The Songs of Bible Women & Why They Change the World
When we think about the Bible, we don’t often think of the beauty and power of songs, especially by women. They aren’t sung loudly over edgy guitar riffs or punctuated by trance inducing beats. They’re not delivered to us via Youtube by stylish singers in trendy clothes. But if we go searching for them, we find that songs are a big deal in the Bible, and though they may not make it to the top 40 Billboard charts, they are some of the most powerful tools we have for claiming a new world order. One in which the hungry are fed, the weak are made strong, the oppressed are set free and the lion lies down with the lamb. A world in which swords are turned into plow shares.
If I were to get a hook out of the songs of Hannah, Deborah and Mary it would be this: God has done the impossible again, should we be surprised?
Though there are nearly two hundred songs in the Bible, some of the most powerful ones are created by these three women.
What makes them so special?
They teach us how to sing our faith into existence by envisioning God’s action in a song, it’s classically known as praise. But the word itself is deceiving. It brings to mind joy, beauty, ease or happiness. But their songs of praise tell us a different story. Praise is hard. That’s what makes it so powerful. These women do the gritty, scrappy, world ordering work of praise in their songs, and it’s what makes them world changing.
Praise is hard because it must be uttered over and against
evidence that points to the contrary. It’s much easier to believe the evidence
that the world is a horrible place than to speak the good news that it is not.
To praise God in a world in which violent hate crimes seem to rule the daily news, where children become targets just for attending school, where women are sold every day into sex trafficking, even in our own backyard, is a radical act. But that’s exactly what faith is, praising God in adverse conditions. This is how the world is changed. Channeling the love of God over and against the reality in which we live. That’s exactly why it’s crucial. Because praise not only heals us, it heals the world, too.
The women of the Bible who sang God’s powerful and healing
love into the world weren’t the product of warm, fuzzy, comfortable societies.
They were scrappy and lived in a culture that often held them to a rigid
standard of having to negotiate life as the property of men. They also lived in
a time in which a woman’s worth was often measured by her ability to bear a
male child, remain a virgin until married and be submissive to male authority.
But the three women whose songs changed the world, Hannah,
Deborah and Mary, colored outside of these lines. Not because they were seeking
attention for themselves but because God asked them to, they simply responded
to a calling from on high.
Hannah, Deborah and Mary were not only prophets, but women who overcame cultural adversity to channel God’s miraculous power into flesh and bones, into peace and love. Deborah’s song tells of an impossible victory that she commands with her vision, grit and military prowess as the right arm of God on earth. Hannah’s song claims God’s miraculous power to do the impossible through a woman that the world had given up on. Mary’s song creates a new world order in which God’s love is Sovran.
Through their songs love is made possible in the world through the odd combination that women carry so well -vulnerability and strength.
The songs of women are special, because they are uttered from hearts that know of sacrifice and oppression, hearts that are well acquainted with sorrow and the impossible. Hearts that have experienced the pain of rejection. Women who didn’t settle for being the victims of an unfair system, who didn’t believe the victim narrative but rose up out of it through God’s strength to share the truthfulness of God’s mighty power with the world.
They also teach us that we can’t do important work alone, we need others to be our best selves. In a culture in which we can easily feel isolated, lonely and without nurturing love, we need to remember that their songs were not sung alone. If they had been, the outcomes could have been very different. Deborah could have gone into battle without enough of the manpower she needed. Mary could have been abandoned by her family and friends and had to face giving birth alone. Hannah would have had no sacred vessel into which she could dedicate God’s gift to her. But because they sang their songs in communities that believed in them, and believed that their words were from God, the outcome was miraculous, every time.
God has done the impossible through the songs of women, should we be surprised?
Check out some of my modern interpretations of the radical stories of the hidden women of the Bible here.
May God add a blessing to your reading of this blog.
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