#31 DEBORAH: JUDGE OF ISRAEL
The first picture we have of the Bible’s Deborah, the only woman who was both the commander-in-chief of Israel’s armed forces and its chief judge is of her sitting under a palm tree listening to and settling the disputes of her people.
Deborah is one of the seven women in the Bible who are called prophets. Two of those prophets are lives of Mary. Her story is preserved in two narratives… both are in the Book of Judges: one is a prose account, the other is a descriptive poem or song.
The times are bad: gangs of thugs roam the countryside. Deborah’s valley is controlled by Hozor, a Canaanite overlord, and her people who are of the tribe of Ephraim can no longer travel on the main road and have fled to the safety of a walled city. There they began to cry out to God for assistance.
God speaks to Deborah and tells her to instruct her general, Barak, to take ten thousand soldiers and fight the Canaanite general, Sisera, on Mount Tabor. Deborah outlines her military strategy to Barak of how to form a coalition army with other tribes but he is reluctant to act. His soldiers are vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped compared to the Canaanites who have nine hundred armed chariots. Having considered Deborah’s request, Barak replies that he will go, if she will go and if she doesn’t go, he won’t go. Deborah agrees to accompany him to battle but she is not amused by his equivocation and lets him know that as a consequence of his hesitation, he will have to share the glory of the imminent victory with two women herself: and another woman, Jael.
In her Song Deborah describes the flash flood, which turns the soil of the battlefield into a muddy quagmire immobilising the enemy’s chariots. The Canaanite army is overwhelmed with heavy casualties and their leader Sisera, takes refuge in the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, where Deborah’s prophecy is fulfilled. Jael drives a tent peg through the ear of Sisera while he sleeps. Deborah’s savage victory hymn describes in the detail of slow-motion the violence of Sisera’s death.
What was Mary doing selecting such a life?
Conversation with the Gatekeeper
“When we first meet Deborah, sitting outside under a palm tree, how old was she?”
“Deborah, when you meet her in The Book of Judges, was twenty-five. She sits in the shade under a date palm tree which is the seat of a leader. Remember the date palm leaves strewn beneath Jeshua’s path and feet? This was in recognition of his wisdom and leadership. A fig tree, on the other hand, was planted at the entrance of a house, where it acted like a permanent sun umbrella. To find a palm in a settlement showed there was likely to be a learned leader there and it was quite significant.”
“How did her life begin?”
“Deborah comes from an obscure origin. At an early age she began her studies which were made possible by the good offices of her mother and aunt. Her aunt was widowed twice and inherited two fortunes. She sent her very clever niece called Hannah at that time to a Talmudic school which was like a Hebrew university. From there she would graduate as a lawyer.”
“What did Hannah look like?”
“She was quite plain but with beautiful thick auburn hair and very fair skin which burned in the sun. Her grandmother was an Amelkite who had come to Israel as a prisoner of war from the Caucus. She was a Celt with freckles too. Hannah was of medium height and inclined to be overweight. She certainly was not pretty, more like Leah’s daughter Dinah and so different from Nefertiti… and she was exceptionally intelligent.”
“How did she become a warrior?”
“By going into battle at sixteen, going on seventeen, disguised as a boy.”
“Did she disguise herself by cutting her hair?”
“No. It was common practice for Judaic men to have long hair. A devout Jew of the time did not shave his face or trim his beard. Hannah artfully constructed a false beard to fool her comrades.
She had run off after finishing her studies and joined the army. She was a physically strong woman who was quite athletic. She would take over the command when a young leader was wounded and she triumphed in a small battle, a skirmish with Syrian troops. She was promoted again and it was then they discovered that she was a girl and that she was a lawyer!”
“Which was worse?”
“Always the answer is the same… being a woman, of course. She had to convince many hardline judges she was capable as a lawyer which she did. She was constantly proving herself smarter and harder than those around her. She was one hardball player! They made her a local judge in the north.”
“Judges covers about two hundred years at the time of the conquest of Canaan. Where did Deborah come in the sequence of judges? Were they assigned one per each of the twelve tribes or by some other arrangement?”
“Deborah occurred almost in the middle of the judges. Each tribe had individual judges and there were national or federal judges as well. Think of it this way, a tribal judge was selected by the elders as both a judge and a politician or, if you like a Senator. By the time Hannah was twenty-five she was a national judge of the status of someone sitting on the Australian High Court or the American Supreme Court, as well as that she was a Senator.”
“No separation of powers! So when we meet her under the palm tree in the south she is …”
“A national judge!”
“Deborah’s name means ‘she spoke’ but you have called her Hannah. The name Deborah must have been given to her later?”
“It was. It was given to her after her triumphant stint in the army. She was made a lawgiver at eighteen or nineteen, the equivalent now of a senior barrister and her name Deborah was in common usage when she acted as a tribal judge.”
“What prompted Deborah to rely on such a seemingly limited man as Barak as the commander of her army?”
“Barak was a weak vacillating man even though he was the commander; she had to promise to go to war with him to put lead in his spine. She did the real soldering.”
“Didn’t Barak say ‘I’ll go if you go, but I won’t go, if you won’t’?”
“That exchange occurred because when she called Barak before her, Deborah had said to him you are not going without me. She was thirty at the time and her store of courage was enough for both of them.”
“What was a women’s role at that time in battles? Were they on the sidelines barracking like at today’s football matches, or did they participate as fighters?”
“Women could be treated on equal terms in the archers. It was a great leveller. The women archers were as good as or better than men. The Hebrews not only had women as archers - but they had whole regiments of women archers. They were the first to be engaged who would then retreat before the spearmen once they had used up their arrows. Then they went to the rear to shoot over the heads of their fighters at the advancing enemy. As well, there were the other women who went to see the spectacle and took the risk of being part of the spoils if their side lost.”
