Deborah Under the Palm Tree

After Joshua died, and after the old men who remembered him died too, the children of Israel began to forget. They went after the gods of the people around them, and they stopped listening to the Lord. And when they did, things went badly for them, and enemies came and took their fields and their food. But every time they cried out to God, God sent somebody to save them. Those helpers were called judges. In those days a king named Jabin was crushing Israel. The commander of his army was called Sisera, and he had nine hundred chariots made of iron, and for twenty years he treated the people cruelly, until they cried out to the Lord.

Now the one who judged Israel in those days was a woman. Her name was Deborah, and she was a prophetess. She used to sit under a palm tree up in the hill country, and the children of Israel would come to her there and she would settle their arguments and tell them what God said. And Deborah sent for a man named Barak, and said to him, “Has the Lord, the God of Israel, not told you what to do? Go to Mount Tabor and take ten thousand men with you. And I will bring Sisera out to you at the brook Kishon, with his chariots and all his crowds of men — and I will give him into your hands.” And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And Deborah said, “I will certainly go with you. But then the honor of this day will not be yours — because the Lord is going to hand Sisera over to a woman.” And she got up and went with him.

So Barak called out ten thousand men, and they climbed up Mount Tabor, and Deborah went up with them. And word came to Sisera that Barak was on the mountain. So he gathered every one of his nine hundred iron chariots, and all his men, and brought them down to the brook Kishon at the bottom of the valley. And Deborah said to Barak, “Get up! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The Lord himself goes out ahead of you.” And Barak came charging down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men behind him. And the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots into confusion, and his whole army broke and ran. Sisera himself jumped down from his chariot and ran away on foot. He ran until he came to the tent of a woman named Jael, and she came out and said, “Turn in here, my lord. Turn in to me. Do not be afraid.” So he went in, and she covered him with a blanket, and he asked for water and she gave him milk to drink, and he lay down, worn out, and slept. And while he slept Jael took a tent peg and a hammer — the tools she used every day, because putting up the tent was a woman’s work — and she drove the peg through the side of his head into the ground, and he died. It is what war was like. And it happened just as Deborah had said it would: the honor of that day did not go to Barak. It went to a woman. And so God broke the power of King Jabin before the children of Israel; and Deborah and Barak sang a great song about it, and the land was quiet again.