The only woman who judges, Deborah “used to sit under the palm tree…and the sons of Israel came up to her for judgment” (Judges 4:5). She is shown here in a stained glass window by the Russian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Photo: © 1997 Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris.

The two chapters show her exemplary moral character and indicate the people gave her great love and respect. Like Moses before³ and David afterward, she fused in herself the roles of prophet, national leader, and military commander.

Thought to be an Ephramite because she resided in Ephraim (4:5), Deborah judged and led Israel for 60 years in the 12th century B.C.⁴ Her oversight covered approximately 20 years of national hardship before the Canaanite war and then a peaceful aftermath of 40 years. Arguably, Deborah first was recognized as a prophet, then as judge/leader, next in a military role (5:15), and finally as a songstress. She judged under a palm tree—a setting, rabbinic tradition maintains, that validated her fairness, openness, and refusal to show partiality.⁵

Deborah is introduced, as are the other 11 judges in the Book of Judges, without fanfare. The Bible records no dissent or rebellion against her. Leadership resides not in gender but in character and gifting.⁶ The Israelites recognized her abilities and prospered under her tenure. Her name means bee or even honeybee.

Judges 4–5 is unusual in that it chronicles a slice of biblical history first in narration and subsequently in poetry. The chapters complement each other, fitting together details, insights, and judgments.

The two chapters begin with Israel’s disobedience, vividly describe a Holy War and its participants, and end with the victorious result: the land had rest for 40 years (5:31). Put another way, the people sinned, learned from hardship, repented, and cried out to the Lord. The Lord responded with a plan of deliverance.

Although the Canaanites didn’t know it, this was a Holy War.⁷

FREE ebook: Israel: An Archaeological Journey. Sift through the storied history of ancient Israel.

First Name:*

Last Name:*

Email Address: * * Indicates a required field.

SUBMIT

If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box.

The chapters present the possibility of three war zones: the initial battleground of Mount Tabor and the Jezreel Valley (4:12); Tanaach (5:19); and the gates of Hazor and other Canaanite cities. (4:23; 5:11d).

Chapters 4 and 5 provide character sketches of those involved in the war. The men include:

• Barak, who, at Deborah’s command, suddenly becomes Israel’s general; he bargains with Deborah to come with him to the war; she agrees but prophesies that “the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman” (4:8–9)
• Jabin, a king in Canaan who resides in Hazor (4:2)
• Sisera, Jabin’s general, who exudes confidence because of his weapons of mass destruction—some 900 iron chariots (4:2–3)
• The tribes of Naphtali and Zebulon followed by Ephraim, Benjamin, and Issachar and the men of Machir; all march with Barak and are praised by Deborah (5:14–15)
• The tribes of Reuben, Dan, and Asher and the men of Gilead (5:15–17); they are ridiculed for failing to heed the summons to the Holy War

In addition to Deborah, the women include:

• Jael the Kenite, who invites the fleeing Sisera into her tent and murders him (4:17–22; 5:24–27)
• Sisera’s mother, who, Deborah imagines, waits anxiously at a latticed window for her son’s return (5:28)
• Nearby ladies-in-waiting who speculate that the victorious Canaanites are delayed because they’re busy dividing the spoils of war and enjoying the women they’ve conquered (5:29–30)

Those mentioned only incidentally include:

• Lappidoth, the husband of Deborah (4:4)⁸
• Heber the Kenite, husband of Jael (4:11); according to tradition, the Kenites descended from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law⁹

Deborah’s tenure starts with the Lord’s judgment against Israel. Because the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, the Lord sells them into the hand of Jabin, a king in Canaan (4:1–2). Confined to the unproductive hilltops and denied commercial access on the highways, the Israelites suffer economic hardship under the Canaanites (5:6).

Deborah summons Barak from Kadesh in Naphtali; she tells him the Lord commands him to position himself at Mount Tabor and bring in 10,000 from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulon (4:5–6). The Lord shares his strategy and promises deliverance and victory: “I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand” (4:6–7).

Chapter 4 highlights the conflict between the Israelites and Canaanites. Tribes assemble under Barak’s order. Sisera hears and takes his chariots to the Wadi Kishon (4:12–13). Making good his word, the Lord throws Sisera and his forces into panic (4:15). Seeing that the battle goes against the Canaanites, Sisera flees on foot. Exhausted, he arrives at Jael’s tent. She brings him milk, covers him with a rug, and while he sleeps, hammers a tent peg through his head (4:17–21)! The assassination incorporates multiple erotic images.¹⁰ Barak, coming shortly thereafter, views the corpse (4:22).

