The Song of Deborah

1Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying, 2“Because the leaders took the lead in Israel, because the people offered themselves willingly, be blessed, Yahweh! 3“Hear, you kings! Give ear, you princes! I, even I, will sing to Yahweh. I will sing praise to Yahweh, the God of Israel. 4“Yahweh, when you went out of Seir, when you marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky also dropped. Yes, the clouds dropped water. 5The mountains quaked Yahweh’s presence, even Sinai at the presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel. 6“In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied. The travelers walked through byways. 7The rulers ceased in Israel. They ceased until I, Deborah, arose; Until I arose a mother in Israel. 8They chose new gods. Then war was in the gates. Was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? 9My heart is toward the governors of Israel, who offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless Yahweh! 10“Speak, you who ride on white donkeys, you who sit on rich carpets, and you who walk by the way.

Just as God had said, Deborah won a great victory in the war with King Jabin. Deborah, who rejoiced greatly to see the word fulfilled, and Barak, who could not rejoice wholeheartedly, would have felt very differently. When he reached Jael’s tent and saw Sisera lying dead, Barak’s heart, we may imagine, was heavy and confused. Never having imagined the war could be won so easily, he would have regretted that he had not obeyed at once when Deborah told him to set out with the troops.

Twenty years under his rule had made Jabin king of Canaan seem like a god, and because Sisera, who had oppressed Israel, was a commander of overwhelming power, Barak found it hard to believe the word that God would deliver him into his hand. This is a sign that Barak had lived until then by human judgment. He obeyed at once the words that would bring him blessing, but he was slow to obey those that seemed likely to bring him harm. Deborah’s word that he would win the war was pleasant to hear, but the command to kill Sisera, who looked like a great mountain, left him without confidence.

If he had no confidence that he could kill Sisera, he should never have joined the war at all. But he must have thought that if Deborah went with him, she would bear all the responsibility and he could hide behind her faith. Win or lose, the responsibility would be hers, since she was the one who had received the word. This was why Barak wanted her at his side. But God is the one who fulfills everything he has promised. God always works and fulfills his word in the same way, but depending on the perspective from which a person judges, his answer can become a reward or it can become sin. If we long for the blessing God gives, we must heed his command, because otherwise his promise becomes, for that person, as though it had never been made, and the reward vanishes with it.

Deborah commanded Barak to go now to Mount Tabor: Sisera would come to the river Kishon with his nine hundred chariots of iron and his soldiers, and Barak was to fight him there. She told him that if he did as he was commanded, God would fight before him, and he would know the victory of killing Sisera. In this word there is God’s condition, that if he did as commanded he would receive the promise, and there is a word of blessing, that if he obeyed, God would act first. If only we obey God’s command, his promise comes to pass as a matter of course.

Rather than obey, however, Barak decided he had to go with Deborah the judge in order to make sure of the promised victory. His obedience was selective. Obedience of this kind is driven by self-interest, and for that reason the reward God has prepared may go to someone else. When God has promised to bless us if we obey in a certain way, we can receive the answer only by acting on it at once in faith.

Barak had clearly received the promise that God would help him defeat Sisera. But thinking his ability fell short, he tried to make use of the faith of Deborah, the judge whom God approved. As a result, he lost all the credit to Jael, a weak woman. Here we need to think carefully: this does not mean that Barak took no part in the war. He fought with all his might to destroy the enemy; he gave everything he had. He would probably have felt wronged, thinking that if he had not driven back the enemy, Jael could never have killed Sisera. If his thoughts went that far, he needed to understand that even Deborah’s victory could never have been won without God’s help. Barak certainly deserves much of the credit for Jael being able to kill Sisera when he entered her tent; but it was Barak who refused God’s command. Deborah and Jael won the victory because they believed God’s promise and acted on it. So no one can ever boast of their own merit, and no one can ever make excuses for their failure.

Giving our all is how we prepare a vessel fit to receive the reward God gives. Barak had already rendered Israel great service. But because he disobeyed at the decisive moment, Sisera slipped through his fingers.

Judges 5:3

3“Hear, you kings! Give ear, you princes! I, even I, will sing to Yahweh. I will sing praise to Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Having defeated King Jabin, Deborah, Barak, and the people of Israel were overjoyed. Just as Moses’ sister Miriam took up a tambourine and danced and sang after the crossing of the Red Sea, Deborah lifted up a song of victory to God.

