Why Deborah?

A sneak peek of session one from my newest study, Deborah

I was recently asked the question: Why did I choose to write on Deborah and why now?

To be honest, I can’t say that I choose most of my Bible study curriculums. It is more that they choose me.

This one started percolating because every year in my Introduction to Old Testament class I teach the book of Judges. And every year I watch my students flabbergasted by how quickly (and repetitively) the people of God start looking like the Canaanites. By the time we reach Judges 19—the story of the Levite and his concubine—I can see their stomachs turn. I can also see their gaze turn inward as they start asking the critical question: “What happens when the people of God forget what it means to be the people of God?”  

That is an important question, then and now.

For Israel, what happened was one of the most morally compromised and politically divided eras of Israel’s history. In the ensuing train wreck of religious compromise, military failure, and lost territory the Kingdom began slipping through the fingers of God’s people, and most of them didn’t care. Why didn’t they care? They had found possessing the territory that belonged to the Kingdom too challenging, and instead had chosen the comfort of status quo. In contemporary parlance we call this “mission drift.” This is a perennial threat, then and now. And then there is Deborah herself. A woman of integrity in a world that didn’t have any. She says “yes” to God’s call when the rest of her world tells her that women don’t lead. She holds her ground in a lawless society and displays the sort of outrageous courage that not only inspires her community to fight for what matters, but by her faith in God’s ability to do the impossible, she wins!

And her victory restores the territory of the Kingdom and brings peace to her kin for forty years! This, in the words of Sam Gamgee, is a story that matters. And we the Church need to rehearse these stories, learn these stories, and be formed by these stories.

Because being willing to fight for what really really matters in a morally compromised and politically divided era is not just the story of Deborah and Israel ... it is our story as well.

What else motivated me to study the great battle for the Jezreel under the prophet Deborah and her clan commander, Barak? Well, to be honest, this narrative is chalk full of historical geography, tribal territories, ancient military strategy, the archaeology of chariotry, the anthropology of tribal systems and volunteer militias, topography, water systems, and what it takes to train a war horse—who could stay away?!

Take a peek at the entire first session of Deborah and preorder your copy today!