We get only a sip from the book of Judges. A sip may be all we want; a big gulp of the book might be more than we could take. So, the lectionary committee measures out a small spoonful of this book, seven verses, and gives us a sip once every three years. The committee must be afraid that all of the blood and gore would turn our stomachs and all of the sex would distract us. So, the bottle marked "Judges" has a sticker from the committee that reads, "Caution, do not exceed recommended dosage."
For our part, we don't make much of an effort to break into the medicine cabinet to sneak a swig of the book. A Bible study on Judges would not likely pack 'em in. Most of us have heard of only two characters in the whole book: Samson and Delilah. Even as fascinating as that story is with the flawed athletic hero and the cunning temptress, we usually wonder what spiritual insights we might gain from it. Samson lets us know that a person can be physically strong, but morally weak, so it is not without value, but the story is not one of the profound parts of the Bible. So, we are not clamoring for more than our recommended sip from the book of Judges.
If a sip is all we need, what spiritual illness does it treat? The one passage we are supposed to read is short, and stops before the narrative gets going. Don't tell the lectionary committee, but we are going to drink a little more than they want us to. I don't think it will hurt us. We are going to take in the whole story, murder and all.
The background of the story is a time of conflict, as we might expect. The best stories always involve conflict. We prefer times of peace ourselves, but a story where everybody got along wouldn't catch our attention. The Israelites are being oppressed by their long-time enemies, the Canaanites. Throughout the book of Judges, the Israelites find themselves at war with someone. The Lord punishes their disobedience by sending an army to defeat them. They suffer under the defeat for some years, and then a warrior or judge will come along and lead them to victory. This victory will provide a stretch of peace and prosperity, but, inevitably, the people will fall back into their sins and God will need to get their attention all over again.
In Judges 4, the attention-getter is King Jabin of Canaan. The Israelites are at his mercy, and mercy is not his thing. The narrator tells us that Jabin "had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years" (v. 3). Cruel oppression for twenty years is more than enough punishment for any sins the people had committed. It was time for some freedom, peace, and prosperity again.
Deborah comes to the rescue. Deborah is a prophetess and judge in Israel. She is one of two heroines in this story, along with Jael. Long before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena the Warrior Princess, Lara Croft, or even Charlie's Angels, Israel had women champions. Deborah is the voice of inspiration, the motivational speaker who lights a fire under Barak, the soldier. Deborah inspires Barak to go to war against Sisera, Jabin's general. Deborah is so important that Barak will not go to war without her.
The narrator lays out the build-up to the battle. At Deborah's direction, Barak summons 10,000 troops to Mount Tabor. Sisera gets wind of what he considers an insurrection and prepares to subdue the upstart Israelites. Sisera calls out all 900 of his chariots, his version of weapons of mass destruction. The battle itself receives only scant attention from the narrator. Besides 10,000 troops, the Israelites have the Lord on their side. The Lord causes a panic among the Canaanite troops, who are all slaughtered. The once-feared Sisera runs off. He's not so brave without his army behind him.
Now the really interesting part of the story begins. Sisera flees the battle and runs to the tent of Jael, the wife of a Kenite named Heber. We don't know much about Jael. She is the mystery woman who saves the day for Israel. Sisera has every reason to think he will be safe in Jael's tent. He and his king, Jabin, have no quarrel with the Kenites. Jael puts him at ease, telling him to have no fear. So, with a belly full of milk, and a feeling of false security, Sisera lies down for a nap, with Jael on guard duty.
The narrator tells us what happens next, but leaves us full of questions. Instead of protecting Sisera, Jael tiptoes over to him and, quiet as a mouse, drives a tent stake through his head. Very few people could bring themselves to kill another human being in such a gruesome way. Did she have to talk herself into it? Did she flinch when the blood spurted out of Sisera's head? Did she hold her breath and close her eyes as the tent stake plunged into Sisera's soft temple?
An even more important question is why she did it. Her husband's tribe was not at war with Jabin and Sisera. Her name may be Hebrew, meaning "mountain goat," and so she might have been an Israelite. If so, she killed Sisera out of loyalty to her own people. Jael means mountain goat in other languages, though, so she might not have been an Israelite. If she wasn't an Israelite, did she kill Sisera because the suffering of others got to her? In any case, she was not directly affected by the oppression of Jabin and Sisera, and she committed this messy murder to help others. Whatever her exact reasons, the narrator leaves us guessing.
