Judgeschapter 5
31 verses · BSBJudges book hub →
Key verse
Most blessed among women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
It stands in scene C of the chapter, verses 24 to 31.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The Song of Deborah and Barak, among the oldest poetry in Scripture, replays the victory from heaven's side. Jehovah goes forth out of Seir and the earth trembles and the mountains quake; in the days of Shamgar and Jael the highways were unoccupied and travelers walked by byways, till Deborah arose a mother in Israel. Tribes are named with praise or shame: Zebulun and Naphtali jeoparded their lives, while Reuben stayed for the pipings of the flocks amid great searchings of heart, Dan remained in ships, and Meroz is cursed. The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; Kishon swept him away. Jael is blessed above women, and Sisera's mother waits at the lattice for a chariot that will not come.
Context
History · Samuel · Judges overview
Where the chapter sits
Judges 5 falls in The twelve judges (chapters 3–16). Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson (and Abimelech as anti-judge). Seven oppression-deliverance cycles.
The song of Deborah. ‘Awake, awake, Deborah’, archaic Hebrew victory hymn.
Before it: Incomplete conquest; programmatic cycle, chapters 1–2. After it: Appendix: diagnosis of Israel, chapters 17–21.
The whole shape of Judges→The world behind this chapter
Judges 5The history
This is a victory song, a form used all over the ancient world to fix a battle in memory before anyone could revise it. It is sung, not written as a report, and its Hebrew is archaic enough that even scholars who date most of the Bible late generally agree this poem is very early, which makes it a first-hand witness to the events of chapter 4.
The song describes a countryside that had gone silent. Caravans took the back roads, village life stopped, and the highways were empty, the ordinary picture of a region under raiders, where no farmer walks to market alone and the gates stand shut.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
It also calls the roll, tribe by tribe, and the praise is uneven. Zebulun and Naphtali risked their lives on the heights; Reuben stayed by the sheepfolds debating; Dan lingered by the ships; Asher sat on the coast. Meroz, a town nobody can now locate, is cursed outright for not coming. In a tribal confederation with no king and no standing army, showing up when the summons came was the whole system, and the song is the public record of who did.
The last scene is Sisera's mother at the window counting the hours, and her ladies reassuring her that the delay must mean plunder is being divided, a girl or two for every man, dyed cloth for the queen. It is the mercy of the poem to let the enemy be a mother, and its severity to let her be wrong.
What it meant to them
The first hearers were the men in the ranks and the villages that had sent them. To hear your tribe named among the brave, or named among the absent, in a song everyone would sing for generations, was a real reckoning.
And the song credits the victory to the LORD marching out from Seir with the earth shaking and the clouds pouring, not to Barak's tactics. The rain that mired the chariots was the hand of God, and Israel sang it that way from the first day.
Sources cited
- Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
A. The song of Deborah: the mountains quaked
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.Chapter 4 tells the battle in prose and chapter 5 sings it, which is the shape Exodus 14 and 15 already used for the Red Sea. Deborah is the singer and Barak sings with her, and Judges 4:4 had already called her a prophetess, so the woman who gave the order composes the record of it. Verse 3 turns outward and addresses kings and princes rather than Israel, which puts the song in the same class as the psalms that summon the nations to listen.
Judges 5:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Judges 5:1
“Deborah, as “a prophetess,” both composed and sang this noble ode, which, for poetic spirit and lyric fire, is not surpassed by any of the sacred songs in the Bible. And, as Miriam took up the first verse of the song of Moses Exo 15:21, and sang it as an antiphony, so Barak, with the chorus of men, answered the song of Deborah by singing Jdg 5:2, which is also exactly suited for an antiphon, summing up as it does the subject matter of the whole ode. Compare David’s example 2Sa 6:15.”
Judges 5:1
“Then sang Deborah and Barak . . . on that day--This noble triumphal ode was evidently the composition of Deborah herself. The meaning is obscurely seen in our version; it has been better rendered thus, "Praise ye Jehovah; for the free are freed in Israel--the people have willingly offered themselves" [ROBINSON].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Judges 5:2, 1 voice
Judges 5:2
“Render “For the leading of the leaders in Israel (the princes), for the willingness of the people (to follow them) bless ye the Lord.” See Deu 32:42 note, and compare Jdg 5:9 and Jdg 5:13, where the nobles and the people are again contrasted.”