As Sisera sleeps, Jael calmly and quietly hammers a tent peg into his temple, in this 1620 painting by Italian Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Photo: Szepmuveszeti Museum, Budapest, Hungary.

The poetry in Chapter 5, the Song of Deborah, smacks of realism and emphasizes the role of women.¹¹ The ballad tells a gripping story, ringing with eyewitness details. Like the Book of Lamentations and the Gospel of Mark, it leaves a reader feeling breathless. One easily imagines Deborah strumming and beckoning Barak to walk and sing with her among their victorious countrymen. Her leadership style favors a team approach; she willingly recognizes those who joined and served.¹² She not only praises others but also thereby encourages them to ongoing service and development as leaders.¹³

Considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry,¹⁴ Deborah’s Song continues the Israelite tradition of immortalizing a victory in song. Both Moses and Miriam led the Israelites in songs of victory after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 15:1–21). Deborah’s song has many Hebrew words that are unknown now; that’s why its translations vary so much.

Deborah sings about the Lord but to the Israelites. For example, the earth trembled, the clouds poured water, the Lord marched, and the mountains quaked “before the Lord” (5:4–5). Indeed, the stars in heaven fought against the doomed Sisera and the Canaanites (5:20). Credit for the Holy War and inevitable victory goes to Yahweh (5:5).

Become a BAS All-Access Member Now!

Read Biblical Archaeology Review online, explore 50 years of BAR, watch videos, attend talks, and more

Deborah calls herself a mother in Israel (5:7). Probably one of the highest designations in scripture, it indicates authority.¹⁵ Centuries afterward, the wise woman of Abel Beth Maacah will describe her city with the same phrase in a conversation with military leader Joab during a break in a civil war (2 Samuel 20:19). Much earlier, Joseph called himself a father to Pharaoh (Genesis 45:8).

Deborah’s concluding words validate Jael’s action, pronouncing her “most blessed of women” Judges 5:24). Similar designations go to Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 2:26–28, 42), and to Judith, heroine of the Apocryphal Book of Judith who beheaded Holofernes, an Assyrian, general and saved her people (Judith 13:23–25). With great force, Deborah prays that all the Lord’s enemies will share Sisera’s fate and likewise perish (Judges 5:31).

Deborah’s War changed history. Any dreams Sisera had to use those 900 chariots to defeat Egypt and become a world power literally got stuck in the mud when the Lord sent rain (5:4, 21). Deborah’s War effectively took the Canaanites off the world stage. Yes, the Israelites moved to the fertile valleys and vended their wares on recognized thoroughfares (5:7). But perhaps a misstep was that the Israelites did not become masters of the forge; they did not capture, copy, or customize the enemy’s technology. Consequently, nearby nations excelled in iron smelting. The judge Gideon built on Deborah’s military foundation and led Zebulon, Naphtali, and other tribes against the Midianites and Amalekites (6:33-35). According to rabbinic tradition, Deborah wrote Psalm 68¹⁶; it clearly resembles both chapters, especially Judges 5.¹⁷

According to another rabbinic tradition, descendants of Sisera, the Canaanite commander whose doom was prophesied by Deborah and fulfilled under Jael’s hand, taught children in Jerusalem.¹⁸ If that tradition is true, then it shows one of the great themes of scripture. The judgeship of Deborah started with the Israelites’ sin but its legacy, in time, included God’s good work of redemption in the lives of the descendants of Israel’s enemy.

This Bible History Daily feature was first published in April, 2019

Robin Gallaher Branch teaches Old Testament and New Testament as an adjunct professor at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the 2002–2003 academic year and served in the Faculty of Theology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa; she retains her North-West research affiliation. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Studies from the University of Texas in Austin in 2000. Her most recent books are Six Biblical Plays for Contemporary Audiences (Cascade 2016) and Jeroboam’s Wife: The Enduring Contributions of the Old Testament’s Least-Known Women (Hendrickson, 2009; Wipf and Stock, 2018).

