It’s No Stairway To Heaven

Judges Chapter 5

We come to another song. This time it’s the Song of Deborah, the judge from the previous chapter. It’s interesting to me that the only female judge and one of only a handful of women in this entire book has two full chapters about her.

This ballad is one of the oldest extant pieces of Hebrew writing; it is difficult in many places. As a literary specimen it has more in common with the Late Bronze Age Syrian mythic poetry than with Hebrew poetry from the Iron Age.

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 396). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

I was going to start off at the first line, “When locks are long in Israel…,” with a joke about Samson who come up later in the chapter, but this verse does refer to the long hair of the Nazirite warriors. So, that would have been egg on my face.

This song tells of the battle that was fought in the previous chapter. The tribes that were near to the battle joined in, but many others did not, such as Reuben, Gilead, Asher, and Dan. There is much praise for Jael:

²⁴“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent‐dwelling women most blessed.
²⁵He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
²⁶She put her hand to the tent peg  
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 370). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

OK, for all of my criticism of the writing in this book, the following verse is very well written:

²⁸“Out of the window she peered,
the mother of Sisera gazed through the lattice:
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?’…”

Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (p. 371). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

This is one of only a few verses so far that really makes someone feel human, and not just a cardboard cutout character from a morality play. The verses following are  “Her wisest ladies” answering that maybe they’re finding and dividing up the spoils of war. Somehow, I think the mother of Sisera knows the truth.

Apologies for the number of quoted passages here, but this song is far more interesting than the Song Of Moses which was a roll call of the tribes. This song added context to the previous chapter for which I am thankful.