40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 4:1-24 (Episode 201)

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Israel is in trouble again, so we are introduced to a prophetess judge named Deborah. A man named Barak is unwilling to go fight without her and so God will deliverer the people's enemy into the hand of a woman, but which woman? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Great Freedom Conference in Germany Freedom Conference in Stockholm Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. check out all the other podcasts that are hanging out over there. Also, while you're over there, you can visit the events page and check out the city events that we got coming up in Las Vegas and Houston, Texas. So we'd love to hang out with you. Those events are free. You just sign up and you show up. We'd love to hang out with you. Houston is February 22nd and Las Vegas is March 21st. So either of those places, we'd love to see. If you're over there in Nevada or if you're in

And, you know, even Southern California, I happen to know that the speakers that we have coming from Southern California, which is the bulk of the speakers, not me, of course, they're just driving over because it's not that far. And so if you're in Southern California, come on over to Las Vegas and hang out with us for the day. We'd love to see you. Also, out in Germany, we'll be there the first week of May. We'll be at the Great Freedom Conference hanging out with our German buddies out there. And if you are one of our German listeners, which I know we have, we'd love to see you. I'll put a link in the show notes to the registration for that event.

Come hang out with us in Germany. We'll also be in Sweden the following weekend at both events talking about the freedom of a Christian. All right, Chad, we are in Judges chapter 4, and we had a good story last time. We have, well, I don't know if it's a better story, but it seems like it's just as good. It's pretty good, yeah. yeah actually some parallels between these these two big stories yeah last time we talked about uh our second judge oh last time we actually talked about our first two judges Othniel and then Ehud our our second judge and and the fat king Eglon and his sneaky way of delivering a

secret message from God yeah messages from God and judges not to be rather yeah it's rather sharp message by the way yeah and the book of judges is the book where you you do not want to receive a message from God. No, you definitely do not. Well, Agulon got the message. He got it very well, very memorable. And as a result, the Israelites were rescued and had a long time, 80 years worth of undisturbed rest. So we move from this kind of gruesome, kind of funny story in Judges chapter three. Actually, before we jump into chapter four, we do have one more verse to cover, and it is by far the shortest description of any of our deliverers in this whole book. So verse 31 of Judges says, after him, that is after Ehud, came this guy named Shamgar,

the son of anat and what did he do well he struck down 600 philistines with an ox goad and he also saved israel now this particular verse leaves us with a whole lot more questions than we have answers to uh for one thing why are we not told anything more than just like how many words that is and that's that's a super super short description so it seems like a pretty seems like a pretty impressive feat yeah it's a very impressive feat yeah and like why an ox code you're like they'd not have a sword or you know was he stuck like uh samson later was where the only weapon he had around was the a donkey's jawbone or what was going on and to to further kind of muddy the waters here it's not i was checking some commentaries out on this just to

see what they had to say and it's not completely clear whether the dude was even an israelite now he could have been uh you got you got well you got several schools of thought here first of all his name it's kind of too technical to get into with the hebrew but his name basically has let put it this way, has four consonants, and most Hebrew words only have three. So it's a little strange to have a name like this if you're an Israelite. Now, that doesn't mean that he's not. Maybe it just was an odd name that this particular Israelite had. And then he's described as Ben-Anat. And there's a couple of different ways to read this, too. There is a town, an Israelite town in Galilee named Ben-Anat, which means son of Anat. So it could be that Shamgar, who had a

strange name for an Israelite, was from this town up in Galilee named Ben-Anat. But there is another possibility too. Anat was a goddess in the Canaanite pantheon, and she was also adopted by Egyptian mythology as well. So she kind of crossed over from Canaanite pantheons to Egyptian pantheons. So it very well could be that being described as Ben-Anon means that he was a worshiper of Anon. Maybe, maybe not. It certainly would not be unheard of for the book of Judges to include a deliverer of Israel who's not an Israelite. In fact, we're going to encounter one in this very next chapter, because Jael, as we'll see, she was not an Israelite. And get this, jl in the next chapter is called the mother of israel pretty pretty strange uh name to be given

