Judges 4 - Introduction

Judges 4-5. Deborah and Barak Deliver Israel. The record of this deliverance appears first in a prose and then in a poetical form, of which the latter is the older, written without doubt under the inspiration of the actual events. There are some striking differences between the two versions. In the prose narrative the oppressor of Israel is Jabin, king of Hazor, whose captain is Sisera; Deborah's home is in Mount Ephraim; only the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali fight the tyrant; and Jael murders Sisera when he lies asleep in her tent. In the triumphal Ode there is no Jabin; Sisera is at the head of the kings of Canaan, himself the greatest king of all; Deborah appears to belong to the tribe of Issachar; all the tribes around the Great Plain (p. 29) take part in the conflict; and Jael slays Sisera while he is standing and drinking. The discrepancies are due partly to the prose writer's attempt to combine the story of Sisera with an independent story of Jabin, king of Hazor (see Joshua 11:1), and partly to his misunderstanding of some lines in the Ode (Judges 5:26).

Judges 5. The Song of Deliverance. The Song of Deborah so called because of the words I, Deborah, arose (Judges 5:7) is a splendid battle-ode, evidently contemporaneous with the events which it celebrates. It breathes the patriotic fervour and religious enthusiasm which inspired the loftiest minds in Israel, and proves that a great faith was already working wonders in the tribes which till lately had been desert nomads. It is a work of genius, and therefore a work of that highest art which is not studied and artificial, but spontaneous and inevitable (Moore, 135). R. H. Hutton calls it the greatest war-song of any age or nation. Unfortunately the text has suffered a good deal, and in some passages we can do no more than guess the sense.