More Than They Want to Admit

“And Barak said unto her, If thou will go with me, then I will go; but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.”  Judges 4:8

Men depend on women more than most of them like to admit.  It has been my observation that many older women who become widows stay unmarried, generally speaking, and older men who become widowers have more of a tendency to remarry.  I have heard the old joke about older men who look for a wife:  “he is looking for a nurse or a purse!”  Of course, most are looking for companionship.  Wives who monitor the family finances are more equipped to take care of themselves financially than those who let their husbands take care of the bills, banking, etc., thus it is wise for both to manage their finances.  Even a widow who did not keep up with the family income can find a sibling, child, or other trusted person to help them.  A widower, on the other hand, had depended upon his wife for rearing the children, keeping the house, and most of what goes into managing a family.  Some husbands are very involved in day-to-day household management, but when they become a widower, some seem lost and don’t know what to do with themselves.  Of course, these are generalities and not true for all people.

Women have always been classified as the “weaker sex”, and that is true physically because women do not have the muscles and the amount of testosterone which men have to do the heavy lifting.  There are other things that distinguish women from men besides the obvious.  They usually do not receive the same pay as men for the same job, and they are sometimes passed over for promotion in order to promote a man, but that has been changing.  Men as of late have not been looked upon very favorably by society as a whole, and some are treated as second class citizens by the “woke” generation.  In ancient Israel, women were second class citizens, although when Jesus came, He was the greatest liberator of women the world has ever seen.  The Apostle Paul gave instructions for women to remain silent in church (I Corinthians 14:34).  I have heard that he did this because there had been a problem in the church meetings because the men and women were segregated, and the women couldn’t hear everything that was being said.  They would yell out at their husbands to find out what was being discussed, and that obviously would create chaos.  That is not in the scriptures, but I suppose it was a possible scenario for Paul to call for hushing them up.  Or it may be because, as Jesus changed lives and hearts, society still would not accept women on an equal basis with men, and Paul was part of that society.  That’s the way that it was, and it was not going to change any time soon.

There were some fairly strong women in scripture.  In Judges 4, we find two of them.  Deborah was a judge in Israel, a place of leadership.  This was before the people demanded a human king.  God had commanded Barak, an army officer, to take 10,000 men and go to Mount Tabor to fight the Canaanites.  God had already arranged a victory for Israel.  However, Barak would not go unless Deborah went with him.  We don’t know the reason.  She agreed to accompany him but made it clear that he would get no honor for the victory.  It would be the LORD’s honor, but everyone would know that it was a woman who led the victory.  Barak and Deborah led the army to Mt. Tabor where Sisera and his Canaanite army were prepared to fight.  However, God sent confusion among the Canaanites, causing them to be destroyed.

What happened next revealed the strength of another woman on that same day.  Sisera fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, who remained neutral with Israel and with Jabin, the king of the Canaanites.  Sisera believed Jael would protect him, so he fell asleep in her tent.  While he was snoozing away, Jael took a tent peg and a hammer (this gets gross) and drove the peg into his temple nailing him to the ground.  When Barak arrived, she showed him what she had done to his enemy.  Jael must have had nerves of steel and an iron stomach.

God designed men and women with different roles.  If they were exactly the same, where would the fun in that be?  While no one, man or woman, should be treated as a second-class citizen, scripture makes it clear that in Christ all are equally accepted.  “…there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28b).  Men depend on their wives, and wives depend on their husbands, and they are both to depend upon the Lord.  That’s what makes for a good marriage and many happy memories.