The Dynamic Duet
Judges 5:1-2 & 10-11a
Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day: “That the leaders took the lead in Israel, that the people offered themselves willingly, bless the LORD! … Tell of it, you who ride on white donkeys, you who sit on rich carpets and you who walk by the way. To the sound of musicians at the watering places, there they repeat the righteous triumphs of the LORD, the righteous triumphs of his villagers in Israel.”
Take this literally or take it figuratively, but there’s no greater or more striking resonance of the rumblings of God’s vocal cords than in a man and a woman singing together in harmony. That’s how the whole story started, isn’t it? Adam, being uniquely man, and Eve, being uniquely woman, became together something even more uniquely wondrous. Something incomprehensibly complete. Adam’s brassy, baritone notes hummed through Eden’s groves but there was something missing in it. It lacked the sweeter, soprano vibrato of the feminine to soften its edges. And just think how wonderfully a simple duet between a man and a woman reflects God’s intentioned distinction between the genders. It’s a distinction that isn’t best expressed when the two join together in unison, singing the same part, but when they harmonize to complement each other. The song of the image of God in man, breathed out at the dawning of time, is a duet.
Families where husbands and wives and fathers and mothers live out their complimentary roles in love, and churches where men and women harmonize together in ministry, and nations where men and women work in tandem to lead and serve their constituents are saturated in the reverberations of Heaven’s musical score. So here’s Deborah, a generational prophetess completely devoted to proclaiming God’s Word, a daughter of Eve who can’t be bought or bribed or tempted by the serpent, a woman who hasn’t retreated from ministry even in an age of debauchery. And next to her is Barak, a godly warrior in the mold of Othniel and Caleb, a man weak in words but mighty in deed, a faithful disciple in a faithless epoch, singing together a song for the ages.
O sing the triumph of Deborah and Barak at the wells and on the street corners and in the church pews! Sing of the triumph of divine creation—of men and women unified in love, advancing Heaven’s song!