Judges 5:3, 1 voice
Judges 5:3
Hear, O kings. She names them "kings" who are called together to hear the word of God. You should rejoice, people of God, at this emblem of your nobility. It is not as just any people that you are called to hear the word of God, but as a king, for to you it was said, "You are a royal, priestly race, a people for God's possession." Because you are kings, therefore, Christ our Lord is rightly called the "King of kings and the Lord of lords."
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· HOMILIES ON JUDGES 6.3patristic
2. (vv. 4-5)
a.God is described coming up from the south country rather than down from the sky, out of Seir and the field of Edom, and the same march appears at Deuteronomy 33:2, Psalm 68:7-8 and Habakkuk 3:3. Sinai is named in verse 5, so the song reaches back past Joshua to the mountain itself and treats this battle as the same God on the same road. The weather in these two verses is doing work later in the poem, since dropping heavens and clouds of water end at a flooded river in verse 21.
Judges 5:4, 1 voice
Judges 5:4
“When thou wentest out of Seir - Here is an allusion to the giving of the law, and the manifestation of God’s power and glory at that time; and as this was the most signal display of his majesty and mercy in behalf of their forefathers, Deborah very properly begins her song with a commemoration of this transaction.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:5, 1 voice
Judges 5:5
“Sinai - She slides into the mention of a more ancient appearance of God for his people in Sinai; it being usual in scripture repetitions of former actions, to put divers together in a narrow compass.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3. (vv. 6-8)
a.In the days of Shamgar: Shamgar is the man of Judges 3:31 who killed six hundred Philistines with an ox goad, and Jael is named here before the song tells what she did. The conditions given are the ones a trader would notice first, main roads left empty, travellers keeping to side tracks, and the open villages abandoned for walled towns. Verse 8 sets cause beside effect, new gods chosen and then war in the gates, and asks whether a shield or a spear was to be seen among forty thousand, a state of disarmament close to what 1 Samuel 13:19-22 later describes under the Philistines.
Judges 5:6, 1 voice
Judges 5:6
“Whereas in times when there was some order and government the travellers might be safe in the open roads, and the robbers were forced to lurk in the by-ways, no, on the contrary, the robbers insulted on the open roads without check, and the honest travellers were obliged to sculk and walk through by-ways, in continual frights.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Judges 5:7, 2 voices
Judges 5:7
“Render the word “villages” (here and in Jdg 5:11) judgment, rule, or judges, rulers. The sense is “The princes (or magistrates) ceased in Israel,” i. e. there was no one to do justice in the gate, or defend men from their oppressors.”
Judges 5:7
“Ceased - The people forsook all their unfortified towns, not being able to protect them from military insolence. A mother - That is, to be to them as a mother, to instruct, and rule, and protect them, which duties a mother owes to her children.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Judges 5:8, 1 voice
Judges 5:8
“Was there a shield - There was not, the meaning is not, that all the Israelites had no arms, but, either they had but few arms among them, being many thousands of them disarmed by the Canaanites and Philistines, or that they generally neglected the use of arms, as being without all hope of recovering their liberty.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (vv. 9-11)
a.The willing offering of verse 2 returns at verse 9, and it is the thing the song praises rather than the size of the victory. Verse 10 names two classes and tells both to speak, the men who ride white asses and sit in judgment, and the men who walk the road on foot. Verse 11 appoints the place for the telling, the watering places where women and herdsmen met every day, so the song is built to be rehearsed at the well until the children of the villages know it by heart.
Judges 5:10, 2 voices
Judges 5:10
“Ye that ride on white asses - Perhaps אתנות צחרות athonoth tsechoroth should be rendered sleek or well-fed asses; rendered asinos nitentes, shining asses, by the Vulgate. Ye that sit in judgment - ישבי על מדין yoshebey al middin; some have rendered this, ye who dwell in Middin. This was a place in the tribe of Judah, and is mentioned Jos 15:61. And walk by the way - Persons who go from place to place for the purposes of traffic.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:10
Speak--that is, join in this song of praise. white asses--Those which are purely white are highly prized, and being costly, are possessed only by the wealthy and great. Ye that sit in judgment--has been rendered, "ye that repose on tapestries."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Judges 5:11, 1 voice
Judges 5:11
“The wells which are at a little distance from towns in the East, are, in unsettled times, places of danger. But in peace they are scenes of pleasant and joyous resort.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
B. Who came to the fight, and who stayed by the sheepfolds
1. (vv. 12-13)
a.The song calls on itself to wake, four imperatives inside one verse, and then turns and calls Barak by his father's name. Lead thy captivity captive is the phrase Psalm 68:18 uses of God ascending on high, and Paul quotes that psalm of Christ at Ephesians 4:8. Verse 13 says the remnant was given dominion over the nobles, so the force that won was the smaller party and the poem states it rather than hiding it.