to someone who's not israelite all that to say there's a whole lot we don't know about shamgar maybe he was an israelite maybe not maybe he was from a town called beninot maybe he was actually a worshiper or not what we do know is that yeah he was a pretty bad dude because anybody who can take an ox goad and knock to it is like a is a stick uh that's made from hardwood probably tipped with iron it's like what you push it's like a cattle prod if any of you uh i grew up working with working with cattle and so we well we used hot shots they didn't have those back then we use hot shots we wanted cattle to move down the chute or wherever we wanted to go for a little little shock to the rump that got him going but before then he had sticks and uh that's what you use

go the ox or you yeah you push the cattle with this with this particular stick so i mean for somebody to take an ox code and to take down 600 philistines that's probably not somebody you want to mess with yeah you don't know if this is like in like a single battle did he just like you know over the course of a year is he just like gradually taking guys out and you're like man we just got his life by cover of night or what you have just no idea but apparently this saved israel yeah yeah that's i mean that's that's all we know we know his name we know whatever been or not means and yeah he took down a whole lot of philistines and it says he saved israel which is the same verb that we've encountered several times already so maybe god used uh in israelite

Maybe he was not an Israelite, but whatever his background, both indigenously and religiously, he was the guy that God used to take out a whole bunch of Philistines to provide a little bit of relief to Israel. Now, notice we're missing all the other components, right? There's no reference to Israel sinning, making God mad, him selling into the hands of somebody, them crying out, or even there being rest afterward. so it's a very minimalist account of this particular judge and that's really all we know you know judges is a book of many things it's also it seems the the book of unconventional weapons yes it is yeah that's a great way to put it yeah we're gonna find a whole bunch of that of course we have a hammer and tit bag tit bag coming up uh combined with a little bit of milk and we've we've got of course uh samson doing all kinds of crazy things with uh foxes and jaw bones

jaw bones and uh gideon's story you know you got clay jars and trumpets and torches so i mean that's one of the things i love about judges is that in in in a kind of a weird way it's really a theology the cross kind of book that's the way i've always looked at these stories because you've got i mean if you think about okay how how could god save the world not just israel but like how could he save the world like hmm like what kind of weapon would he use to just really take down the enemy and just completely demolish him and bring about victory and rest for everybody well of course the last thing anybody would have thought of would have been the crucifixion so that's like the last in the long line of unconventional weapons that God used to bring about salvation for people.

It begins all the way back here in these early books of the Old Testament. And all of these are just a long line of weapons that God uses to choose what is foolish to reveal his wisdom and what the world despises to bring about his glory. See, Theology of the Cross, the book of judges there you go that's that's pretty impressive okay well let's go to chapter four we got three judges under our belt let's see what we got next now we're gonna we're gonna kind of interesting uh interesting chapter here the this chapter which is judges four and then the following chapter are basically two versions of the same account except one's prose and one's poetry so verse chapter four is all prose it's a description of you've got the enemy

you've got uh the prophetess deborah uh you've got the the leader barack and then we're going to meet uh jl as we go along with the story and hear about everything that's happened so we got all that that's written in prose but then we get to chapter five and the whole thing with different parts thrown in is going to be retold except this time it's going to be retold totally in poetry and poetry is of course very different than prose not only in english and i suppose it's like this in any language, but it's certainly like that in Hebrew, because when you get to poetry in Hebrew, you got, you know, typical poetry, you got a whole lot of images, all these metaphors, everything's exaggerated, there's a whole lot of hyperbole. So it's kind of like many of the

