but we must not forget there is no sex in right or wrong-doing, though it may be long before we can rid ourselves of the habit of requiring a higher morality in a woman than in a man.

In this heroic effort on the part of Deborah to throw off the yoke of a cruel oppressor, we see the curse of neutrality, and the pitiful spectacle, which seems always to be present, of the unfaithful, ignoble and indifferent ones who quietly looked on while all this was happening, and not only missed their reward, but justly received the curse of God’s displeasure and judgment. And so, in the Song of Deborah, we hear of Reuben’s enthusiastic purposes, but does nothing. We see her fiery scorn for those who strayed among the bleatings of the sheepfolds, rather than the trumpet of the battle. We see her sarcasm strike the selfish men of Gilead who abode beyond Jordan; the careless Danites who remained in their ships, and men of Asher who, secure in their naval defences, stayed away up yonder on the seashore, and took refuge in their ports and inland rivers, while, above all the echoes of her denunciations, rings out the last awful curse against the inhabitants of Meroz, a little obscure city that probably had taken refuge in its insignificance, because its inhabitants had refused to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty.