Judges 4--Deborah and Barak

Judges 4
English Standard Version

Deborah and Barak
4 And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD after Ehud died. 2 And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. 3 Then the people of Israel cried out to the LORD for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.

4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. 5 She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. 6 She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, “Has not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?” 8 Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” 9 And she said, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 And Barak called out Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. And 10,000 men went up at his heels, and Deborah went up with him.

11 Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the Kenites, the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zaanannim, which is near Kedesh.

12 When Sisera was told that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, 13 Sisera called out all his chariots, 900 chariots of iron, and all the men who were with him, from Harosheth-hagoyim to the river Kishon. 14 And Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the LORD go out before you?” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. 15 And the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot. 16 And Barak pursued the chariots and the army to Harosheth-hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.

17 But Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. 18 And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord; turn aside to me; do not be afraid.” So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. 19 And he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. 20 And he said to her, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘No.’” 21 But 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 peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. 22 And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” So he went in to her tent, and there lay Sisera dead, with the tent peg in his temple.

​23 So on that day God subdued Jabin the king of Canaan before the people of Israel. 24 And the hand of the people of Israel pressed harder and harder against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.

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A lot is made out of Deborah being a judge and being a woman, and I believe some of the story this attention gets in that area is warranted.  The story shows us that the LORD uses women as well as men to accomplish His good purposes for His people and that women can be filled with the Spirit (as we already knew from when Miriam, the prophetess, was filled with the Spirit and praised the LORD in Exodus 15.  However, there is something about this that makes us ask, "Why did the LORD raise up Deborah to lead the people what the responsibility of leadership, especially for the family, the church, and the nation has always been something the LORD has made men responsible for?  Was there no man in Israel at the time that the LORD could trust with this responsibility?" (I am quoting my own thoughts here).  The answer would seem to be, "No," as we'll see in the story that the men have become feckless cowards.  The LORD even even commands one of the men in this story to lead the army into battle against the opposing army and he said that he would only go if Deborah goes with him, and for that reason, the LORD allows a woman to deliver the fatal blow to the king that had been opposing the LORD's people so that this coward of a man would barely be remembered in history other than he was one who passed on the blessing that the LORD had offered to him, so the LORD offered that blessing to someone else--someone who would be obedient and would give glory to the LORD for the victory that He had provided.

Ehud died and the people returned to sin, so the people were given over to Jabin, king of Canaan and the commander or general of his army, Sisera.  They had a great number of chariots which were the most advanced military weaponry not only of that time, but for thousands of years after this, and they had 900 of them.  With this kind of fast-moving cavalry, these Canaanites seemed to be too strong for the Israelites, yet the LORD had already destroyed all the cavalry of Egypt in the Red Sea.  


Psalm 20:7
English Standard Version
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
    but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

I mentioned before the Miriam was a prophetess because Deborah is also identified as a prophetess and there are many other women in Scripture that the LORD gives the gift of prophecy too.  We normally only think of the prophets as a group of Israelite men who wrote the books of Prophecy in the Old Testament, but we should never think that woman gifted with the gift of prophecy.  The people were already coming to Deborah to hear from the LORD in how they should handle situations where difficult judgments needed to be made (much like how they did at the time of Moses when his father-in-law encouraged him to appoint wise men to assist him).  Again, where are those elders and judges that the Law required to be appointed to assist with these matters?  My feeling is that the people have slipped so far away from the LORD and the Law that the elders and judges no longer exist at this time, and Deborah has stepped into this role because she has been given the word of the LORD through prophecy and the wisdom of the LORD to make good judgment.  In this way she is already helping to not only minister to the people but lead them in the way they should go.

Now the LORD spoke to Deborah and told her that He had commanded Barak, son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali to tell him that the LORD had already commanded Him to make war with Sisera and had given him clear instructions on where to go and how many men from which tribes to take with him.  The command had been clear, so there was no reason for him to wait on clarity or more information and the command was one that required immediate response, but Barak was a coward of a man as I mentioned before (Was this the best that Israel had to offer?  The best the LORD had to choose from?  Though we do know the LORD likes to use the weak of this world to accomplish His work so that He gest the glory, something here seems to indicate that Barak is not only cowardly but also disobedient and needed Deborah to correct him and call him out for both his cowardice and disobedience.).

As I stated earlier he says he will only go (only obey) if Deborah goes with him (he doesn't want to take all the blame if it goes poorly).  And so the LORD refuses to let Sisera be given over into his hand, but instead a woman would be the one to kill him (that woman would not be Deborah though).  The LORD would end up using someone who was not even an Israelite to save the Israelites.  Remember Moses' father-in-law that I mentioned briefly a moment ago?  He was the father of a group called the Kenites that were Midianites that feared God and were given permission to live among the people of Israel.  They were given a particular allotment of land from among the tribe of Judah, but one of them who would be important to this story later, had left that land he had been given and chose to pitch his tent in the northern region of Israel where this story takes place.  It will be this man's wife who will deal the fatal blow to Sisera.

Barak sends his 10,000 soldiers against the 900 chariots of Sisera, and the LORD allows Israel to utterly defeat all of Sisera's army so that Sisera flees for his life (if he were caught he should have been executed for running from the battle), and Sisera comes upon the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (this is the Kenite I mentioned earlier who had left his allotment of land in Judah).  Jael pretends to offer a place to hide and rest to Sisera and offers him some milk to drink so that it might help make him sleepy, and when Sisera lays down to sleep, Jael drives a tent peg through the temple of Sisera in fulfillment of the prophecy that Deborah had spoken--that the LORD would deliver Israel from Sisera by the hand of a woman.

When Barak come through the area looking for Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said, "Come let me show you the man whom you are seeking," and they found him in her tent already dead.  Without either his army or Sisera, Jabin the Canaanite king was no longer a force that the people feared.  They quickly made war with him until they had destroyed him.  Notice that the LORD is gradually using all of these battles to deliver Israel from the enemies that they failed to drive out or destroy.  God is faithful to accomplish His plan for them, but this way is slower and more painful than the way in which He had originally planned if they had been fully obedient to Him.