Psalms in that respect. But we'll get to that, get to that later on. But just want you to know beforehand that this is the only part of the book of Judges, and it's probably actually the most studied for various reasons but you got the the prose and the poetry and what makes judges five even more unique is that it it's it's the nature of the hebrew itself this seems to be like a super old poem just because of some of the uh it's kind of like you know if you read if you read shakespeare or something else that's you know older english you're like man this we don't talk this way anymore i mean we can still read it but like there's a lot of expressions that are strange it's kind of like the hebrews of chapter five so chances are this is a extremely

old old poem but anyway we'll get to that back to chapter four okay we start out here with uh the sequence of events with which we are now familiar the israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord after Ehud died. And once more, God sells them. He auctions them off to a guy who is the king of Canaan, whose name is Jabin, or in Hebrew, it would be Yabin. And he reigns in this place called Hazor. Now, we've encountered Hazor before. You may remember that when Joshua and the Israelites entered into the promised land, first they did the central campaign where they took out jericho and i and then they moved south and they did the conquer several places there and then finally they moved north and one of the northern cities they took out was the famous very very old

city called hazor and it says that they not only destroyed it but they burned it to the ground and archaeologists have found burned ruins which correspond to about the dates of the book of joshua so it's kind of strange here right away that we hear that there's this guy jabin who's the king of Canaan and he reigned in the Hazor. I suspect, now this is pure speculation, but I suspect what happened is the same thing that happened in a lot of the other cities that Joshua and the Israelites quote unquote conquered. Well, they did, but they just kept moving. It's not like, okay, we conquered the city. Now we're going to leave a thousand troops behind and they're going to make sure that the city remains ours. Nobody comes back in. We're going to hold

this place they didn't do that they just kept moving well what do you think's going to happen of course not everybody is killed and so when the Israelites move on what are they gonna do where they're gonna go back and you know maybe they'll rebuild a little bit of the city something like that that's probably what happened in Hazor not everybody was killed and some time passed and people went back and they began to live there again and do a little building and this guy whose name is Jabin, ended up reigning from there over Canaan. Now, he actually is a minor figure in the rest of the story. He's like the top dude, but the one that we're really concerned with was the guy who ends up being the commander of his army. So he's like the five-star general in Jabin's army,

in the sky's name is Sisera. Sisera lives in this place called Harosheth Hagoyim. We're not exactly sure where that's at, but it's probably like some place that was like given to him as a reward for his military service. So that's the place where he resides. So we're introduced to two characters right away. We got the king, and now we have Sisera. And Sisera is going to be the one who really is the focus of the rest of the, the bad guy, who's really the focus of the rest of the story so the israelites cry out to god and they cry out for good reason because this guy's like he he's got he doesn't have just a few chariots he's got iron chariots and he has nine excuse me has 900 of these nine chariots and because of this he's able to oppress the israelites for

for 20 years so they had 80 years of rest and now everything falls apart again and they are oppressed for 20 years. Now, at this point, what do we expect? Well, we've got them sinning, we've got God mad, we've got him selling them, and we have them crying out. Now, the very next verse that we would expect would be, and the Lord raised up so-and-so, whatever this person's name is going to be. But now we have a little twist in the regular rhythm with which we have grown of custom because we're introduced. First of all, we're not told that God raised someone up as a deliverer, although we're going to meet him in a little bit, but we're introduced. First of all, we're not introduced to another guy. We're introduced to a woman, and she's not just a woman.

She is a prophetess. So verse four, Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidot, was judging Israel at that time. Now there's a couple things that are, that are, well, there's a lot that's of interest here, but in particular, two of the words in this, in this verse are, are interesting. First of all, prophetess. Deborah is not, actually, she's not the only, nor is she the first prophetess that's mentioned in the Old Testament. And we actually, we actually have some mentioned in the New Testament as well. So the first one we meet is the sister of Moses. So Miriam is called the prophetess and that's back in exodus chapter 15 that's where we have the song of moses and miriam and the and the other women are are singing part part of the song so she's called

a prophetess uh we also hear about holda got second kings 22 and somebody called noah dia and that's in the uh the sixth chapter of of nehemiah and then we have anna early years of Jesus. And then in Isaiah 8.3, we don't know her name, but she's Mrs. Isaiah, basically. So the wife of Isaiah is also called a prophetess. And I wish we knew more, and I wish we had some more details about exactly what a prophetess did. We can assume, there's no reason not to assume this, that they did the same thing that the prophets did. They were the mouthpiece of God. So they were the ones that God chose in order to give his word. The very first mention of a prophet in the Bible is Abraham, and he prays for the king.

