Judges 4:4-7
Under the palm of Deborah
She is judging already, in the open, between two towns. She summons Barak and opens with a question: has not the LORD commanded you.
People of the Bible
Deborah
Judged Israel under a palm tree, told a general what to do, and went with him when he would not go alone.
Deborah is a prophetess and the only woman among the judges, and she is already judging Israel when the chapter opens, sitting under a palm between Ramah and Bethel while people come up to her for judgment. Sisera has nine hundred chariots of iron and has oppressed the country for twenty years. She sends for Barak and tells him what the LORD has already commanded him to do, which implies he had been told and had not moved. He agrees on one condition, that she comes. She does, and tells him the honour of the day will go to a woman.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Deborah
- 01
- 02
Judges 4:8-10
If you will go with me
He will not go without her. She agrees and warns him that the road he is taking will not be to his own honour, because the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.
- 03
Judges 4:14-16
Up, for this is the day
Ten thousand men come down off Tabor on her word. The river Kishon rises, the iron chariots are useless in it, and Sisera gets down and runs on foot.
- 04
Judges 5:1-31
The song at the brook
She names the tribes that came and the ones that sat among the sheepfolds, and ends at a window where Sisera’s mother is watching a road he will never come back down.
Why it matters
Deborah holds every role the period has: prophetess, judge, and in the song, a mother in Israel. Judges 5 is one of the oldest poems in the Bible and it is hers, and it does not read like a victory ode so much as a roll call of who came and who stayed home. The land has rest for forty years after her, which is the longest stretch of quiet in the book.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
