Because God is our Creator and Jesus is Lord women should not be forced to fight and women should have the courage to kill if necessary. Men should be comfortable with swords and shovels, women should be comfortable with skillets and AR-15s, and tent pegs.

The story of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, is “fun” because it’s far away, instructive because of its context, and uncomfortable because it’s true.

At the start of Judges 4 Israel was again doing “what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (verse 1). So the Lord “sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan” (verse 2) who “oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years” (verse 3). After two decades in the downward part of the cycle they cried out for help.

The commander of the Canaanite army was Sisera. Deborah (yes, a woman) was judging Israel at the time (verse 4), and she summoned Barak to muster his troops to fight against Sisera (verses 6-7). Barak replied that he would only go to battle if Deborah came with him (verse 8). Barak did engage, and “the LORD routed Sisera” and Sisera “fled away on foot” (verse 15).

In his escape he came to the house of Heber the Kenite, Jael’s husband, because Jabin and Heber had peace (verse 17). Jael invited Sisera in (verse 18), gave him warm milk to drink—an upgrade from the water he requested (verse 19), and Sisera fell asleep. As has been told now for around three-thousand years:

“Jael, the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the tent peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.” (verse 21)

Courageous, crafty, and swift; understated but unmistakable: “So he died.” Jael is praised in Deborah’s song in Judges 5.

“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked for water and she gave him milk;
she brought him curds in a noble’s bowl.
She sent her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera;
she crushed his head;
she shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet
he sank, he fell, he lay still;
between her feet
he sank, he fell;
where he sank,
there he fell—dead.
(Judges 5:24–27 ESV)

Again, this is part of Deborah’s song celebrating the Lord’s deliverance of His people that includes honor for Jael for driving a stake through Sisera’s skull into the ground.

It’s Not Normal

But this narrative does not argue for women being called to combat. Actually, in context, it argues for the very opposite.

When Deborah called Barak to fight, he resisted, almost as if he was hiding behind her skirt. So Deborah told Barak, “the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman” (4:9). The assumption is that fighting, even the glory of the fighting, belonged with a man. Deborah shamed Barak for being a sissy. She didn’t say, “If you were a real man you would have more women represented on your leadership team.”

Note also that the primary reason Sisera fell is because he also assumed that a woman wouldn’t kill him. Jael wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t a combatant. It worked because it was surprising.

Jael is a great example of courage. And, she’s also a rare example. There are way more Joab-types in Scripture than Jaels.

The only other woman who killed someone (though a few wicked women ordered others to kill for them) is an unnamed woman in the city of Thebea, “a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull” (Judges 9:53). But even here,

he called quickly to the young man his armor-bearer and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, ‘A woman killed him.’” And his young man thrust him through, and he died. (Judges 9:54 ESV)

Among David’s “mighty men” there were no women. Samuel said kings would take daughters to be “perfumers and cooks and bakers” (1 Samuel 8:13), but not to be soldiers; kings might be ruthless, and many were evil, but they weren’t stupid.

It is an earthly axiom that fighting and war and killing are not a woman’s place. So it was typical smack-talk to say men fought like women, or were scared like women. Just a couple examples:

In that day the Egyptians will be like women, and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts shakes over them. (Isaiah 19:16 ESV)

Behold, your troops
are women in your midst.
The gates of your land
are wide open to your enemies;
fire has devoured your bars. (Nahum 3:13 ESV)

The warriors of Babylon have ceased fighting;
they remain in their strongholds;
their strength has failed;
they have become women;
her dwellings are on fire;
her bars are broken. (Jeremiah 51:30 ESV)

(See also Isaiah 13:8; Jeremiah 48:41; 50:37. And see Isaiah 3:12 for an example of the embarrassment of having women rulers.)

A New Normal?

I’m not bringing this up to pile on the failure of the female Secret Service director who just resigned, or the fumbling of multiple female Secret Service agents who couldn’t seem to get their guns holstered on the day former President Trump was shot.

In June the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services proposed their plan for 2025 which includes requiring women to register for the draft. Under Section 3, the third bullet point:

Amends the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service.

