Deborah, Woman of Fire: Rethinking Female Leadership in the Old Testament | Dr. Ron Peirce

So you love college students, and you love the Old Testament texts.

Yes.

So let's go to the Book of Judges, and before we zero in on Deborah-

Yeah

... um, I would love to hear from you what I'm sure you get frustrated that people don't do, and that is give us a bird's-eye view of the whole book and its argument before we try to place Deborah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, well, of course, Judges is kind of a transition from the time of Moses and coming into the land.

Now we have a season of Israel being, uh, led by judges, uh, persons who, uh, help to give them civil leadership, but also a sense of, I think, moral leadership at the time, not quite the same as prophets.

Hmm.

So that goes on through the Book of Judges.

It's, it's a dark period where Israel is not presented as being faithful.

Uh, and it starts off early.

Deborah's right up at the beginning in this book.

Uh, and then we end up, as we transition into the Books of Samuel, we end up with Samuel being the last judge who is going to introduce the king, the kingdom, and the kings, so Saul, David, and Solomon.

So it sets right in there.

Uh, it has a, a wide variety of disturbing stories, uh, in the Book of Judges, but the four main characters that emerge there are, to use the, uh, language of the Book of Hebrews, Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah.

And so how do we get to Deborah?

How do we get to Deborah?

And as we...

Yeah, as we come back to the Book of Judges, we find out that Deborah was a leader at the time, and she was actually a leader that Barak worked under or worked with.

And so and there the story begins.

There the story begins.

But also, before we dive into her more specifically, what do you think is going on with the fact that Samuel and Deborah are both prophet-judges, and none of the other judges are prophets, correct?

Yes, absolutely.

What's happening?