Notes

1. Branch 2002, p. 134.

2. Rabbinic tradition lists seven prophetesses: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther (Meg. 14a) (“Deborah,” p. 489).

3. Herzberg 2013, pp. 15–16. Herzberg notes the prophetic gifting of both Moses and Deborah and the similarities of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and Deborah’s War; consequently he argues Deborah was seen as “the Moses of her time” (2015, p. 33).

4. Zucker and Reiss 2015, p. 32.

5. “Deborah,” p. 490.

6.Nielson 2018, pp. 78–79. Both men and women are made in the image of God.

7. Boda (2012, p. 1137) notes that Israel’s success and the Canaanites’ failure are directly related to their relationship to Yahweh.

8. “Wife of Lappidoth” also could be translated “woman of torches” or “woman of flame”; rabbinic tradition notes that Deborah was “a great light in Israel” (“Deborah,” p. 489).

9. “Sisera,” p. 397.

10. Ackerman 1998, pp. 59–61.

11. Haddox 2013, p. 79.

12. Kroll 2006, pp. 34–35.

13. Nielson 2018, p. 85.

14. Branch 2002, p. 134.

15. Meyers 2000, p. 332.

16. Branch 2002, p. 135.

17. Wright 2011, pp. 529–531.

18. “Sisera,” p. 398. Git 57b.

Bibliography

Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel. The Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1998).

Mark J. Boda, “Judges,” in Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, eds., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Revised Edition. Volume 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), pp. 1043–1288.

Robin Gallaher Branch, “Deborah,” in Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans, eds., The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), pp. 134–135.

“Deborah,” The Jewish Encyclopedia. Volume IV (New York: KTAV Publishing House) pp. 489–490.

Susan Haddox, “Gendering Violence and Violating Gender in Judges 4–5,” Conversations with the Biblical World 33, pp. 67–81 (2013).

Bruce Herzberg, “Deborah and Moses,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 38, pp. 15–33 (2013).

Woodrow Kroll, Judges: Ordinary People, Extraordinary God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006).

Carol Meyers, “Deborah,” in D. N. Freedman, ed., Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), pp. 331–332.

Kathleen Nielson, Women & God: Hard Questions. Beautiful Truth (Good Book Company, 2018).

“Sisera,” The Jewish Encyclopedia. Volume XI (New York: KTAV Publishing House), pp. 397–398.

Jacob L. Wright, “Deborah’s War Memorial: The Composition of Judges 4–5 and the Politics of War Commemoration,” Zeitschrift fur die alttestantliche Wissenschaft 123, pp. 516–534 (2011).

David Zucker, and Moshe Reiss, “Subverting Sexuality: Manly Women; Womanly Men in Judges 4–5,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 45, pp. 32–37 (2015).

More by Robin Gallaher Branch in Biblical History Daily

Who Was Phoebe?

Tabitha in the Bible

Ebedmelech—A Remarkable Figure in Jerusalem’s Final Days

Martha: A Remarkable Disciple

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

David and Joab

Why Deborah’s Different

The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not

Hazor and the Battle of Deborah—Is Judges 4 Wrong?

The post Deborah in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Hebrew Bible contains 35 books sorted into three sections: the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), the Nevi’im (the “prophets” consisting of 19 books), and the Ketuvim (the “writings” consisting of 11 books). The Old Testament of most Protestant Bibles has 39 books because the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah are split into two books, whereas each of these appears as a single book in the Hebrew Bible. The latest books of the Hebrew Bible, such as Esther and Ezra-Nehemiah, describe events from the fifth century B.C.E. and would have been written afterward—meaning that the very earliest the Hebrew Bible could have been compiled in its entirety is the fifth century B.C.E., with some scholars suggesting much later dates.

What about a start date? When was the Hebrew Bible first written? Many scholars think the earliest biblical traditions could not have been written before the eighth century B.C.E. However, Matthieu Richelle of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris) questions this assumption. After examining the epigraphic and archaeological evidence of ancient Israel and Judah, he thinks the biblical traditions could have been written down during the ninth or even tenth century B.C.E. In the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Richelle details his reasoning in the article “When Did Literacy Emerge in Judah?”

FREE ebook: The Holy Bible: A Buyer's Guide 42 different Bible versions, addressing content, text, style and religious orientation.

