Judges 5 - Introduction

5 The Song of Deborah

There can be little doubt that this splendid Ode belongs to the same date as the events which it describes. The passions roused by the battle have not cooled down; the sense of a common danger, the enthusiasm of united action, the exultation in Jehovah's triumphant aid, are felt with a vividness which only a contemporary could have put into words. The religious temper and the political situation agree with what we know of the period of the Judges from elsewhere, while the antique poetic language may well be characteristic of the same date. The Ode, then, is a most ancient composition, earlier probably than anything else in the Old Testament of the same extent; its original place may have been in some collection of old Hebrew songs such as the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18) or the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Numbers 21:14). A text so ancient must inevitably have suffered in the course of ages; and though the general sense is clear, in many places we cannot follow the connexion of thought or interpret particular words. This is due partly to our ignorance of the ancient language, and even more to the exceedingly corrupt state of the text; in Judges 5:8 especially the corruption is so deep-seated that it looks as if some accident had happened to the ms. from which our present text is descended. Prof. Moore suggests that at this point the page was obliterated or rubbed, so that the early copyist was driven to make what sense he could out of it. The process of corruption must have begun before the Greek Versions were made, for on the whole they presuppose much the same text as we have.

The Song is an invaluable witness to the history of the period. After a spell of oppression (Judges 5:7), probably brought on by the expansion of the Israelite tribes in the direction of the Great Plain, the Canaanites, led by Sisera at the head of the local chiefs, made a determined effort to drive the Israelites back into their hills. To resist this formidable movement, and to put an end to an intolerable state of insecurity and humiliation, Deborah roused the tribes. Six of them, those immediately N. and S. of the Plain, responded to the summons; the remoter clans, Dan and Asher in the N., Reuben and Gilead (Gad) on the E. of Jordan, refused to stir themselves. Judah is not mentioned: it was cut off from Ephraim and the rest by a line of Canaanite strongholds (see p. xxx); Simeon and Levi, who are also passed over, seem to have been unable to maintain a distinct existence after the early stages of the invasion. The battle was fought near Taanach and Megiddo (Judges 5:19), down the valley of the Kishon, whose waters, swollen by a tremendous storm (Judges 5:20 f.), worked havoc among the Canaanite forces.

That a summons to battle could be sent round and meet with a response shews that the tribes admitted the claim of a common bond of race. At an earlier period some of them, at any rate, had wandered together in the desert, and camped together on the outskirts of Canaan (p. xxviii f.). Israel had not yet grown into a nation, but when the tribes made common cause against Sisera, under the impulse of Deborah's high enthusiasm, they took the first step in the development of united national action. Stronger, however, than the bond of race was the influence of a common faith. The Song bears unmistakable witness to the fervour and reality of Israel's religion at this early period. Jehovah is the God of Israel; He is no Canaanite deity, His seat is in the southern desert (Sinai, Horeb) whence He travels in tempest to His people's aid (Judges 5:4); His presence and power are on the side of Israel (Judges 5:11); He fights in Israel's battles (Judges 5:23), and Israel's enemies are His (Judges 5:31). This faith, which gave to Israel a distinctive character among other races, confirms indirectly the tradition which connects the acceptance of Jehovah as the national God with Sinai and the work of Moses; herein lay the secret of Israel's national progress during the ages of slow consolidation which followed.

The Song falls naturally into three divisions: A. Judges 5:2 an introduction, B. Judges 5:12 a description of the battle, C. Judges 5:23 the sequel. Within these divisions some kind of strophical arrangement, i.e. a grouping of verses connected in thought, can be detected, thus:

A. Judges 5:2-3; Judges 5:4-5. Jehovah's advent. Judges 5:6-8. The recent oppression. Judges 5:9-11. ?? The celebration of Jehovah's acts. B. Judges 5:12; Judges 5:13-15 a. The muster. Judges 5:15. The reluctant and the ready. Judges 5:19-22. The battle. C. Judges 5:23; Judges 5:24-27. The courage of Jael. Judges 5:28-30. The mother of Sisera. Judges 5:31 a. Conclusion. To obtain a more complete symmetry, with a regular number of verse-lines in each strophe, the text must be considerably altered; and as the emendations are necessarily conjectural, none of the attempts to restore a perfectly consistent scheme of strophes and verse-lines can claim any certainty. Much ingenious labour has been spent upon the metre of the Song; but while we can hardly deny the existence of a metrical system in Hebrew, in this case the text is too insecure to establish any satisfactory results. All that can safely be said is that the prevailing rhythm contains four, or sometimes three, beats in each verse-line, e.g. Judges 5:28:The cursing of Meroz.Prelude.Exordium.

Oút of the wíndow loóked and críed

The móther of Sísera oút of the láttice:

Whý do his cháriots tárry in cóming,

Whý línger the stéps of his teáms?

An imposing effect is produced by the frequent use of the kind of parallelism known as the climactic or progressive; (1) the first line is incomplete, and the second line repeats some words of it and completes them, e.g. Judges 5:4 b (? text), Judges 5:7; Judges 5:12 b, Judges 5:19 a (? text), 23b, cf. Psalms 29:1; Psalms 92:9 a, Psalms 93:3; Psalms 94:3 etc.; (2) the first line is complete, and the second line repeats some words of it with an addition, e.g. Judges 5:3 b, Judges 5:5; Judges 5:11 b, Judges 5:21; Judges 5:24, cf. Psalms 22:4; Psalms 29:5; Psalms 29:8; Psalms 67:3; Psalms 77:16. This kind of parallelism is not common, and belongs only to elevated poetry.