Judges4chapter 4

Judges 4:1-3

This is the fourth of the seven times the book says it, at 2:11, 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 6:1, 10:6 and 13:1. The oppressor reigns in Hazor, the city Joshua 11:10-11 says Joshua took and burnt with fire, and readers differ over whether Jabin is a throne name carried by a later king or a house rebuilt on the old ground, with Adam Clarke taking the second man for a descendant of the first. Nine hundred chariots of iron answers Judges 1:19, where Judah could not drive out the valley because the inhabitants had chariots of iron, and the phrase falls four times in the whole Bible, at Joshua 17:16, Judges 1:19, and twice in this chapter. The cry of verse 3 is the third of six in the book, after 3:9 and 3:15.

Judges 4:4-5

Deborah, a prophetess, the wife: Deborah is the second woman in Scripture called a prophetess, after Miriam at Exodus 15:20, and like Miriam she sings the victory in the chapter that follows. She is the one judge in the book shown doing what the word ordinarily means, since the people come up to her for judgment before any deliverer is raised. Her palm stands between Ramah and Bethel in mount Ephraim, which is the hill country in the middle of the land, while the man she summons and the war she sends him to are both far north. Genesis 35:8 buries another Deborah, the nurse of Rebekah, under an oak at that same Bethel.

Judges 4:6-7

Deborah gives Barak no new order and instead asks whether he already has one, hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, so the word had reached him and had not moved him. The two tribes called are Naphtali and Zebulun, and Isaiah 9:1 names the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali as the country first afflicted, which Matthew 4:15 quotes as Zabulon and Nephthalim of the ground where Christ began to preach. Tabor is a hill and the Kishon is a riverbed, and the plan puts the footmen on the high ground and draws the chariots down to the low.

Judges 4:8-9

Barak will go only if she goes, and the readings of that condition are old and they differ. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take the request for an eastern commander carrying what he most trusts into the field, while Albert Barnes reads a weakness of faith at the start and sets Barak beside Gideon, Moses and Peter, who each asked for a sign. Hebrews 11:32 names Barak in the roll of faith and says nothing of the condition. Deborah grants it and names the cost, that the honour of the day goes to a woman, and her verb is sell, the same word verse 2 used when the Lord sold Israel into the hand of Jabin.

Judges 4:10-11

The ten thousand go up at his feet, which is footmen against nine hundred chariots on ground the chariots own. Heber is planted before he is needed, and the narrator stops the march to pitch one tent by Kedesh. He is a Kenite of the children of Hobab, the father in law of Moses, so the household that ends this war descends from the kin who came into the land with Judah at Judges 1:16 and then moved north alone.

Judges 4:12-13

Sisera hears and brings every chariot he has down from Harosheth to the Kishon, which puts iron wheels into a riverbed at the foot of Tabor. The prose account gives no reason for what becomes of them, and the song in chapter 5 gives two: 5:20 says the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and 5:21 says the river of Kishon swept them away. Both accounts of the one battle stand in the book, the narrative keeping the mechanism out of sight while the poem names it.

Judges 4:14-16

Deborah gives the order as a report rather than a promise, this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand, with the verb already past. The word discomfited at verse 15 falls nine times in the King James Bible, and the Lord is its subject at Joshua 10:10 and 1 Samuel 7:10, where great stones from heaven and a great thunder do the work. Barak goes down off the hill to meet chariots on the flat, which is the ground Judah could not hold at 1:19, and verse 16 says there was not a man left. The man with nine hundred chariots finishes the day on foot.

Judges 4:17-18

to the tent of Jael: The peace between Jabin and the house of Heber is stated before Sisera reaches the tent, so the reader is told why he runs to that door. Adam Clarke notes that a man would not enter the women's quarters without leave, which made it the one place a pursuer would pass by. Jael goes out to meet him, tells him to fear not, and covers him with a mantle, which is what a host does for a guest.

Judges 4:19-21

a little water to drink: He asks for water and is given milk, which 5:25 tells again as butter in a lordly dish, and Adam Clarke observes that giving more than was asked increased his confidence. The nail and the hammer are the gear of the tent, and pitching and striking a tent was women's work in a nomad camp, so the weapon is what was already in her hand. Serious readers stand apart on the act itself: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call the taking of his life murder, Matthew Henry holds that she acted under a divine impulse as Ehud did in the chapter before, and Albert Barnes weighs the treachery of that age against her faith in Israel's right and gives her the praise he thinks due. Judges 5:24 blesses her above women in the tent, and this chapter reports the deed and passes no sentence on it.

Judges 4:22-24

Barak arrives to be shown the man he came for, and the word of verse 9 is discharged in front of him. Albert Barnes holds that Barak would have taken the woman of that prophecy for Deborah, and that the saying was explained only by its fulfilment. Verse 23 makes God the subject of the victory, and verses 23 and 24 name Jabin three times in two sentences as the twenty years of verse 3 are worked off. The formula the land had rest is withheld until 5:31, where it falls for the third and last time in the book and never returns.