Note: This post is rated PG-13.
People who say the Bible is boring probably need to forget everything they have ever heard about the Bible and begin to read it as the masterpiece of literature that it is.
We are so used to reading the Bible as a “Holy Book” that we often fail to see how humorous and delightful it can be … even, at times, scandalous and bawdy.
I was recently reading through a commentary on Judges and was struck by the sexually suggestive imagery of the song of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5.
The Song of Deborah in Judges 5
The Song of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5 sounds a bit like a drinking song one might have heard in an Ancient Near Eastern bar frequented by fighting men.
The Song of Deborah is definitely not a “church song.”
After contrasting Israel’s God with the fertility gods in that region (Judges 5:3-7), and giving a shout-out to all the tribes that participated in the battle (Judges 5:14-18), Deborah and Barak recount the highlights of the battle (Judges 5:19-23), and then focus on the victorious blow, when the woman Jael defeated General Sisera in her tent.
Here is where the song of Deborah gets quite sexually suggestive. You can almost hear the soldiers whooping and hollering as Deborah and Barak sing this explicit song. Rather than lay it all out for you, let me simply quote from Chisholm’s translation of the song of Deborah in Judges 5, and you can fill in the details for yourself:
Her hand reached for the tent peg,
Her right hand for the workman’s hammer;
She “hammered” Sisera,
…
Between her legs he collapsed,
He went limp, he was lifeless;
Between her legs he collapsed, he went limp …
(Judges 5:26-27)
Later in the song, Sisera’s mother is seen to looking out the window, wondering what is taking her son so long to come home, and her maids basically say, “Most likely he is out raping women and grabbing for their clothes; don’t worry, he’ll be home soon” (Judges 5:28-30). Little does she know that in taking women for himself, his life has been taken by a woman.
The song of Deborah seems to be full of irony and sexually suggestive imagery, not the sort of song you usually hear in church.
The Song of Deborah and the Hebrew Text
Of course, if you check some of the traditional translations of the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, the imagery is not as obvious (e.g., in the NIV and NASB), and having looked up the Hebrew text for myself, I am not actually certain that the above translation is best. But Chisholm is a Hebrew expert, and who am I to disagree?
For all I know, Chisholm meant nothing of the sort, and I just have a mind that is in the gutter so that I read things into the text that are not there…
Any Hebrew scholars want to weigh in on this translation of the Song of Deborah?
Regardless, these sorts of things are in the Bible (The Song of Solomon, for example), and no, these are not the sorts of observations you usually hear from the pulpit.
Jeremy,
thanks for this teaching, it is good to see that someone will teach on the subjects that other pastors would touch even if God Himself dared them to do. Please continue this teaching. Very greatful for your ministry.
i meant WOULDN’T touch.
Thank you! I am very grateful for you!
Could you please touch on the taboo fact that the loss of a pregnancy in the Torah is not treated on the same level as a “murder” (of the unborn)?
I believe you are on the right track, Jeremy. God is no Puritan. Am not sure whether all metaphors in this song might have a sexual connotation, but we should not wonder if it were true.
It was Bernard of Clairvaux who said that God would draw the believer toward Himself away from mere (physical) erotic love, which human beings know, to agape, which is only found in Him. Our God is Love. And His love includes erotic love, of course. If the Gospel indeed IS the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16), then it entails the power to set free from sin, particularly sexual sin.
“But how?”
Men and women are all created in the image of God – whether they know it or not. And the Word, who is Christ (Jn 1:1), created all words that exist in human and heavenly languages.
Comparing the OT and the NT, we see that the Old Covenant was a covenant “in the flesh” (circumcision) whose members should have lived a righteous life on earth according to the (tangible) Law, whereas the New Covenant is a covenant “in the Spirit” whose members receive the power of the Holy Spirit to really live a righteous life according to the Law of Christ which is written on their hearts that have been circumcised as well.
What the Old Covenant could not offer, God in Christ reveals in the Gospel.
“Again, how does it work?”
There are two spiritual realms that reach into our world, the realm of darkness which is ruled by Satan, and the realm of light, the Kingdom of God with Christ as its Head. Since Satan is not a Creator, he is not able to reinvent the wheel, that is, to invent new words. The only thing he is capable of is distorting and twisting the truth. He is a liar who wants to prevent humans from believing that God is good and that Heaven is a place where ALL our dreams will be fulfilled (and way more than we could ever imagine!).
Well, Satan’s main job is to bring man to the point that he believes Heaven must be a boring place, and if not, he must wait soooo long until he can eventually enjoy a sort of life of which he does not clearly know how it might look like.
BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE!
Heaven is neither boring nor must we wait until we die if we want to enjoy eternal life (Jn 17:3; 1 Jn 1:3). The power of the Gospel lies in the fact that God gives us His Holy Spirit so that we might enjoy fellowship with God, with Jesus, and with one another right now.
“Huh?”
No, I am not talking about mere physical fellowship; it is a spiritual fellowship through which we can share God’s heavenly love already here on earth. He wants to give us an overwhelming foretaste of a love that this world does not know – at all. And this love makes us forget anything so that the mere thought of sexual sin becomes boring and ridiculous in comparison with an ecstatic love in the Holy Spirit that fulfills our every desire – with Pentecostal FIRE. 😉
Great comment, Suzanne. Yes, God is not boring, and the Bible is not boring, and Heaven is the most thrilling existence that ever will be. As you so well point out, one of Satan’s greatest lies is that God is boring and all things of Satan are exciting. It is not true at all.
For contrast and comparison, here are the lyrics to a few modern worship songs:
Oh, I’m running to Your arms,
I’m running to Your arms
The riches of Your love will always be enough
Nothing compares to Your embrace,
Light of the World forever reign!
