The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #1
Introduction
Written by Dan McDonald
As a young person I was wary of the
New Testament. People in my church liked
to tell how different the New Testament was from the Old. I reasoned that if God had spoken through the
Old and the New was contradictory, then the New was suspect. So I read the Old three or four times before
ever reading the New. Then I read the
Sermon on the Mount and saw one who dealt with truth as if he were one of the
prophets. Then I read the New
Testament. I came to St. Augustine’s
conclusion: “The Old Testament is the
New concealed and the New Testament is the old revealed.” Since then I have loved to see the Old
Testament point to the new, and the New Testament fulfill the Old. That is part of why I want to write about
four ladies from the Book of Judges who point the way to Jesus Christ.
I write pragmatically also. I have two groups of friends these days. They often believe differently. I have no desire to choose one group of these
friends and leave the others behind. One
set of friends, largely on my Facebook page, are boomers and a bit younger than
boomers; who are largely conservative, traditionalist, and patriarchal in
understanding life. The other groups of
friends, largely on Twitter are millennial and a little older; and largely
describe themselves as progressive, feminist, and also as Christian. They
complain of their wounds from growing up in conservative Evangelical churches
where they came to feel that their humanity was squeezed, constricted, and
hindered. Maybe in some things they just
need to live longer to see things differently.
But sometimes when I read truly articulate expressions of their pain I
realize that I felt the same pains enough to feel that they are articulating
truth about the inheritance they received from the very movement that I have
been associated with most of my life. The
fact, that these young people fail to articulate their wounds in Bible chapter
and verse, doesn’t mean their sufferings are not real. We, who are older and can recite Scripture backwards
and forwards should not imagine that because we can hang a verse on something
means therefore that we are necessarily right . . . the Pharisees could do the
same thing. The fact that the ones full
of pain cannot describe their pain in Biblical texts may not mean they are any
more condemned in their circumstances than were those who Jesus gathered around
himself, those of whom the religious of Jesus’ day often regarded with contempt.
But mostly as I look at my two
groups of friends I don’t want to treat either group as outside of the merciful
reach of our Lord Jesus Christ. I want
to bring some of these passages of Scriptures to both groups of my friends and
hope that they will discover that the Scriptures reveal that their perspectives
may not be mutually exclusive. In fact I
sort of think that for Christianity to move forward in a healthy manner it will
take the boomer with his traditional patriarchal way to discover a way to meet
the millennial with their progressive feminist tendencies to discover if
perhaps the Bible doesn’t present a case for both viewpoints. Perhaps these texts that we will look at will
speak simultaneously to both groups. It
seems to me that the Book of Judges was a book that looked at a most painful
time in Israelite history. On one hand
its last verse suggested that a patriarchal answer was needed to meet Israel’s
dilemma. It described how the period of
the Judges was desperate because “In those days there was no king in Israel:
every man did what was right in his own eyes.” But when you look for solutions and hope in
the words of the Book of Judges the hope of the book, is in my view presented
through four very important stories of women in the Book of Judges. These four women represent pictures of the
coming Christ that are as clear when they are taken together as they are often
deeply disturbing when contemplated.
For the truth of the Gospel is that as beautiful as the Gospel is, it is
also deeply disturbing. For I see Christ
presented as fully in the lives of Deborah, Jael, Jephthah’s daughter, and an
unnamed Levite’s concubine as in any heroic patriarch of the Old
Testament. Those will be the stories
that I shall present both to encourage and disturb those who read these blogs.
In the process I hope we can begin to
view the Bible not as patriarchal or feminist as if we could only learn its
message when such titles came into common use.
Rather I hope we can learn that from the beginning the Gospel was
predicted as the seed of woman born into humankind to crush the head of the
serpent and to gain redemption at the last for humankind. He would be called among other things, “wonderful,
counselor, the everlasting father” and he would be born of woman. Let therefore everyone of a patriarchal
mindset understand that true patriarchy is to be fulfilled in Christ reigning
for the good of mankind in the understanding of the fullness of Deity and the
fullness of humanity having learned obedience through suffering that he might
secure the good of men and women who suffer.
Let every feminist anchor their understanding in that the Gospel reveals
the glory of womanhood to be the bearing forth of God into this world in human
flesh. This is accomplished figuratively
in presenting Christ to the world in life and word. This is the story the ancient church rejoiced
in when it proclaimed the truth of “Theotokos” (literally God-bearer) as well as
the truth of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
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