“What happened to her after the battle with Barak?”
“It was an amazing battle with an amazing result. She became the pre-eminent leader of Israel.”
“We were told she was married to Lapidot. Did she have children?”
“Deborah appeared to be content with her husband and they had no children. Her life was her work. But there is something there… a secret?”
“She is a woman I respect, if she wants to tell us she will. Is she the most perfect woman in the Old Testament?”
“She would have to be close to it… I agree, on reflection she was the most perfect woman.”
“Deborah is an outstanding role model, but Mary as a fiery warrior, isn’t this unusual for her?”
“Deborah was the ice killer… cool and collected… not fiery at all. This is Mary the Magdalene and you will have seen her as the Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir!””
“Wow! What was her strength?”
“Her strength was that she never behaved in the way they expected a woman to behave. She could, for example, maintain a silence for minutes on end. As a lawyer, she would stare at a victim until they broke and revealed the truth. Deborah didn’t scare easily she had no fiery temper and although she was capable of outrage she never lost her control.”
“What do you think of her poetry The Song of Deborah?”
“It was an orthodox religious peculiarity of her nation to describe a battle in that manner. She was as a person infinitely more attractive than that great poet, David. But the Song was not all written by her; some was added after her death. She was a sublime poet and in her future she will demonstrate how beautiful her poetry is. “
“Why did she have to incarnate?”
“Deborah incarnated to give expression to the more combative side of Mary’s character and to do this as a woman not as a man. Remember Mary the High Priestess was a warrior as Arjuna, now she’s a warrior as a woman.”
“What qualities of Mary did she bring to her incarnation?”
“Her enormous intellect, her clarity of mind and her patient perseverance. Deborah only got impatient with nonsense. She had a clear vision of her part, a great determination and a great strength of character.”
“What was her greatest achievement?”
“Her greatest achievement on a temporal level was her successful unification of Judah and Israel into one nation.”
“I thought King David got the credit for that! Didn’t he unify the two states of Israel and Judea?”
“Yes, but Israel and Judea were like a broken cup which was stuck together. David got credit but it was Deborah who gave them a common purpose as a Judge, a Commander-in-Chief and as a leader of Israel.”
“And her spiritual achievement?”
“The wielding of power without becoming intoxicated by it which is so much harder than it sounds.”
“Did Deborah achieve what she set out to achieve in that life?”
“Yes, she did. She harnessed her martial nature to her law giving role and infused it from her enormous central core of caring. Her depth of caring was very Marian. It is right that she is well-loved.”
“How did she die?”
“She died of a massive heart attack at ninety. It is often a reliable index of the success of a person’s life by how much they are mourned. Deborah was mourned throughout the land publicly and privately. It was hard not to like her enormously. She was a great, great woman.”
“There is a grave near Tel Kadesh in Israel which is attributed to either Barak or to Deborah. Whose is it?”
“I am looking. Just a moment.” The Gatekeeper paused and spoke quietly in Hebrew. Then he said:
“I have been told her secret. They are both buried there. They were secret lovers when they were young. Barak died first at seventy-eight; he was five years younger than her. She ordered that she was to be buried with him. He was the love of her life and when he said ‘I’ll go if you go’ what he was saying was ‘if you’re going into battle to die for Israel, you will not die alone, I will die with you.’ They knew even then that they could only be together in death.”
“That’s sad! Could you please thank Deborah for telling us? What was her next prominent life?”
“As Priscilla, the colleague and fellow worker of Paul. She was an important teacher and missionary.”
“Then Paul will have many aspects of Mary as his colleagues. There was Luke, Barnabas, Titus and Priscilla.”
“And he would need every single one of them to calm him and fix up his messes. Mary and Hilarion work well together.”
“I would have liked to see her as a warrior again.”
“And so you shall… in a most remarkable role… but don’t bother guessing. You’ll just waste your breath! Now to St Germain as the last judge of Israel.” [Litchfield, 2006]
Thinking about These Lives
Despite his failings, Aaron’s life has the dash and flash, sleight of hand, the guileful words, the brazenness and intrigue of some of St Germain’s great lives as Merlin the Magician, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Disraeli. You will notice two of those lives share the same first name. Mary and St Germain use the same names repeatedly of their dual energies, Jacob and James, Benjamin, Christopher, Julius and Jules, Claudius, Claudio and Claude, Joseph and Joshua, Patrick and Merlin. And Mary uses Luke and Phillip, Deborah and Leah. Fortunately, they haven’t reprised Imhotep and Nefertiti yet!
Joshua is a surprise; strong, pragmatic, intelligent, a return of the Imhotep Line of St Germain, and the Gatekeeper’s rendition of him is closer to the Biblical story than his account of Aaron’s. Aaron appears to have been completely overshadowed by the charismatic deliverer and leader of the Jewish people, Moses. His contribution to writing the first three books of the Torah has been appropriated to Moses.
Mary, in her life as Deborah, is gifted with leadership, prophetic inspiration, creative ability and wisdom and she experiences a life which will not lead her to be Christ’s mother, but rather it will prepare her for a sequence of lives where she demonstrates characteristics of Artemis and Diana, physically strong and articulate.
In a time where woman were subordinate to men, Deborah emerges as a wonderful model of a leader: courageous, firm, kind, wise and humble. In her song of deliverance she calls herself “a mother in Israel” not a Judge or a prophet. The story of Deborah raises interesting questions because neither the chronicle in Judges nor her lyrical outburst tells the actual story of her life and the Gatekeeper attempted to remedy that. Deborah, who appears not to have the flaws of either Moses or Aaron, was the most perfect woman in the Bible.
This is a life of Mary as a commander-in-chief and a wise leader who is very different from what we have seen in her lives so far.
