
While many (if not most) commentary attempts to explain away the role of Deborah as a judge of Israel (you know, if only a man would have stepped up, which isn't in the text, not even hinted at), the text does focus on the significant role two women play in the plot of God's redemption (his salvation) of Israel in this episode of the Book of Judges. Thus, a gospel-turn to Galatians 3 seemed fair.
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:27–29). |
I know we like to be modern, freeing, hip, trendy and relevant and say “sons and daughters of God,” attempting to get past the ancient gender-bias; but this is both unwarranted and does injustice to the text in its culture—depriving the Christian (in any age), especially the female Christian, of its impact. “Sons” were everything in the Greek and Roman world. They got everything. They held far more respect than women (and slaves, but we're focusing in the "female" here). The men got citizenship, status before the law courts, and able, as Roman citizens, to get married. And, if you were the first born male, you were heir to family wealth, possessions, land, and legacy. The goal of marriage to the Greek and Roman was to produce a legitimate male heir citizen for the Empire; females on the other hand didn't have legal status before the courts and were the property of the wealthy and husbands. So, to deprive the female Christian direct title “son,” with all of its rights and privileges (as it would have meant to the ancient world reader), is an applicable disservice to the gospel and to our sisters in Christ.
The impact of such sonship on the Jew, the Greek, the slave or emancipated slave is left with no contemporary translative spin—as it should be; yet, our cultural sensitivity (although sincere and well-meaning in most cases) to gender-bias, we have robbed the sister in Christ of the applicable impact on her status as a “son of God.” And, for sure, this simple slight of hand, turning “sons” into “sons and daughters” makes us (you know I mean the brothers) feel as if we’ve solved the gender-bias within Christianity and the church with its male-dominated religious systems, habits, and attitudes with one easy up-to-date “translation” fix. In some since, this translative adaption helps to lesson the power of this text to deconstruct our male-centeredness and robs the church from allowing the contemporary female's spot in history and the church itself to be reconstructed into the place of a “son of God.”
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