Email(Required)

REQUEST FREE BOOK

There are two main reasons why many scholars think reading and writing were not prevalent in ancient Israel and Judah until the eighth century B.C.E.:

1. There are significantly less alphabetic inscriptions from ancient Israel and Judah dated to the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E. than from later periods.
2. They think Israel and Judah did not reach the “level of development” necessary to produce literary texts until the eighth century B.C.E.

Richelle acknowledges the first point. There is a near absence of alphabetic inscriptions dated to the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E. from ancient Israel and Judah. However, there are some. Further, even though many such texts haven’t survived, it doesn’t mean they never existed. Richelle notes, “Many epigraphists will argue that there is no simple correlation between the quantity of discovered texts and the number of documents that actually existed. We have hundreds of Hebrew seals and bullae from the ninth to sixth centuries, pointing to the existence of hundreds of papyri, and yet only one such papyrus from this period has ever been found, in a cave in the Wadi Muraba‘at, near the Dead Sea.”

He deconstructs the second point altogether. Many scholars think that in order to produce literary texts, a society must first reach a certain “level of development,” which they often connect with state formation. There is no consensus among scholars as to when Israel and Judah developed as nations. Some think this was not until the eighth century B.C.E. Others think earlier—by the tenth or ninth centuries. Still others think later than the eighth century or earlier than the tenth century. There is a variety of opinions to say the least!

FREE ebook: Israel: An Archaeological Journey. Sift through the storied history of ancient Israel.

First Name:*

Last Name:*

Email Address: * * Indicates a required field.

SUBMIT

If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box.

Regardless of when Israel and Judah developed as nations, this doesn’t necessarily affect their ability to produce literature. Richelle clarifies, “The supposed correlation between the ‘level of development’ (assuming it could be assessed) and the existence of literature—has never been proven. In fact, it cannot be proved in the context of ancient Israel since one parameter, the presence of literature, is in large part undetectable by archaeological means. In addition, there are possible counter-examples, like Moab in the ninth century, where the long text on the Mesha Stela was written.”

Richelle then gives two reasons why writing was likely prevalent in Israel and Judah during the early first millennium B.C.E.:

1. They developed a national script in the ninth century.
2. Within this script, they developed cursive features already in the ninth century.

Nimshi’s Jar. This storage jar from Tel Rehov in ancient Israel bears a ninth-century inscription that says, “belonging to Nimshi.” The second and third letters of the inscription (the nun and the mem) display lengthened downstrokes, which are cursive features. When was the Hebrew Bible first written? The use of cursive in texts like this is indicative of an existing literary production and shows that writing was prevalent in ancient Israel by the ninth or even tenth century B.C.E. Thus, biblical texts could have been penned in the early first millennium B.C.E. Drawing: Courtesy Amihai Mazar, Tel Rehov Excavations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The existence of a national script, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, in the early ninth century B.C.E. suggests that they were writing lengthy texts, not just short notes. Further, some inscriptions from Tel Rehov and Megiddo—dated to the tenth or ninth century B.C.E.—have cursive features. Richelle notes, “Such features in the shape of letters develop when scribes write quickly on mediums like papyrus and leather … Since cursive features are probably the result of decades of fast writing, they may point in any case to fast writing already in the tenth century.”

Detail of the inscription on Nimshi’s Jar. Drawing: Courtesy Amihai Mazar, Tel Rehov Excavations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

So when was the Hebrew Bible first written?

Richelle cautions that we should not take the above reasoning as proof that biblical texts were written during the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E., but it certainly shows that they—or other literary works—could have been.

Learn more about literacy in ancient Israel and Judah in Matthieu Richelle’s piece “When Did Literacy Emerge in Judah?”—published in the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review—and in his book “The Bible and Archaeology” (Hendrickson, 2018).

Subscribers: Read the full piece “When Did Literacy Emerge in Judah?” by Matthieu Richelle in the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on April 1, 2020.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Ancient Military Correspondence: Send Wine

Computer Program Learning to Read Paleo-Hebrew Letters

Three Takes on the Oldest Hebrew Inscription

Precursor to Paleo-Hebrew Script Discovered in Jerusalem

Ancient Aramaic Business Records

The Phoenician Alphabet in Archaeology

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

When Did Literacy Emerge in Judah?

The History Behind the Bible

How the Books of the New Testament Were Chosen

The Fluid Bible

The post When Was the Bible Written? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.