Judges 4-5

[Josh]

Post your comments and questions on Judges chapters 4 and 5 as replies to this post.

Also, here's a link to our audio lesson/ teaching on
Judges 4 and 5

Listen along and post your comments here.

[Josh]

Questions:

1) What does this passage imply about female leadership?



2) What does this story tell us about courage?



3) What does this story tell us about cowardice?

[Josh]

A great quote from Chrysostom:

"Indeed nothing-- nothing, I repeat-- is more potent than a good and pruden woman in molding a man and shaping his soul din whatever way she desires. For he will not bear with friends, or teachers, or magistrates in the same way as with his wife, when she admonishes and advises him. Her admonition, in fact, carries with it a kind of pleasure, because of his very great love of the one who is admonishing him"

"Therefore I beseech women to carry this out in practice and to give their husbands only the proper advice. For, just as a woman has great power for good, so also she has it for evil. A woman destroyed Absolom; a woman destroyed Amnon; a woman would have destroyed Job; a woman saved Nabal from being murdered; a woman saved an entire nation! Furthermore, Deborah... and innumerable other women directed the success of men who were generals"

And elsewhere he writes:

“Women should not be restrained from deeds of valor by the weakness of their sex. [Deborah] governs the people; she leads armies;she chooses generals, she determines wars and orders triumphs. So, then, it is not nature which is answerable for the fault or which is liable to weakness. It is not sex but valor which makes strong.”

Very cool coming from a thinker of the 4th century, eh? And it shows how Scripture has positively influenced thinking about gender roles.