So maybe that's part of what the prophet did. But most of what we're accustomed to with the prophets of the Old Testament is these are the men, and in this case, the women, that God gives his spirit to in order that they might be the one who communicates his will to the people. whether that's by teaching songs, or whether that's by teaching his word, or maybe that's by some kind of revelation that he gives, or some kind of warning, whatever it is, that's what the prophet said. So presumably that's what Deborah did as well. And it says that she was judging Israel at this time. I think what that means, judging by the way the story unfolds from here on out, is that she was the one that, because she was a prophetess, and given the Spirit of God

whereby to reveal his will, that she was the one that the Israelites came to in order to know what they should do with regard to the enemies. Because it goes on to say that she used to sit, probably this was like her official place, under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the whole country of Ephraim. And the sons of Israel came up to her for the judgment. Some of your translations might have just without the article, like for judgment, but the Hebrew has the article. So for the judgment. And we know that in other cases, kings or prophets would pronounce like the judgment of God. That is his divine will for the people. So anyway, that's kind of my reconstruction of what's going on here. She's the mouthpiece of God. She did what prophets did.

and the way that she was judging Israel at this particular time was they came to her and they basically said, hey, we've been living under this king and Sisera, his general, for a long time. What should we do? That's the way I read it. Ultimately, they're coming to her for decisions to be made. So a judgment is a decision. This is part of what it is, right?

so you got things going on israel's going up to her and say what's the call here yeah yeah yeah let's see i that i think that's exactly right especially as we as we see how the story unfolds so they're wanting her basically to say what does god want us to do here's the situation you know we we've cried out to him we've been under this canaanite king and we have sisera who's his general. So you're the one with God's ear and who hears God's mouth. So you tell us what the Lord would have us do, because that's exactly what happens. So they come up to her for the judgment. Verse six says, she sent and summoned this guy named Barak, whose name means thunder. Pretty cool name. So she calls for thunder. She calls for Barak, the son of Abinoam

from, he's from a place called Kadesh Naphtali. And here's what she says to him. Behold, the Lord, the God of Israel has commanded, go and march to Mount Tabor and take with you 10,000 men from the sons of Naphtali and from the sons of Zebulun. And I, this is God speaking through Deborah, and I will draw out to you Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his many troops to the river Kishon, and I will give him into your hand. Now, there's something that's missing here in the translation. So, when he says, go and march to Tabor, and then when God says, I will draw out to you Sisera, those are the same words in Hebrew. same words in both those cases so it's kind of like he's she's saying god is saying through

deborah to barack i want you to to get your troops together to draw out your troops to mount tabor and then i god says i'm going to draw out sisera so i'm going to draw out the other troops so you can see how god is kind of always orchestrating this this whole this whole scenario so that's her message. The people come to her for hamishpat, for the judgment, and she gives the judgment. She says, all right, here's what we're going to do. There's this guy named Barak, and I want Barak to hear what God has to say. You gather all these troops together from the two tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, 10,000 guys, get them ready, and then I'm going to draw out your enemy. I'm going to bring Sisera, who's the commander of the army, and all his troops, and you guys are going to meet

there at the river kishon now i'll explain this more in just a little bit but notice their meeting place is by water the reason i appoint i'll uh i'll telegraph this now the reason they're meeting the reason that the water is mentioned is because there are clear echoes of the red sea victory over egypt that are coming up so notice right away that this this battle is going to take place by water because what god is doing is he is repeating what he did for the nation of israel when he destroyed the egyptians and when we come to those verses i'll point out the similarities but notice right away that's where they're going to the river kashon and he says i'm going to give him into your hand now you'd think at this point that uh barack would