In her work as judge, Deborah would have known times of fear, and there would also have been times when she stepped out in front to show courage. When Barak said he would not go to Mount Tabor, she knew that God would act whether Barak went or not, and it grieved her to see him miss that blessing. Being full of faith does not mean that, as we live in this world, we are never tempted to sin or never afraid.

The apostle Paul declared that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set them free from the law of sin and of death. For all his spiritual authority, Paul confessed that he saw a different law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity under the law of sin in his members. He said that he beat his body and brought it into submission to the word because he feared that after preaching the gospel to others, he himself might be rejected. Paul was saying that he strove to overcome sin by faith, not that he was never tempted. Though he endured much persecution and suffering, his spirit had gone up to heaven and had seen and heard the glory of God and all the mysteries of the last days. Yet even this Paul confessed that he was afraid sin might shake him.

Listening to this confession of Paul’s, we can believe that Deborah felt the same way. When Barak said he would not go unless she came too, she probably judged that this was the moment to display faith before Barak and Israel. For the sake of the people watching her, and for Barak’s faith, Deborah overcame her fear and showed them all how God works.

Faith and unbelief are two sides of one coin: when we choose faith, we can reveal God’s power to the world, and when we choose unbelief, we reveal to the world the wickedness of sinful humanity. Deborah set out for the battlefield carrying even Barak’s fear on her shoulders. Seeing her faith, God sent rain in answer. When the rain began to fall from the sky, Deborah likely sensed that victory was at hand. This is faith proved in experience, a faith that can build others up.

Judges 5:4

4“Yahweh, when you went out of Seir, when you marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky also dropped. Yes, the clouds dropped water.

So in verse 4 she sang her praise: when Yahweh went out of Seir and marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky dropped water, and the clouds dropped water too.

We can experience God’s power only when we obey first. We can receive the blessing God gives only when we first prepare the vessel of faith. Such a magnificent scene could unfold because Deborah showed a faith that obeyed the word and God answered as he had promised. Deborah gave all the glory to God, and her faith shone as she sang together with the people so that they too could exalt him. To the rulers of the nations who had persecuted them, she proclaimed that God alone is the true God, the one supreme ruler to be feared and revered.

How elated Deborah must have been as she sang her heart out against the enemy commanders! She would have sung at the top of her voice, like a child who has been given a wonderful present by a father. As though God were telling her that he was at work to answer her faith, rain poured from the sky, the earth shook, and with thunder and lightning he conveyed the joy of victory. It was as though he were telling his beloved daughter himself that she had lived through twenty years of suffering, but that now he would make even the strong, even a Jabin or a Sisera, bow the knee before her faith. In this way he crowned her with the glory of victory.

Deborah, who loved God, praised him with every kind of instrument and sang together with Israel. She magnified God’s greatness, confessing that all creation would tremble in fear before the authority of Yahweh the Creator.

Judges 5:8

8They chose new gods. Then war was in the gates. Was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?

The figure of forty thousand here tells us that troops from many tribes of Israel had rallied to help Barak and the ten thousand he was leading. Because this war belonged not to them alone but to all Israel, it was only right that the other tribes should join it. Looking at those who had rushed to help their brothers in their hour of need, Deborah said that she truly loved and honored them and would never forget them. Going to war against Sisera and his chariots of iron was a heavy burden for everyone. But Ephraim and Benjamin, Machir of Manasseh, and Issachar marched out to help Deborah and showed what true brotherly love is.

Judges 5:16

16Why did you sit among the sheepfolds? To hear the whistling for the flocks? At the watercourses of Reuben, there were great searchings of heart.

Though an urgent war had broken out, the tribe of Reuben did nothing but debate whether or not to join it. They did not want to give up the peaceful days they were enjoying.

Numbers 32:1

1Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of livestock. When they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that behold, the place was a place for livestock;

Numbers 32:1 tells us that the children of Reuben and the children of Gad owned far more livestock than the other tribes. Because of it, while their brothers fought a life-and-death war, they stayed out of it to guard what they owned. Gilead also held back; Gilead here refers to the tribe of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Deborah rebuked these tribes for dwelling east of the Jordan and giving no help in their kinsmen’s war. The tribes of Dan and Asher, which bordered the land of Zebulun and Naphtali where Jabin’s oppression was harshest, were likewise indifferent to their kinsmen’s suffering and absorbed only in making a living. Those who joined the war ready to die for their people and those who stood by, intent only on guarding their possessions, would not receive the same reward or the same protection from God when the war was over.

Yahweh commanded that Meroz, which had not come to help them, be cursed, and cursed again. Failing to help in this war, he said, was the sin of not helping Yahweh, and for that they were cursed. We cannot know what sort of place Meroz was, but though it was bound to help Israel, it did not.