Judges 5:12, 1 voice
Judges 5:12
“Awake - Stir up thyself and all that is within thee, to admire and praise the Lord. This work needs and well deserves the utmost liveliness and vigour of soul. Lead captivity captive - How could this be done, when there was none of them left? chap. iv, 16.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Judges 5:13, 1 voice
Judges 5:13
“This verse is otherwise rendered: “then a remnant of the nobles came down; the people of the Lord came down for me against the mighty.” The following verses mention in detail who this “remnant” were.”
2. (vv. 14-15)
a.The tribes that came are called by old family names rather than the standard list, so Machir stands for Manasseh as it does at Genesis 50:23 and Numbers 32:39. Ephraim is set against Amalek, whose people held hill country inside Ephraim according to Judges 12:15, and Zebulun sends men that handle the pen of the writer, read either as the officers who mustered troops or as men carrying a marshal's staff. Barak is sent on foot into the valley at verse 15, and the valley is exactly where the nine hundred chariots of iron of 4:13 had the advantage.
Judges 5:14, 2 voices
Judges 5:14
“Out of Ephraim - a root of them - Deborah probably means that out of Ephraim and Benjamin came eminent warriors. Joshua, who was of the tribe of Ephraim, routed the Amalekites a short time after the Israelites came out of Egypt, Exo 17:10. Ehud, who was of the tribe of Benjamin, slew Eglon, and defeated the Moabites, the friends and allies of the Ammonites and Amalekites. Machir, in the land of Gilead, produced eminent warriors; and Zebulun produced eminent statesmen, and men of literature.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:14
“Writer - That is, even the Scribes, who gave themselves to study and writing, whereby they were exempted from military service, did voluntarily enter into this service. With Deborah - Ready to assist her. Issachar - Hebrew. and Issachar, that is, the tribe or people of Issachar, following the counsel and example of their princes.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Judges 5:15, 1 voice
Judges 5:15
“Even Issachar ... - i. e. “and, as well as Issachar, Barak also with the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, rushed down on foot from Mount Tabor into the valley to attack the iron chariots of Sisera.” For the divisions - Better: “among the brooks.” Reuben ought to have followed in this catalogue of patriots, but with that abruptness for which this poem is so conspicuous, Deborah adverts to his absence instead.”
3. (vv. 16-17)
a.Four groups stayed away and each is named with the thing that held it, Reuben with the sheepfolds and the bleating of the flocks, Gilead beyond Jordan, Dan with ships, Asher on the sea shore. The divisions of Reuben draw the sharpest line in the poem, repeated at the close of verse 15 and again at the close of verse 16, great thoughts of heart and great searchings of heart, which is long deliberation that produced no men. Judah, Simeon and Levi appear nowhere in the roll, praised or blamed, and the song gives no reason for their absence.
Judges 5:16, 1 voice
Judges 5:16
“Great searchings - (thoughts, Jdg 5:15) of heart Deborah means to say that at first the Reubenites made magnanimous resolutions to help their brethren against Jabin. But they stayed at home, and let the opportunity slip.”
Judges 5:17, 1 voice
Judges 5:17
“The land of Gilead, on the east of Jordan, was divided between Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, who are both comprehended here. Joppa was in the territory of Dan Jos 19:46, and was in later times the sea-port for Jerusalem. His breaches - Rather havens; i. e. the creeks and bays and river-months by which their coast was broken. Jos 19:29.”
4. (vv. 18-19)
a.Zebulun and Naphtali are the two tribes Barak was ordered to call at 4:6 and did call at 4:10, and they are the two the song says staked their lives. The kings of Canaan fought at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo, and the clause that they took no gain of money means they carried off no plunder from a battle they expected to win. The plain of Megiddo is the ground a long line of writers connect with the name at Revelation 16:16, and that identification belongs to them rather than to the verse itself.
