Chapter 4
After Ehud died, the people go wrong again. No surprise there really. This time, Jabin, king of Canaan conquers them. He oppresses them for 20 years.
2024 - This verse:
2 And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. [Jdg 4:2 ESV]
And this one...
1 When Jabin, king of Hazor, heard of this, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, [Jos 11:1 ESV]
1 When Jabin, king of Hazor, heard of this, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, ... 10 And Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword, for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms. 11 And they struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire. [Jos 11:1, 10-11 ESV]
So Joshua had already wiped this place out once before. And yet here we are, with a new king and an old name, and the Canaanites who had not been wiped out resettling a city that had previously been razed. By leaving Canaanites in the land, Israel had in fact allowed this to happen to them. They still receive the consequences of their failure to do as God had told them.
2024 - But what would that have entailed? Israel broke the military might of Canaan. They could not resist. So what should Israel have done? Should they have gone door to door in the little outlying villages and killed man, woman and child and burned houses and farms and livestock? Should they have summarily dispatched anyone they found who was not Israeli? Or...just exiled them? Just pushed them out of the land God gave to Israel and set up border control to keep foreigners out? We might find this second idea more palatable. But we'd need a verse or two to place the idea within God's instructions.
We must believe that all the horror and atrocity and war and inhumanity in this part of the world since the days of Joshua would have been avoided had the short term horror ordered by God been carried out faithfully and completely. We have to remember that God didn't just decide that Israel was such a wonderful nation that they ought to have their own country. God made promises to Abraham, and then God used Israel to punish the inhabitants of the promised land, who greatly deserved to be punished for the things they were doing and attributing to the idols they worshiped. They were killing their own children, they had temple prostitution - male and female, they had orgies under the stars in every high place, a total lack of morality and not one single follower of God. They were so evil that God decided to cleanse the earth by wiping them out...just as he later uses Assyria, Babylon, and I have to believe Rome, and at a stretch Hitler to chastise the Jews for their continuing stubbornness in turning back to God. The good would have outweighed the bad in the scales of history had Israel done as they were commanded, and we must believe, we must trust that God had the wisdom and the foresight to determine the "better" way, horrible as the short term results appear to us with our short term way of looking at things.
At this time, Deborah is judging Israel.
2021 - So a female judge, and that is not even mentioned as an anomaly. Can we say from this that God sometimes makes exceptions to the roles created for men and women, or do we say that when men shirk their responsibilities, God will appoint a qualified woman, or do we say that the fact that a woman was in charge is an indication of just how far Israel had drifted from God's commands?
She sends for Barak. She knows, and reminds him, that God has already told him to raise an army, and that He will deliver the king of Canaan to him. But Barak won't go unless Deborah does. So she agrees to go, but says that because of his requirement, a woman will get the glory from the defeat of Jabin, rather than Barak. The man didn't do what a man should do, so a woman got all the credit. This is another place in the Bible where women were honored far above what the culture of the time was doing.
2024 - This verse:
6 She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, "Has not the LORD, the God of Israel, commanded you, 'Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. [Jdg 4:6 ESV].
This certainly appears to be a prophecy. She is repeating the commandment of the Lord, and as the passage goes on, she tells Barak how things are going to go. This is the only recorded prophecy of Deborah that we have, but the fact that she was already called "Prophetess" implies that there were others - enough to earn her this title.
Sure enough, Sisera - the commander of Jabin's armies - and his 900 iron chariots come out to battle. God gives Barak the victory, all of Sisera's men are killed, but Sisera flees the field and goes back to his home town.
Sisera hides in the tent of Moses father-in-laws descendants. A woman named Jael makes Sisera comfortable and agrees to keep watch while he sleeps. Once he's nice and resting, she drives a tent peg though his temple and all the way into the ground below. Just to be sure. Like you do.