Barak, Deborah & Gender Roles in Spiritual Leadership

I’ve heard the story from Judg. 4-5 (Judg. 4:4-9 in particular) used to justify this claim:

It is shameful when the lines between gender-roles are blurred.

Judg. 4:8-9 in particular are the basis for that claim. The argument might go something like this:

1. Barak said he wouldn’t lead if Deborah didn’t come with him (v. 8). Barak failed to lead alone, like a man should—he failed to perform his masculine role.
2. God was displeased by Barak’s lack of leadership, so God shamed him by giving the glory of killing the enemy general to a woman (v. 9).
3. Conclusion: Men should not look to women for leadership, but should take leadership upon themselves as their masculine duty.

There are several assumptions/beliefs involved in this argument.

• Men and women have different roles in relation to (1) other people, (2) society and (3) creation in general.
• Those roles flow from the differences in what it means to be male and female.
• Those differences are so pervasive that men and women share almost no common purposes in relation to other people, society and creation in general.

Those assumptions influence how Judg. 4:8-9 is read.

I’d like to challenge some of those assumptions. I think they’re motivated by a good thing—respecting and conforming to the way God designed us. By challenging those assumptions, I don’t mean to subvert or disrespect God’s design for humans—rather, I’m challenging those assumptions because I think they distort the truth about God’s design. 

Distorting truth destroys the truth’s credibility, so I really want to be reading God’s word correctly.

I think it’s worthwhile to notice a few things.

1. God puts women in spiritual leadership over men sometimes. He used Deborah, His prophetess, to communicate His word to Barak in the first place (Judg. 4:6-7).
   
   I’ve heard it argued that this was only because there weren’t any spiritual men available for God to speak through. Maybe, but the text doesn’t say that, does it? And God used female prophets other times when we know there were plenty of spiritual men available (e.g., see Acts 21:8-9).
   
   That makes me think that spiritual leadership (speaking on God’s behalf to someone) must not be a male/female role—it looks like God uses who He wants to use.
   
   Of course, there’s nuance to that statement (1 Tim. 2:11-14). In the context of a local church service, it looks like God differentiates based on gender for some tasks (though not all—e.g., 1 Cor. 11:4-5 has both men and women praying and prophesying in a local church service).
   
   
2. It looks like Barak had a faith problem. He said he would only obey God’s command if God’s prophetess came with him (Judg. 4:8).
   
   When Moses refused to go to Pharaoh and God had to send Aaron with him, Moses’ faith problem wasn’t a masculinity problem—he just didn’t think God was capable of using him. Why would Barak’s faith problem be a masculinity problem?
   
   One answer might be, “Because God’s punishment was that a woman would get the glory instead of Barak.”
   
   It’s true that God said that would be the consequence (Judg. 4:9). It does sound like that would have been shameful for Barak.
   
   It’s not clear to me, though, that killing the enemy general would have been a particularly masculine thing to do. In a society where the army is composed exclusively of men (e.g., see Num. 31), we can’t tell whether the shame would have been because of Jael’s femininity or the fact that she was a civilian. It’s possible that the shame would have been primarily because she was female—but it’s also possible that the shame would have been primarily because she was a civilian.

The bottom line: It’s not clear to me that the story of Barak and Deborah argues for gender roles.

There are clearly defined, non-overlapping roles for men and women—in childbirth, for example.

But it doesn’t look like every area of life has neatly-divided masculine and feminine ways of engaging that area of life. In fact, it looks like there are some areas where men and women share common purposes in relation to other people, society and creation in general.

That’s actually what I would expect from the account of God’s creation of men and women—God gives men and women some shared purposes. Some of them require the unique contribution of both male and female partners (e.g., be fruitful and multiply), but some of them can be done by either a man or a woman (have dominion over creation).

Though I don't think Judg. 4 supports it, I actually agree with that claim from the top of this post: 

It is shameful when the lines between gender-roles are blurred.

But I think it’s helpful to distinguish between gender-roles that are derived from the created order (e.g., pregnancy and church eldership) and gender-roles that are derived from culture (e.g., a preference for male political figures).

It’s not that gender-roles derived from culture don’t matter. For example, I think Tit. 2:4-5’s wording, “that the word of God may not be reviled,” hints that believers should take public perception into account as they navigate gender-roles. Public perception must not supplant Scripture (Acts 5:29), but it’s still relevant.

Let’s not mix up those two categories of gender-roles. 

The Bible offers truth about who God created us to be and how we can live well, including in terms of our sexuality. Let’s not obscure that truth by distorting it—let’s make sure we don’t squeeze into Scripture things that aren’t there.