be like all right let's do it right i mean we came to you for judgment and you've given it and i'm the appointed guy i mean i get i get to be the one so and you yeah god has promised through you that he's already given them into your hand so here we go i'm gonna get it done yeah you're you're about to see uh i mean and we obviously don't have any background here but you're going to see that apparently israel has uh holds deborah in pretty high esteem yes they do yeah big time big time yeah i mean she is like uh she's probably the most well i don't i wouldn't even say probably she is the most important person in israel at this time yeah they hold her in extremely extremely high esteem uh because there's no mention of any of the prophets or

prophetesses as far as that goes so as far as we know she's the only one in this generation that is privy to the divine counsel, that knows what God has to say, and that people can trust to give them that word. So that's why the people are so much behind her. Now, Barak, on the other hand, as soon as she says this, he shows his true natures. He's not a gung-ho about this idea. he says to her if you will go with me then i will go but if you won't go with me i'm staying home yeah i'm not gonna go so this excuse me so this was a mistake um i mean it clearly god had already promised him victory but he says to her well unless you're with me it ain't happening so we have a kind of a scenario of a of a weak man and strong woman i guess you could say or we have i

think better a better way to say it would be we have someone who we have a woman who is holding fast to the word of god and not just holding fast to it but actually proclaiming that then we have a guy who's not he's doubting because everything that uh god said through deborah was was crystal clear that victory was his. All he needs to do is go claim it. So in response to Barak's hesitation and his conditional acceptance of this, verse 9, she goes on to say, all right, I'm going to go with you, but here's what's going to happen. The honor shall not be yours on the journey that you're about to take, because the Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman. Then Deborah rose and went with Barak to Kadesh. Now, notice there's some ambiguity here. If you don't know

this story, say you've never read the story before, and maybe some of you haven't, and you get to this point, and you hear that the honor is not going to be Barak's, but instead God will sell sisera into the hands of a woman well of course who's the woman that you think he's going to sell her into the hands of yeah yeah of course deborah of course she's she's the only woman that we've been introduced to in the whole story so you're thinking oh okay so what's going to happen is somehow deborah is going to take out sisera i don't know how but she's going to be there so do you see the literary quality the bible itself where you have these these open-ended kind of statements like this that are kind of teasers as to what what is coming up and yet

we end up being surprised because things don't happen the way that we expect them to well anyway what happens next so barack he called zebula naftali they went to kadesh and we got together 10 000 guys and deborah also goes with him then this is another one of these kind of strange literary features. All of a sudden, the story is completely interrupted by something which seems completely inconsequential and out of order. And you're like, well, why in the world is this here? This doesn't fit the story. You would think they would jump right into the battle scene, right? But no, before we get there, we have verse 11. It says, now, now Haber, the Kenite, had separated himself from the Kenites, from the sons of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses,

and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak of za'a nanim which is near kadesh now you're reading along you're like okay what the heck does that have to do with with anything don't know who this guy is yeah right yeah it's like so it's like you could have put that as a footnote you know i mean because it really doesn't fit the story. At least it doesn't seem to, but this is what this case is where you got to like, okay, bide your time. This wasn't just like thrown in to fit a little more onto the scroll.

There's a reason it's there, and we're going to find out as we keep going through the story. But just to reflect, the father-in-law of Moses had a lot of names. You ever notice that? It's like this dude has way too many names. he's called jethro i think that's the first name that we're that he uses when we meet him and then somewhere else he's like ruel i believe his name and here he's called hobab so i guess it's like choose a name which one it's gonna be but anyway he's the father of moses and he was a keenite