===========
Til You are my one desire
Til You are my one true love
Til You are my breath, my everything
Lord, please keep making me
===========
Note: The second set of lyrics is sung by a male group.
Mmmmmhhhhh ohhh…………………love this so much. Thanks so much for posting these lyrics.
Here’s another one.
DEEPER IN LOVE
There is a longing only You can fill
A raging tempest only You can still
My soul is thirsty, Lord
To know You as I’m known
Drink from the river
That flows before Your throne
Take me deeper
Deeper in love with You
Jesus, hold me close in Your embrace
Take me deeper
Deeper than I’ve never been before
I just want to know You, more and more
How I long to be deeper in love
Sunrise to sunrise
I will seek Your face
Drawn by the Spirit
To the promise of Your grace
My heart has found in You
A hope that will abide
Here in Your presence
Forever satisfied
(Praise and Worship Songs http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/heli_copter/songs.html/)
You do find a lot in your Bible Jeremy.
Let me say first that I am NOT a Hebrew scholar but I do like to look up the ancient Hebrew words and have some familiarity with the alphabet, enough to know that Hebrew and all ancient and eastern languages are extremely difficult to translate because their whole thought process is so different from ours. I like to look at the Ancient Hebrew – which predates Moses. Moses used something more modern. If I go back though to the real ancient alphabet I find that the letters were actually little pictures. The more recent Hebrew, including Moses’ changed the form so they did not look like pictures but they still represented pictures.
I realize I am getting off track here but this is important to any Old Testament study.
They used pictures to represent ideas. For example we think of a fence post as a 4″X4″X7′ piece of wood. They would say a fence post is “that which holds up the fence.” So they always include a functional description. i.e. they have a noun and a verb in the subject.
I’m getting long but for those that are interested I’ll continue.
One example of the picturesque characters is found in Ps 1:3 a man is likened to a tree planted by the water which will not be moved. This is easy to understand and we ‘get’ the picture
Now for a hard one go to Ps 103:8 part of that verse says God is slow to anger. A literal translation is God is slow to nose. That is confusing for us but for them – when they think of a nose they think of it flared out in anger.
Do you see the difficulty in translation.
Okay, here’s my take on the Deborah story.
Cisera was AT her feet. This just looks like a preposition to me – it could mean below or under and instead of feet it could refer to the soles of her feet. This could well mean he was below her feet.
I don’t discount your idea though. esp when I consider that she may have had sex to relax the man so she could save her husbands life… that’s a possibility in my thinking.
Yes, you are right on track. Hebrew is so difficult for us, not only because of the imagery it uses, but also because of the completely different mindset and worldview of those who spoke it thousands of years ago. Thank you for weighing in!
I just want to say that I really appreciate what you’re doing, by addressing the nitty gritty topics others are afraid to. The World needs this. They’re getting sexual ideas from what seems like all other sources and they need to know the God of the Bible hasn’t abandoned them, with their questions, struggles and issues!
When I go to New Wine and Soil survivor, Christian meetings where we all camp for a week (an effeminant man, to be camp) and have wonderful worship with a couple of main speakers and many seminars. When I erect my tent hammering in my tent pegs will never have to same sense any more.
I think you need to get out more Jeremy ha ha love Clive.
Sorry to ruin the Christian tent meetings for you! Ha! I do need to get out more…
Innuendo can be very subtle and deceotive and lead us into sin. Paul wrote in Romans 1 v 24 to 32 how God allows us to follow the imaginations of our hearts. In Matthew 5 v 27 to 30 Paul folliws this theme up when he says “capture every thought” he is saying here thst the nasty little barbed arrows tge devil fires at us must be caught and destroyed befure they cause any long term damage.
In Proverbs 6 v 12 to 15 “here is a discription of worthless and wicked people.
The next time I notice my mind begining to run away with a thought, I will nip it in the bud before I let it rip on my friends so I can get a good laugh. What a terrible thing I’m doing to them, as I plant seeds of destruction in them, as I tacitly give them authority to do the same until further down the road someone says “that was a bit close to the bone, don’t you think”.
Thanks J for bringing me up short before I fell over the cliff edge. Clive.
A very interesting find, Jeremy. This seems to fit well with something I recently read in a book entitled “Strange Scriptures that Perplex the Western Mind.” The author (Barbara Bowen) brought out this point: People in the tent dwelling cultures considered it common courtesy to extend hospitality to a passing stranger (as Abraham did to the three men), and they considered it a social wrong to turn someone away. However, it was never acceptable for a man to enter into the woman’s quarters of the tent, since it would basically incriminate the woman as an adulteress (and her husband could then demand her death). The story indicates that Sisera commited a great indecency against Jael by forcing his way into her tent quarters to hide from his pursuers (thinking they would never look there for him because of the inappropriateness of it, and that she would not betray him because of the danger it would place her in). She may or may not have feared that he intended to rape her, but it certainly seems she felt violated and endangered. So Bowen suggests that she killed him in defense of her purity and reputation.
Given this perspective, it would not seem strange if the imagery of the song is one of attempted rape. His actions were those of a rapist, suggesting he intended to have his way with her, but instead she “hammered” him. He was “between her legs” in the sense that he had gone into her private section of the tent. With this imagery, we might imagine him on the very brink of impropriety. But the part that says “he collapsed … he went limp” seems suggestive of impotence, his inability to carry through with his supposed intentions. The singers then continue to mock Sisera by implying that he was nothing but a common rapist.
I’m not entirely sure as to exactly what you were reading in the text, but I don’t think that either the story or the song necessitate that Jael was herself actually guilty of impropriety.
Hmm. Interesting. I wonder if she was protecting herself from rape? Very possible, since war and rape often go together.
It is boring if you read the kjv.
Ha. Yeah. The KJV has it’s strengths, but it is a difficult translation.