The judges of Israel

Deborah and Barak

The prophetess and the captain · During the oppression of Jabin · Delivered Israel from Jabin, king of Canaan, and Sisera his captain · The land had rest forty years

Deborah was a prophetess who judged Israel from beneath a palm tree, the only woman named among the judges and one of the few with no recorded fault. When Jabin king of Canaan crushed Israel with nine hundred chariots of iron, she summoned Barak to lead the army. He would go only if she went with him, so she warned him that the glory of the victory would go to a woman. God routed Sisera's army, and Jael finished him with a tent peg.

And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.Judges 4:4 (KJV)

Their story from Scripture

Israel again did evil, and the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, whose captain was Sisera, with nine hundred chariots of iron. For twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel. In that time Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, judged Israel. She sat under the palm tree of Deborah in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people came up to her for judgment.

Deborah sent for Barak the son of Abinoam and gave him God's command to draw ten thousand men to mount Tabor, promising that the LORD would deliver Sisera into his hand. Barak answered, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go. Deborah agreed, but told him the journey he was on would not be for his honour, for the LORD would sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.

When the armies met, the LORD discomfited Sisera and all his chariots and all his host with the edge of the sword before Barak, and there was not a man left. Sisera himself leaped down from his chariot and fled away on foot, and came to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who invited him in, gave him milk, and covered him. When he had fallen asleep, worn out and trusting her, she took a tent peg and a hammer and drove it through his temple, and he died. Barak came chasing after, and Jael went out to show him the man he sought lying dead. So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan, and Israel prevailed against him until they had destroyed him.

The song of Deborah and Barak in chapter five, one of the oldest poems in the whole Bible, celebrates the victory. It remembers that the very stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and the river Kishon swept the enemy away, so that nine hundred chariots of iron were worth nothing against the God of Israel. It praises the tribes that came willingly and rebukes those that lingered by their flocks; it curses Meroz for not coming to the help of the LORD; and it pictures the mother of Sisera watching at her window for a son who would never come home. The song ends in prayer: so let all thine enemies perish, O LORD, but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.

Their character, honestly

Deborah stands out in the whole book for her clear faith and her lack of any recorded flaw. She is prophet, judge, and mother in Israel, and she does not flinch. Barak is more mixed. His hesitation, his refusal to go without her, is remembered as a want of full confidence in God's word, and it costs him the honour of the final blow. Yet the New Testament lists Barak, not Deborah, among the heroes of faith in Hebrews, for in the end he did believe and did go. The text neither hides his weakness nor writes him off for it.

How God used them

God used a woman to lead when the men would not, and used a hesitant captain who needed her at his side, and then gave the deathblow to yet another woman with a tent peg, so that no man could boast. The whole story is arranged to strip away human pride and leave the glory with God. Deborah's courage did not replace Barak's calling; it called it out. Together the reluctant and the resolute did what neither would have done alone, and God got the honour.

The cycle turns again

Once more the wheel turns: evil, oppression under Jabin, the cry of the people, a deliverer raised up, and rest for forty years. Deborah's song rejoices that the people willingly offered themselves, a rare bright note in a darkening book. But the rest, as always, ended at a death, and the next chapter opens with Israel doing evil again. The pattern will not break from the inside.

How they point to Christ

Deborah judged Israel with wisdom and the word of the LORD, and led her people to a salvation they could not win alone. She points to Christ, the true Judge and Prophet, in whom wisdom and rescue meet. And the honour God gave to lowly and unexpected hands, a woman under a palm tree, a woman with a tent peg, foreshadows the God who would come as a servant and save the world through the weakness of the cross, that no flesh should glory in his presence.

A note on honesty: the book of Judges is one of the darkest and most candid books in the Bible, and it does not flatter its own heroes. The failures named above are the ones Scripture itself records. We do not whitewash them, because the point of the book is not how good the judges were, but how faithful God was to a people who could not save themselves, and how deeply they, and we, need the true Deliverer.

Related: Previous: Shamgar · Next: Gideon · The Kings of Israel and Judah · All the judges of Israel