and this guy haber he for whatever reason he separates himself and he moves way way north and he sets up this tent by the oak of Za'a Nanim, which is pretty close to where the battle is going to take place. Okay, so let's see what happens. We get the battle coming up next. Then they told Sisera that Barak, the son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor. So Sisera does what any general will do he musters his troops he gets ready for uh for the battle he calls all his chariots so he lines up the tanks he's got 900 of these iron chariots we've heard about those before this is like a an upgrade in military technology uh the older chariots had no iron on them so they weren't quite as stable these are iron chariots and all the people who were with him

from Harosheth Hagoyim to the river Kishon. So he's got all his troops ready, he's got all his horses, he's got his chariots, and he's ready to rock and roll. Now Deborah, at this point, verse 14, she addresses Barak. She says, Arise, for this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Behold, the Lord has gone out before you. so god is there i love the languages so god has given him into your hands and he's there he's going out before you and this is one of those out in front of you which is nice he's

out in front of you yeah exactly i mean like if i'm going into battle against all these guys with iron chariots if i'm like right behind god that's where i want to be yeah i don't want to be just in front of him right yeah i got your back god i'm right behind you i mean and this is this is one of those it's not an explicit reference but i think you can kind of hear echoes here of the red sea we're going to hear one next the next verse but you know god is of course they're fighting for israel which is what moses told them it's like hey everybody relax because god's about to to fight for you so this is what happens so verse 15 the lord routed sisera that's that that's a translation i have i don't do you have something else there that's what that's what i have yeah

it's probably as good a translation as anything but the word that's used there hamam is the exact same word that's used in exodus 14 24 when it described how god routed or confused or perplexed the egyptians when they were in the middle of the red sea so it's not a word that occurs a ton But it does occur in these very specific places It occurs here And then in Exodus 24 So you can see how these two battles Are understood to be

Parallels to each other It's interesting because you have this The Lord routed Sisera and all his Chariots How does this work? Yeah I don't know how this works You almost have to imagine

Are these chariots just falling apart? Yeah, like a chariot's just blowing apart And they don't know what the heck's going on Wheels coming off I mean, it kind of makes sense in the Red Sea They could get, like, stuck in the mud Or something like that But we don't know what's happening here

But something Something is happening with their chariots Due to divine interference So God Hamams, he routes Sisera And all his chariots and all his army And with the edge Of the sword before Barak

so it looks like you know everything's gonna gonna go great and everybody's gonna get killed but it says sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot so the the main guy has gotten away and we'll come back to him just a minute and we finish the section verse 16 but barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as harasheth hago yim which was sisera's like place, his town. And all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. Not even one was left. That's the second explicit echo. That particular phrase, not even one was left, is repeated verbatim in Exodus 14, 28. So two verses in the story of God destroying the Egyptians to the Red Sea, the routed phrase and the not even one was left phrase, both of those

are pointing to the parallel nature of these two accounts. I mean, we see this, of course, the Exodus theme repeated all over the scriptures. I just finished a book called Echoes of Exodus, which traces the earliest references to any kind of exile and return language all the way from Genesis to Revelation. So it's no surprise that we would hear that here in the book of Judges as well. Okay, so now we have Sisera. He got away.

and what is it with like the leaders of armies always getting away you notice that like what these dudes like hang at the very back of the battle as soon as things look like they're going south they take off or what because you know we had them with a cave the guy the king's hiding in the cave right earlier commanders are the only ones that feel like they have the authority to run i suppose yeah you know i'm just picturing like braveheart you know he's like leading him into battle. These guys, that's not happening with them. Well, Sisera gets away. Let's finish out and see what happens to him. Well, he flees on foot and he goes to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, the guy that we were introduced to earlier, because there was peace

between Jabin and the king of Hazor and the house of Heber, the Kenite. So Sisera thinks that, man, he is in the place he needs to be because Jael is married to the guy who is at peace with Sisera and Yabin. I mean, so this is like the place to hide out, the place to get some rest. Everything seems good. So Jael actually goes out to meet Sisera and she says to him in what seems to be almost like coaxing language, turn aside, my master, turn aside to me. Don't be afraid. and she takes him she he turned aside to her into the tent and she's not done yet you know so she she goes out to him says hey come on in you know everything's gonna be okay don't be afraid he comes inside you know he's exhausted and so he lays down and she she covers him with a rug or a