In any case, the Lord comes through again and overthrows Israel's oppressors. The celebration is boisterous, with a big song and dance.
This story is exciting, if squirmy, and would make a great action-adventure movie. The actress who played Jael could work with a personal trainer so that her arm muscles would flex as she drove the stake into Sisera's head. Even with such box-office potential, how does it help heal our spirits and souls? No wonder the lectionary committee doesn't want us to read too much of this. With all of the violence in the world already, who needs a Bible story about a tent stake through the brain? Don't too many people already use religion to justify hatred and violence? Besides, doesn't Jael deceive Sisera, urging him to have no fear?
We can take the book of Judges only in small doses, and even then, we have to mix it carefully. We have to blend in some other parts of the scriptures, because straight Judges could be toxic to our faith. Fortunately, we have some words about love elsewhere in our medicine cabinet. For example, from the bottle marked "Matthew" we read, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-44). Those words help us with the side effects of reading this passage.
This violent story can be just the right medicine sometimes. We still have oppression, cruelty, and people who are trapped, needing help to get out of stifling situations. Judges can be just the right book in those times. We can't take Judges at face value. As Clinton McCann suggests, we have to take Judges symbolically.1 We can't regard Jabin and Sisera as personifying our enemies, people we don't like. We need to see them as symbols of oppression itself, of injustice as an abstraction. In that way, Judges is just what the doctor ordered.
We know that God opposes injustice; God wants what is right and fair. We know that God allows us to participate in the fight against injustice. If we read Judges in the right way, seeing the evil characters as symbols of oppression, and remembering to love our enemies, we can learn to join God in the fight against injustice. Both Deborah and Jael can serve as role models for us.
When we face situations of oppression and cruelty, especially when we are not the ones being oppressed, we sometimes have an initial feeling of righteous indignation, but we usually get over it. Our problem often is that we don't translate our righteous indignation into action. If we are tempted to turn away from an example of injustice, to go on with business as usual, Deborah's speech to Barak may become the word we need to hear. Deborah implores Barak to take action, to trust in God's deliverance, even though the odds seem against him. Perhaps we even can be Deborahs ourselves. Maybe we know someone with the resources to tackle a social problem and we can find just the right words to get the ball rolling. We may not see ourselves as eloquent enough to persuade someone, but we never know until we try.
Sometimes, like Jael, we have to take matters in hand, so to speak. In order to fight injustice, we have to take some action that gives us a crawly feeling. We aren't called to kill a man in his sleep, but we may be called to do things in the name of justice for other people and to do things we are not comfortable with. It may give us the willies to get up at a city council meeting and speak out against some outrage. Heading up a committee on environmental racism may be out of our comfort zone, but Jael lets us know that maybe we can do it after all.
Brent Salsgiver did not like what he had to see and hear in the Sudan. A student at West Virginia Wesleyan College, Salsgiver traveled to that African country to try to combat slavery. Through a translator, he heard stories of brutality, torture, and sexual assault. One woman, named Ajak, told him of seeing her grandfather murdered and her father die of thirst. She watched girls as young as sixteen shot in the head because they refused the sexual advances of the guards. Ajak herself was locked up in a pen and sexually assaulted. Ajak was only twenty years old. Salsgiver was repulsed by what he saw and heard. At one point he wrote, "I want my memory erased. No one should have to see this or ever live through it." Just as Jael had to do what no one should have to do -- drive a stake through a man's head -- so Salsgiver had to see and hear what no one should. He did it to pursue justice on another continent. He saw an outrage and just couldn't let it go by without trying to change it. He continues to write, speak out, and work for the abolition of slavery.2
We may get only a sip from Judges, but it is strong medicine. We may need to hear the disturbing stories of Deborah and Jael to shake us out of our complacency and realize that we can do more than we think. As we do what we have to do to fight injustice, God is with us.
1. Clinton McCann, Judges (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2002), pp. 18-19.
2. Brent Salsgiver, "Setting Captives Free," Christian Social Action 15.6 (November/December 2002), pp. 3-7.