A judge with a sting like a bee
You might have noticed that this is the summer of “Wonder Woman.” But there is nothing truly new here. Three thousand years before Gal Gadot made it to the big screen, the Bible gave us a true Wonder Woman. A Hebrew woman by the name of Deborah was one of the most powerful leaders in the ancient Near East. In Hebrew, the name Devora (דְּבוֹרָה) means “bee”, an allusion to the vicious sting she inflicted on the Canaanites in a major battle in the Jezreel Valley (Judges 4).
An exceptional biblical wonder woman
“At that time Deborah, a prophetess…was judging Israel” (Judges 4:4). If the fact that Deborah - a woman - served as a judge is not surprising enough, the Bible goes one step further and refers to her as a prophetess. The Hebrew word neviah (נְבִיאָה), which is the female form of the Hebrew word for prophet (navi), is very rare, only appearing five times in the entire Bible. The Bible goes even further in its praise of Deborah: “you arose as a mother in Israel” (em b’Yisrael) (Judges 5:6). This is the only time this term appears in the Bible, making Deborah a truly exceptional matriarch.
The power of the Hebrew language
No modern film is really new. It is simply recycling beloved ancient stories from the Bible. But why shut yourself out by reading the Bible in translation? Reading the Bible in its original Hebrew is the most powerful way of accessing the true meaning of the text. In short, if you are reading the Hebrew Bible in English you are only seeing half the picture. Enroll in our upcoming live online Biblical Hebrew course and learn to read the Bible as it was always intended.
