Judges 5 Study Notes

5:1 When God intervenes decisively in the lives of his people, their response is to sing his praise (Ex 15). Here Deborah and Barak together led the people in a song of celebration and thanksgiving that focused on the Lord as the central character, while not ignoring the heroism of the human participants.

5:2-3 The introduction to the song is a call to praise. The reason for praise is that Israel’s leaders took charge, and the people volunteered.

5:4-5 Deborah described the Lord’s presence in the battle in the form of a theophany in which the Lord marched out from Mount Seir in Edom, bringing a mighty rainstorm. This storm not only served the practical function of bogging down Sisera’s chariots and neutralizing his technological edge, it also depicts the Lord—not Baal—as the true God of the storm who marches out from his mountain home with the clouds and rain. The Lord alone controls the cosmic elements.

5:6 The state of Israel before the battle is graphically evoked. By calling these the days of Shamgar son of Anath and the days of Jael, Deborah highlighted the lack of leadership at this time. The Lord had to use two foreigners to rescue his people, including one whose name celebrates a pagan goddess. In those days the main roads were deserted, either because of fear of attack by bandits or excessive tolls imposed by the Canaanites, pushing what traffic there was onto the hidden trails that only local people knew.

5:7-8 Life in the unwalled villages became impossible, so they were deserted. Only when Deborah arose did things begin to change. She became a mother in Israel, a title that not only expresses the respect with which she was viewed as a prophetess, but also highlights her femininity and the absence of a similar male figure as “father” at this time. The reason for this negative set of circumstances was simple: Israel had chosen new gods.

5:9-11 Deborah renewed her call to praise the Lord, this time addressing the rich Canaanite merchants, who travel on the road on which the Israelites were afraid to walk. These men were summoned to join the ordinary Israelites in celebrating the righteous acts of the Lord and of his warriors at the locale for conversation and the sharing of news, the watering places. These acts are righteous in the sense that the victory over Sisera vindicated the Lord’s power and validated Israel as his chosen people.

5:12-13 “Deborah imaginatively portrays God summoning to action the principal Israelite protagonists in the battle” (Daniel Block).

5:14-18 The response to God’s call to arms shows that Israel was not united. Ephraim . . . Benjamin . . . Machir (Manasseh), Zebulun . . . Issachar, and Naphtali came eagerly, but Reuben . . . Gilead (Gad), Dan, and Asher remained behind.

5:19-21 The climax of the song brings into view the battle itself. Defeating Jabin was in effect a defeat for all the kings of Canaan. Earthly kings were no match for the Lord’s heavenly host, the stars of the heavens, who fought on Israel’s side. Divine intervention was evidenced by a sudden storm that swelled the river Kishon, normally little more than a brook, into a raging torrent, and made Sisera’s horses and chariots useless.

5:22 Rather than galloping, galloping, Daniel Block believes the context better supports “the wild rearing of the stallions in the frenzy of battle.”

5:23 Meroz cannot be precisely identified. Most likely, they were an Israelite group who had adopted the ways of the Canaanites and remained outside the conflict, thereby earning a curse from the angel of the Lord.

5:24-27 The curse on Meroz forms a contrast with the blessing on Jael, a non-Israelite who came “to help the Lord with the warriors” (v. 23). She is lauded for her resourcefulness and cunning. A comparison to Eglon’s fatal encounter with Ehud is invited by a key comparison: Instead of a left-handed assassin, Jael did her work with her right hand. The end result for the oppressor is the same—the details of the death repeated with gory redundancy.

5:28-30 From the bloody murder scene, the song moves poignantly to the image of Sisera’s mother, waiting vainly for his return. Her ladies reassured her that what was delaying her son was just the time involved in dividing the spoil. Each soldier would need to select some choice garments for themselves and their ladies, and a girl or two, or more literally, a “womb or two,” highlighting the sexual and reproductive functions the captive women were expected to provide.

5:31 Reinforcing the theme that obedience to the Lord leads to rest and disobedience to death, the final note of the chapter is that the land had peace (lit “had rest”) for forty years.