Judges 5:18, 1 voice
Judges 5:18
“Zebulun and Naphtali - jeoparded their lives - The original is very emphatic, חרף נפשו למות chereph naphsho lamuth, they desolated their lives to death - they were determined to conquer or die, and therefore plunged into the thickest of the battle. The word jeoparded is a silly French term, and comes from the exclamation of a disappointed gamester: Jeu perdu! The game is lost; or J’ai perdue! I have lost.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:19, 2 voices
Judges 5:19
“The Canaanite hosts are now described, led to battle by their numerous kings. (Compare Jos 12:21.) They took no gain of money - i. e. either they got no booty, as they expected, or, they did not fight for plunder, but for life and victory (compare Jdg 4:16 and Jdg 5:30).”
Judges 5:19
“It is said of these kings that they took no gain of money, they were not mercenary troops hired into the service of Jabin (such often fail in an extremity), but they were volunteers and hearty in the cause against Israel: they desired not the riches of silver, so the Chaldee, but only the satisfaction of helping to ruin Israel.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
5. (vv. 20-21)
a.Chapter 4 says only that the Lord discomfited Sisera at 4:15, and it never mentions a river. The song supplies what the prose left out, that they fought from heaven and that the Kishon swept the army away. Readings of the line are old and are held by serious men, that a storm broke over the plain as the hailstones fell at Joshua 10:11, that the host of heaven is meant as at 2 Kings 6:17, or that the stars name the powers ranged behind the battle. Taken together the two chapters account for what became of nine hundred chariots of iron in flat country that suited them, because a river in flood takes wheels out of the reckoning.
Judges 5:20, 2 voices
Judges 5:20
“They fought from heaven - The angels of God came to the assistance of Israel: and the stars in their orbits fought against Sisera; probably some thunder storm, or great inundation from the river Kishon, took place at that time, which in poetic language was attributed to the stars.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:20
“The Chaldee reads it, from heaven, from the place where the stars go forth, war was waged against Sisera, that is, the power of the God of heaven was engaged against him, making use of the ministration of the angels of heaven.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Judges 5:21, 2 voices
Judges 5:21
“The word translated ancient occurs only here. The phrase probably means that Kishon was celebrated from ancient times on account of the battles fought on its banks.”
Judges 5:21
“Ordinarily, it was but a shallow river, and, being in their own country, we may suppose they well knew its fords and safest passages, and yet now, probably by the great rain that fell, it was so swollen, and the stream so deep and strong, that those who attempted to pass it were drowned, being feeble and faint, and unable to make their way through it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
6. (vv. 22-23)
a.Horsehoofs broken by their own prancing is what a chariot line looks like from the ground once it is mired and the teams begin to panic. The curse of Meroz is spoken by the angel of the Lord, the same speaker who brought the charge at 2:1, and it falls on a town of Israel for staying home rather than on Canaan for fighting. Meroz occurs nowhere else in Scripture and its site has never been fixed, so the one place the song curses by name is the one place in it a reader cannot find on a map.
Judges 5:22, 2 voices
Judges 5:22
“Then were the horsehoofs broken - In very ancient times horses were not shod; nor are they to the present day in several parts of the East. Sisera had iron chariots when his hosts were routed; the horses that drew these, being strongly urged on by those who drove them, had their hoofs broken by the roughness of the roads; in consequence of which they became lame, and could not carry off their riders. This is marked as one cause of their disaster.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:22
“Then were the horse hoofs broken by the means of the prancings--Anciently, as in many parts of the East still, horses were not shod. The breaking of the hoofs denotes the hot haste and heavy irregular tramp of the routed foe.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Judges 5:23, 2 voices
Judges 5:23
“The inhabitants of Meroz (a village 12 miles from Samaria) hung back, and gave no help in the day of battle, although it was Yahweh who called them. Hence, the curse pronounced by the Angel of the Lord.”
Judges 5:23
“This city of Meroz seems to have been at this time a considerable place, since something great was expected from it; but probably, after the angel of the Lord had pronounced this curse upon it, it dwindled, and, like the fig-tree which Christ cursed, withered away, so that we never read of it after this in scripture.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. Blessed above women, and a mother at the lattice
1. (vv. 24-25)
a.The blessing on Jael runs close to the words spoken of Mary at Luke 1:42, and Matthew Henry is among the writers who set the two lines side by side. She is a Kenite, outside Israel by descent from the father in law of Moses according to 4:11, and the song puts its highest blessing on a foreign woman living in a tent. The prose at 4:19 has Sisera ask for water and Jael open a bottle of milk, and the song keeps that exchange and adds the lordly dish.
