It is very exciting to find women in the Bible who were given a man's job and did it with dexterity.   Deborah led the entire Israeli nation to war, and won against overwhelming odds.  Jael finished the battle by killing the enemy's General in command--and did it with a tent spike and a hammer!!  Who needs a gun when God is on your side!

Lest you think I am leading a rebellion against men, let me assure you that I'm not.  God has an order in the home for women.  And an order in the home for men.  But it stops there.  I once had a man in my church that was a Macho bully--and was a deacon.  He loved to criticize women and put them down.  Which he tried on me.  Big mistake.

One day he went too far with me and I said, "I am subservient to one man, and to one God.  And you are definitely not either one of them."  I didn't need a tent spike.  He backed off after that and let me do God's work in the church that I had been appointed to do.  Sometimes you just have to stand up and put an end to the rhetoric that devalues the work that women do.  Especially the work they do for the Lord and in their churches.  Yes, I admit, Iwas a little bit sassy.

You remember Gideon.  He was the fellow that put out the "fleece" because he wanted to be sure that the message that he had been given by an angel was truly from God.  He had 70 sons--one of whom (Abimelech) murdered all of his brothers except the youngest (Jotham) who hid.  Abimelech wanted to be king.  So he did away with anyone who might interfere.

But the people demanded, "Who is this Abimelech, and why should he be our king."  The people and Abimelech went to war.  As Abemilech stacked wood to burn down the walls of the city, the people climbed to the top of the wall and one of the women, (I wish we knew her name), took aim, and threw a great stone down--which landed on Abemilech's head.  As he was dying, he begged his armor bearer, "Kill me! Never let it be said that a woman killed me.  So his armor bearer killed him.

That didn't change the fact that it was a woman who did him in.  And it is recorded in the book of Judges for all of us to read.  "Thus God punished him for the sin of murdering his father's seventy sons."  Justice Served.  By a woman.