Deborah, Barak and Jael

Now the Israelites took no warning from their earlier misfortunes to mend their ways. They neither worshiped God nor submitted to the laws, and so they were brought into slavery by Jabin, king of the Canaanites — and that before they had had even a short breathing space after their slavery under the Moabites. This Jabin came from Hazor, a city that lay above Lake Semechonitis, and he maintained an army of three hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand horsemen, and had three thousand chariots. Sisera was commander of his whole army and stood first in the king’s favor. He beat the Israelites so badly when they fought him that he ordered them to pay tribute. [a]

So they went on under that hardship for twenty years, not wise enough on their own to learn from their misfortunes. By this God also meant to subdue all the more their stubbornness and ingratitude toward him. When at last they repented, and were wise enough to learn that their calamities came from their contempt for the laws, they begged Deborah, a prophetess among them (in the Hebrew tongue the name means “a bee”), to pray to God to take pity on them and not to abandon them, now that they were ruined by the Canaanites. So God granted them deliverance and chose them a general, Barak, a man of the tribe of Naphtali. Barak in the Hebrew tongue means “lightning.”

So Deborah sent for Barak and told him to pick ten thousand young men to go against the enemy, because God had said that number was enough and had promised them victory. But when Barak said he would not be general unless she went as general with him, she was indignant at what he said: “Barak, you are handing over to a woman the rank God has given you! I, for my part, do not refuse it.” So they gathered ten thousand men and camped at Mount Tabor. There, at the king’s command, Sisera met them and pitched his camp not far from the enemy. At this the Israelites, and Barak himself, were so terrified at the size of the enemy’s army that they had decided to march away — had not Deborah held them back and ordered them to fight the enemy that very day, for they would conquer them, and God would help them. [c]

So the battle began. When they had come to close quarters, a great storm came down from the sky, with heavy rain and hail. The wind drove the rain into the faces of the Canaanites and so blinded them that their arrows and slings were of no use to them, and the cold would not let the soldiers use their swords. The storm did not trouble the Israelites nearly so much, because it was at their backs. They also took such courage from the sense that God was helping them that they fell on the very center of the enemy and killed a great number of them. Some fell at the hands of the Israelites, some under their own horses, which had been thrown into disorder, and not a few were killed by their own chariots. [d]

At last Sisera, as soon as he saw the rout begin, leaped down from his chariot, fled, and came to a woman named Jael, a Kenite, who took him in when he asked to be hidden. When he asked for something to drink, she gave him soured milk, and he drank so much of it that he fell asleep. While he slept, Jael took an iron nail and with a hammer drove it through his mouth and jaw into the floor; and when Barak and his men arrived a little later, she showed them Sisera nailed to the ground. So this victory was won by a woman, as Deborah had foretold. Barak also fought Jabin at Hazor, and when he met him he killed him. When the general had fallen, Barak razed the city to its foundations, and he was commander of the Israelites for forty years.