The rulers ceased in Israel. They ceased until I, Deborah, arose; Until I arose a mother in Israel.
World English Bible
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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The rulers ceased in Israel. They ceased until I, Deborah, arose; Until I arose a mother in Israel.
World English Bible
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
The contradiction sets the silencing-and-subordination passages — Genesis 3:16 (the husband rules over the wife as curse), 1 Timothy 2:12 (woman may not teach or have authority), 1 Corinthians 14:34 (women keep silence in the churches), 1 Peter 3:6 (Sarah as model of calling her husband lord) — against texts that show women exercising public religious and political authority: Deborah the prophetess judging Israel (Judges 4:4, 14-15; 5:7), the Joel/Acts 2:18 promise of women prophesying, and Philip's four daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:9). The same canon both denies women teaching authority and celebrates women exercising it.
Critical scholarship: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction.
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
One of these tensions involves a difference in wording across manuscripts or translations. Examine the original language on Lemma →
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Judges 5:7 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/judges/5/7?version=WEB (retrieved 26 August 2026).