Here we see curse and blessing divided between those who helped Israel and those who did not. Since Israel’s war was Yahweh’s war, those who held back would be cursed by God. By refusing to help brothers who were fighting for their lives, just to protect their small possessions, they would in the end bring God’s wrath upon themselves. They lived in plenty because God had given it to them; to ignore their brothers’ suffering in order to keep it was to rebel against God. Jael, however, though her husband was friendly with Jabin and Sisera, the enemies of Israel, knew who God is, and so she saw clearly what she had to do.

This war, then, stands at the center of curse and blessing. God’s word to Abraham, that he would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him, reveals how much it matters that God should approve our faith.

If those who help you are blessed by God and those who curse you are cursed by God, then you must live a life all the more upright and holy. If you stand at the center of the promise and still do not live a holy life, God will turn that wrath upon you instead. Deborah knew this, which is why she cursed the tribes that did not join the war and blessed those that gladly did.

Judges 5:28

28“Through the window she looked out, and cried: Sisera’s mother looked through the lattice. ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why do the wheels of his chariots wait?’

The longing of Sisera’s mother, waiting for her son who had gone to war, is vividly portrayed. To anyone, a child is this precious. His mother never once imagined that her son might be defeated. So when the battle should already have been over and he was late in coming home, she could not hide her anxiety. Her son had always won when he went to war, and he had ruled Israel for twenty years. It never occurred to her, then, that he would lose to Deborah.

Her ladies comforted the anxious mother, telling her not to worry: Sisera was late because he was taking so much plunder. No one imagined that King Jabin, with all his absolute power, and the commander Sisera, armed with chariots of iron, could be defeated. From the world’s point of view, a defeat for Sisera was unthinkable, because he had formidable weapons and trained soldiers; however many men Israel put in the field, this was a war he could not lose.

But as time passed, his mother grew uneasy. Her foreboding proved right, because even as she fretted, Sisera had already been killed by Jael. Good or evil, a parent’s love for a child is the same. To his mother, her son was a fine warrior and a commander honored by the nation. And since she knew the hour when this son she was so proud of would come home from battle, it seems Sisera was a devoted son. As they saw it, invading and plundering Israel was no sin, so it would have seemed only natural that he would win another great victory and return with rich spoils. To them it was natural, because that is the way of the world.

But because their opponent this time was God, this was a war they could never win with the strength they had. Sisera’s mother would have wailed more at the news that her son was dead than at the news that the nation had fallen. Yet it would never once have occurred to her that because of her son, countless mothers had lost their sons and wailed. In the world it goes without saying that the strong carry off the most spoil, for that is how the world keeps its accounts. But this reckoning of the world has nothing at all to do with God.

Since good and evil part ways around God, and what awaits after death differs according to the truth, we must not look at this event with merely human eyes. Accordingly, in verse 29 Deborah describes the ladies who comforted Sisera’s mother as wise.

Judges 5:29

29Her wise ladies answered her, Yes, she returned answer to herself,

Deborah was saying, with irony, that the words of these ladies were foolish, for they knew nothing of who God is, what kind of nation Israel is, or around what the history of the world turns. The sight of Sisera’s mother grieving and weeping is pitiful indeed; but only if she knew whom her son was fighting against, and whose goods he had seized to live in wealth, would she see her own sin.

To persecute and plunder God’s people is, in the end, to declare war on God himself, and so they could not help but be defeated. God’s purpose in creating the world is to make Israel his people and to build an everlasting kingdom. Because they did not know this purpose, they tormented his people and acted against his will, and in the end they could only bring his wrath upon themselves.

Judges 5:31

31“So let all your enemies perish, Yahweh, but let those who love him be as the sun when it rises in its strength.” Then the land had rest forty years.

So in verse 31 Deborah sang her praise, asking Yahweh to make all his enemies perish like this, and to make those who love him like the sun when it rises in its strength.

Deborah, who obeyed God’s word completely, ruled Israel for forty years, and in all that time the nations did not attack. By God’s grace Israel lived through peaceful days. It was not any strength or ability of Deborah’s, a woman, that made Israel strong. God saw her faith and, to commend her, protected Israel.

If you do not forget that God is alive, he will protect your life just as he helped Deborah. Only by believing this can you triumph as Deborah did. God used weak women like Deborah and Jael to accomplish a precious work. So I hope that, with a bold faith like hers, you will believe that God will act and proclaim the word to the world.

May you always live to praise God, and be among those who lift high his glory.