Have you ever read Judges 17:6?
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.”
That one verse sets the tone for the whole tragic period.
Whenever the topic of female headship comes up, you can count on one name being mentioned. Last week when the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) voted to restrict pastors and elders to biblically qualified male leaders, and the NPUC (North Pacific Union Conference) tried to get women’s ordination on the agenda (for the 4th time) of the 2030 GC Session, that name surfaced again by WO proponents. The name is…Deborah.
The text simply says she “dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.” She sat there and people came to her.
After Joshua died, the rightful spiritual head of the nation was the high priest. But again and again in Judges we see people — even the so-called heroes — refusing to submit to God’s ordained order and instead doing what seemed right to them. That’s the key to understanding the book.
Barak, Deborah, Jael, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, Ehud — every one of them is a flawed hero operating in a time of deep spiritual darkness. The Book of Judges is not a handbook for leadership principles; it’s a heartbreaking record of apostasy and apathy. It’s what happens when a generation rises up that “did not know the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel.”
Think about that.
It only took one generation after Joshua — a man who knew God and walked with Him — for the people to slide into ignorance and rebellion. They knew about God, but they didn’t know Him. They stopped obeying His Word and started following their own ideas. The downward spiral is shocking. The book of Judges stands as a vivid example of theological pluralism, twice characterized as "each man doing what was right in his own eyes."
This book convicts me every time I read it. It’s a mirror held up to any individual or any nation that drifts from making the Lord the absolute center of their lives. When we start doing what we think is best instead of what God has clearly said is best, the unraveling is inevitable — both personally and culturally.
And yes, Isaiah 3:12 warns about women and children ruling over a people as a sign of judgment:
“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err…”
You can search the entire Bible and you’ll only find one woman who exercised rule in Israel who wasn’t portrayed as wicked — and that woman ruled during this exact period of widespread spiritual ignorance and confusion, when “Every person did that which was right in his own eyes.”
Pro WO liberals in the church may eagerly seize on Deborah as proof that we should have female pastors, elders and leaders in the church, but you cannot have Deborah as a prototypical leader without also having the desultory climate of theological confusion that made her involvement possible.
That’s not exactly a strong biblical case for female leadership in the church, is it?
Nope.
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Watch what you say, and do it God’s way (James 1:19; Psalm 128:1).