blanket or something like that it's the only time that hebrew word occurs in the old testament so we're not exactly sure what it was but anyway it's you know it's like a blanket or something covers him with it and she's still not done because he says i'm thirsty bring me some water well she doesn't bring him just water she opens a skin of wine and gave him a drink and then she she covered him up so he gets them all safe all comfortable and he says before he falls asleep stand in the doorway and if anybody comes and says is there a guy here then you say no and then he falls asleep and then verse 21 but jail she took a tent peg and she took a hammer in the other hand and she walked stealthily over to where he's at and she drove the peg into his

temple and it went through into the ground because he was sound asleep and exhausted and then to make sure that we get the point it adds at the end of the verse so he died yeah i would say so i would say so chances of recovery pretty slim yeah so she's like this tent peg literally all the way through his head into the ground yeah yeah yeah this is this is not like your your pup tent uh set up like you you put in the backyard this is this is a long this is a long stake that she drives through his through his head into the ground let's wrap it up uh we'll talk more about this in a second so it barack shows up about this time and he comes out to meet her and she says come and i'll show you the man whom you're seeking and i don't know what he

expects like he's gonna be cowering in the corner or something and so he goes in with her and he finds Sisera lying dead with a tent peg in his temple. So God subdued on that day Jabin, the king of Canaan, before the sons of Israel. And the hand of the sons of Israel pressed heavier and heavier upon Jabin, king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin, king of Canaan. So it's only at the end of the story that we realize that the woman that Deborah was talking about, who would receive the honor of the day would not be Deborah, but it would be Jael, who's not an Israelite. In fact, whose husband himself was at peace with Jabin and with Sisera. This is not always cases where we wish we knew a little bit more about her. I mean, what pushed her or what was it that made her

led her to make a decision like this. She was accepting into her tent a man who was at peace with her husband and presumably with the rest of her family, but she chose instead to execute him. We wish we knew more, but what we do know is that later she is called, the next chapter, she's called the mother of Israel. So her allegiance was not in line with the allegiance of her husband. Instead, her allegiance was in line with the God of Israel. And she took advantage of this opportunity to crush the head of one of her enemies in kind of line with that same biblical theme we see very often already back in Genesis 3.15 about the head of the snake being crushed. Very often we have the heads of God's enemies being destroyed, whether it's Goliath

or whether it's people like Sisera here where God crushes their head in order to provide victory for his people. Yeah, you know, when Deborah says that the glory will go to a woman, the way that this is ensured is interesting because obviously next week we'll get into a recounting, as you said, of this in a more poetic way. In fact, in song, this is what this is. back in the day if you wanted to something to live on forever i mean like the best the best thing in the world is to have a song written about you man i mean this is this was the this

was the way i mean this is this went on forever this is like back even old medieval stuff you know far long long after this you know they say hey man we're gonna go fight this battle and they're gonna sing songs about it and like that was that was that was like glory insured you know if this happened so you'd have uh you know bards going around being like i'll like go into this battle man i'll write a song about about this thing and what you have next is the glory that she receives yes you know you have the mother of israel and this kind of stuff but this is enshrined for a people that have things passed down orally uh well in in an oral tradition i mean the best thing you can have is a song yeah yeah absolutely and here we are you know after all these thousands

of years we're still talking about her yeah so the honor was hers and still is that's it and that's it guys we are out of time uh so next week we will we'll get into the the song that deborah and uh and barack to his uh credit uh doesn't have a problem with the song he's okay with it so we're going to get into that guys if you'd like to support the podcast you can do so by going over to the donate page on the on the 1517 site and you can become a contributor thank you so much to those of you who do that also appreciate you rating and reviewing the podcast on itunes helps us get more visibility so if you've not done that yet please go over and give us a hand chad i will see you next week all right see you then