Judges 5:24, 1 voice
Judges 5:24
“Blessed above women shall Jael - be - She shall be highly celebrated as a most heroic woman; all the Israelitish women shall glory in her. I do not understand these words as expressive of the Divine approbation towards Jael. See the observations at the end of Jdg 4:24 (note). The word bless, both in Hebrew and Greek, often signifies to praise, to speak well of, to celebrate. This is most probably its sense here.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:25, 2 voices
Judges 5:25
“Butter - Rather curdled milk, probably a fermented and intoxicating drink. All these marks of respect and friendship would lull Sisera into security.”
Judges 5:25
“No (say others), it was milk that had the butter still in it; we call it cream. Whichsoever it was, it was probably the best her house afforded; and, to set it off, she brought it in a lordly dish, such as she called so, the finest she had, and better than she ordinarily used at her own table.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 26-27)
a.The song says she smote off his head and struck through his temples, while 4:21 says she drove the nail through his temples into the ground while he slept. Both accounts stand in the canon and neither corrects the other, the poem heightening the blow where the prose gives the mechanics of it. Verse 27 slows the whole song to one body going down, bowed and fell and lay down, said three times over, and it is the last thing Scripture says of Sisera. The crushed head under a woman's hand is read back to Genesis 3:15 by named writers, and the New Testament makes no such link, so it stands on their authority and on no text.
Judges 5:26, 1 voice
Judges 5:26
“We read it she smote off his head, probably with his own sword, which, now that his head was nailed through, she durst take from his side, but not before, for fear of waking him. But because there was no occasion for cutting off his head, nor was it mentioned in the history, many think it should be read, she struck through his head.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Judges 5:27, 1 voice
Judges 5:27
“At her feet he bowed - בין רגליה bein ragleyha, “between her feet.” After having stunned him she probably sat down, for the greater convenience of driving the nail through his temples. He bowed - he fell - He probably made some struggles after he received the blow on the head, but could not recover his feet. Aeschylus represents Agamemnon rising, staggering, and finally falling, under the blows of Clytemnestra. - Agam. v. 1384.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (vv. 28-30)
a.The song ends the enemy's side indoors, with a woman at a window counting the minutes and answering her own question. Her ladies reply with the arithmetic of plunder, a damsel or two for every man and dyed needlework for Sisera, and the Hebrew word behind damsel is a coarse one for the women taken. Deborah had called herself a mother in Israel at verse 7, and the poem closes on a second mother, waiting for a son who is already lying in Jael's tent.
Judges 5:28, 2 voices
Judges 5:28
“Cried through the lattice - This is very natural: in the women’s apartments in the East the windows are latticed, to prevent them from sending or receiving letters, etc. The latticing is the effect of the jealousy which universally prevails in those countries. Why is his chariot so long in coming? - Literally, Why is his chariot ashamed to come?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 5:28
“In these verses a sudden transition is made to the mother of the Canaanite general, and a striking picture is drawn of a mind agitated between hope and fear--impatient of delay, yet anticipating the news of victory and the rewards of rich booty. the lattice--a lattice window, common to the houses in warm countries for the circulation of air.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Judges 5:30, 1 voice
Judges 5:30
“Render the latter part of the verse “a booty of dyed garments for Sisera, a booty of dyed garments and of party-colored cloth, a dyed garment and two party-colored clothes for the necks of the booty,” the spoil or booty being either captive damsels, or captive cattle on whose necks these clothes are to be placed (either as ornament or as a burden; compare Jdg 8:21, Jdg 8:26). But possibly “the necks of the booty” may mean the backs or shoulders (of men or beasts) laden with booty.”
4. (v. 31)
a.The closing line asks that enemies perish and that those who love God go out like the sun in its strength, which Matthew 13:43 takes up of the righteous shining in the kingdom of their Father. Then the land had rest forty years, and that formula has now fallen three times in the book, at 3:11, 3:30 and here. It never appears again. Everything after Deborah records deliverance without rest, and the loss shows in the vocabulary before it shows in the story.
Judges 5:31, 1 voice
Judges 5:31
“A most striking conclusion, in which the spiritual truth, which the whole narrative is intended to convey, comes out. The enemies of the Lord will perish like the host of Sisera, and all their hopes will end, like those of Sisera’s mother, in bitter disappointment and shame; but all that love our Lord Jesus Christ shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Compare Mat 13:43; Dan 12:3.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Judges 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth; Matthew Henry and Origen of Alexandria, HOMILIES ON JUDGES 6.3.
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