Now we haven’t had a draft since 1972. And, this isn’t the first time politicians have floated the idea. And, we already have women not just in the U.S. Armed Forces but in combat training and units, a restriction that was lifted in 2015.

This message is not about the merits of a national draft system (even for men), let alone the possibility of just war. It is not about whether it is allowable for women to take non-combative positions in the military (or police), such as clerical or medical jobs, however near or far away from fighting front lines they may be.

It is to get on record the elders’ position on the religious exemptions that fathers (and mothers) and daughters should have in conscience against required military registration for women. It is to be clear for conscience and courage.

Who knows what will happen; the government is exceptionally inept at doing what they propose. And, there are denominations that already have made statements (such as the CREC), along with some religious legal groups that I believe would fight this. It is unlikely that TEC would have to be the tip of the spear. But we will fight for your consciences and your protection. Just as we did when companies required letters for religious exemptions against forced vaccinations, we will do what we can. And we do want you to be informed and to inform your family.

The elders agreed, and even thought that a supplement to the instructions to younger women in Titus 2:4-5 would be an appropriate place to drive a stake in the ground.

The Norm of NOT Calling Women to War

We do not make up our gender identity or even the options. Male and female are God-given categories (Genesis 1:27), equal in image-bearing value and also distinct in roles and relationships. In general, men and women have different physical and emotional strengths, as well as different temporal callings.

The normal roles of women are life-nurturing and oriented around household responsibilities. This is explicitly stated for younger women in Titus 2:4-5. Women have unique, and therefore valuable, capacity for pregnancy and nursing and child-raising. Their bodies are designed to carry babies on their hips, not guns.

There are no examples of warrior women in the Old Testament. As mentioned before, Jael’s killing of Sisera is an exception, not the norm.

Men are to provide for and protect those who are weaker. Men are built by God differently than women, for different work, and, when necessary in this fallen world, for war.

Are we allowed to equip women with weapons’ training? Should we? Yes, and depending on the environment, with greater urgency. Self-defense is moral, let alone (currently) legal. Defense of one’s children, even one’s animals/property, is right. We are not saying that a woman can never leave her house, or even that a woman never can kill. We want our daughters to have great courage. We want our daughters to be the right sort of threat.

Perhaps a woman’s husband is gone (on deployment even), maybe he’s deceased. This puts her in a difficult position. But the fact that this is a hardship supports the fact that it ought not be required.

We certainly have women at TEC who handle their gun better than what we saw from the “professional” Secret Service at the Trump rally. That doesn’t mean we should buy them plane tickets to take over presidential security detail.

A Stake in the Ground

The purpose of Selective Service registration is, according to their documentation, to provide a fair and efficient draft system for rapidly mobilizing additional military personnel in times of national emergency or crisis. Because the draft is supposed to be used in the midst of an existing conflict, there is no reason to think a woman could control where she is assigned, and .

So we will resist the government if it requires women to register to be called into the military. We are considering how best to refine this statement (already borrowing some language from the CREC memorial), and the best place to put it (by-laws, What We Believe, other), as a stake in the ground.

God requires men to protect women and children, whereas God made it normal for women to nurture life, not to take it. Christian fathers must protect their daughters from being seduced or coerced into combat service, and church elders must protect families whose consciences require resistance to required Selective Service registration for women.

We are willing to fight over who should fight.

We worship the true God, so we cannot suppress the truth of male and female like many in our current positions of military leadership, dressing as women, wearing dog masks, pushing for DEI among the troops. One reason for the smaller number of men volunteering for the military is because the government keeps shooting itself in the foot with foolish and ungodly policies.

It is not oppressive of men to keep women off the battlefield. If male privilege includes risk of death, and that “privilege” is demanded equally, then we really ought to recheck our definitions. We’re trying to keep women from becoming victims, not sending them to war because they currently are. We do not honor weaker vessels (1 Peter 3:7) by putting them in harms way.

Conclusion

There are so many ways for a woman to be fruitful with her hands, and that does not include killing (in abortion or) in combat. It’s a real marvel how many seem to think that the female warriors in the movies are real wonder women. Those may be entertaining stories, but they are false stories.

Winston Churchill remarked once on what allowed WWII: “the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.” May God continue to raise up men who stand as men with women who stand up under their protection.