“But what about Deborah?” say the feminists among us who call themselves ‘Christian.’ “She was a judge and a mighty warrior,” they say. They always pluck Deborah out of the Old Testament to try to justify their disobedience; and they never mention that ‘the exception proves the rule’ and that we should never ‘legislate for exceptions.’ Deborah did judge Israel for a long time during the Iron Age, or around 1235 B. C. The Bible has nothing to say against her leadership; the fact is just recorded for our learning; and we should have nothing but praise for her queenly reign. We even pay deference to Deborah by calling the song in Judges 5 the Song of Deborah when verse one begins with, “Then sang Deborah and Barak.” What more can we say about Deborah the judge and prophetess? Nancy M. Tischler says: “The warlike housewife Deborah…rises to the needs of the hour and takes her chances as the leader of armies, assuming the role of the man when no men could do the job” (A Complete Literary Guide to the Bible, p. 158.) When I read this literary guide many years ago, I highlighted and took notes. My note at the close of Nancy’s contribution to the guide says: ‘a bitter, feminist undercurrent.’ Nancy the feminist does not realize that she admits that the role of warrior belongs to the man when she says that Deborah was ‘assuming the role of the man.’ What is more revealing than this oversight of hers, however, is her shortsightedness. She does not see farther than what she misperceives Deborah to have been and did. Deborah was a judge and a prophetess; but she was not, as far as we can learn from Scripture, a warrior, or in Nancy’s word, ‘warlike.’ Did Deborah do a job that ‘no men could do,’ as Nancy says? Deborah indeed went with Barak to Kedesh; but it was Barak who went up from there ‘and pursued after the chariots’ and, with his men, made the host of Sisera fall by ‘the edge of the sword’ (Judges 5.) It looks like Barak, though hesitant, not only could do the job but even did it. There is no record of Deborah in armed combat in the book of Judges: of killing a king with a dagger, as Ehud did; of slaying six hundred Philistines with an ox goad, as Shamgar did; of piercing a captain’s temple with a nail, as Jael (a woman) did; of breaking a skull with a piece of millstone, as ‘a certain woman did’; or of smiting ‘hip and thigh with a great slaughter,’ as Samson did. She is not mentioned outside of Judges 4 and 5, by the way. It is too interesting and instructive to not notice this humiliating fact concerning Deborah: She told Barak that her going with him to Kedesh would not be to his honor, but to hers; but then she is left out of the great roll call of faith in Hebrews, while Barak is honorably mentioned there (Judges 4.9; Hebrews 11.32.) It is as if the LORD corrected her on that point, though he waited until the writing of the New Testament to do it. But we must accord Deborah some kudos for admitting that it was a dishonor, in her day, for a man to be delivered into the hands of a woman (Judges 4.9), for this is an admission of subordination, which agrees with the dishonor that Abimelech avoided when he said to his armourbearer: “Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, a woman slew him” (Judges 9.54.) In the Bible, which is the final rule for what the roles of men and women ought to be, women do not go to the front lines to do combat with men. They go as far as ‘Kedesh,’ maybe, like Deborah did, and no farther. Here and there and now and then, a woman can drive a nail into a temple or drop a millstone on a head, or maybe even stab a tyrant in his heart, as did Charlotte Corday in the French Revolution. This she may do when circumstances admit; but she should otherwise be made to keep to a God-honoring, subordinate, submissive, supportive role as man’s ‘help meet.’ Even in 1798 in England, a woman could honestly assert: “There are many branches of science, as well as useful occupations, in which women may employ their time and their talents, beneficially to themselves and to the community, without destroying the peculiar characteristic of their sex, or exceeding the most exact limits of modesty and decorum” (Priscilla Wakefield, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex; with Suggestions for its Improvement, pp. 8, 9.) How many more ‘branches of science’ have been opened up to women since 1798? And what do women need more today than to get back within ‘the most exact limits of modesty and decorum’? Is it modest or decorous to accompany men on a military campaign and to fight with them and bathe with them and sleep in close quarters by their side? There never was a need for women in combat arms trades among men; and there is no need for them in that capacity yet. Women should go farther in their abstinence than this, though, as Priscilla, a proper lady, goes on to say on her very next lines: “Whatever obliges them to mix in the public haunts of men, or places the young in too familiar a situation with the other sex; whatever is obnoxious to the delicacy and reserve of the female character, or destructive, in the smallest degree, to the strictest moral purity, is inadmissible.” An infantry platoon, or its equivalent, is no place for a woman, however butch the woman may be.
