Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Song of Deborah
Judges 5:1-12
1 Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying, · WEB
One of the oldest poems in Scripture opens by blessing God for volunteers, and its picture of the era is roads too dangerous to use.
Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day Judges 5:1.
The same events are now told a second time, in verse. Scripture does this at its great deliverances — the sea has a narrative and then a song Exodus 14:1–31 Exodus 15:1–18 — and the song is not decoration; it supplies information the prose omitted, including the flooded river and the tribes that stayed away.
Because the leaders took the lead in Israel, because the people offered themselves willingly, be blessed, Yahweh! Judges 5:2.
The first note is volunteering, and it will become the song's measure of everybody. In a confederation with no machinery to compel anyone Judges 5:14–18, willingness was the only recruitment there was — and the blessing for it goes to God rather than to the volunteers.
Yahweh, when you went out of Seir, when you marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the sky also dropped Judges 5:4.
The song reaches back past the battle to Sinai Judges 5:5, describing God's coming in the language of storm — trembling earth, water out of the sky, mountains quaking. That is not a digression. The battle was won by weather Judges 5:20–21, and the poem places it in a long series of the same God arriving the same way Psalms 68:7–8 Habakkuk 3:3–6.
In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied. The travelers walked through byways Judges 5:6.
The most vivid picture of the period in the book, and it is about roads. Main routes had become unsafe, so traffic moved on back paths; village life had contracted to what could be defended. The rulers ceased in Israel Judges 5:7 — administration had simply stopped.
They chose new gods. Then war was in the gates. Was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? Judges 5:8.
The song's diagnosis, and the sequence is the book's whole argument compressed: they chose other gods, and then the fighting reached their own gates. The rhetorical question about shields and spears reports a disarmed population — the same condition Israel is in later under Philistine control, when a monopoly on metalwork left the country without weapons 1 Samuel 13:19–22.
Until I arose a mother in Israel Judges 5:7.
Her own title for herself, and it is not military. Set against the collapse of rulers, the office she claims is maternal — and the book has just shown what she did with it: she summoned, she reminded a general of God's command, and she went with him Judges 4:6–10.
Awake, awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, utter a song! Arise, Barak, and lead away your captives Judges 5:12.
The song calls to itself, and then to the man beside her. Both are named, both are given their part, and the poem does not settle old scores — Barak, who would not go alone Judges 4:8, is told to arise and take his captives.
held with reason What this mark means