The Song of Deborah

⁵Then Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying:² ‘When locks are long in Israel,   when the people offer themselves willingly—   bless the ^Lord! ³ ‘Hear, O kings; give ear, O princes;   to the ^Lord I will sing,   I will make melody to the ^Lord, the God of Israel. ⁴ ‘^Lord, when you went out from Seir,   when you marched from the region of Edom,the earth trembled,   and the heavens poured,   the clouds indeed poured water.⁵ The mountains quaked before the ^Lord, the One of Sinai,   before the ^Lord, the God of Israel. ⁶ ‘In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,   in the days of Jael, caravans ceased   and travellers kept to the byways.⁷ The peasantry prospered in Israel,   they grew fat on plunder,because you arose, Deborah,   arose as a mother in Israel.²⁴ ‘Most blessed of women be Jael,   the wife of Heber the Kenite,   of tent-dwelling women most blessed.²⁵ He asked water and she gave him milk,   she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.²⁶ She 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.²⁷ He sank, he fell,   he lay still at her feet;at her feet he sank, he fell;   where he sank, there he fell dead. ³¹ ‘So perish all your enemies, O ^Lord!   But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might.’ And the land had rest for forty years.

Deborah and Barak

⁴The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the ^Lord, after Ehud died.²So the ^Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim.³Then the Israelites cried out to the ^Lord for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly for twenty years. ⁴ At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel.⁵She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgement.⁶She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, ‘The ^Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, “Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun.⁷I 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.” ’⁸Barak said to her, ‘If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.’⁹And she said, ‘I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the ^Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.’ Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.¹⁰Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and ten thousand warriors went up behind him; and Deborah went up with him. ¹² When Sisera was told that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor,¹³Sisera called out all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the troops who were with him, from Harosheth-ha-goiim to the Wadi Kishon.¹⁴Then Deborah said to Barak, ‘Up! For this is the day on which the ^Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The ^Lord is indeed going out before you.’ So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand warriors following him.¹⁵And the ^Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and all his army into a panic before Barak; Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot,¹⁶while Barak pursued the chariots and the army to Harosheth-ha-goiim. All the army of Sisera fell by the sword; no one was left.