Judges 5:3

Judges 4 tells the story of the battle in prose, and Judges 5 tells it again as a song. It happened in the time of the judges, when Israel turned from the LORD again and again, fell under foreign oppressors, cried out to him, and was rescued by the judges he raised up (Judges 2:16). This time the oppressor was Jabin, the Canaanite king of Hazor. His general Sisera commanded nine hundred chariots of iron, and Jabin had oppressed Israel severely for twenty years (Judges 4:3).

The song itself shows how hard those years were. The roads were unsafe and the villages stood empty (Judges 5:6–7). Then the LORD routed Sisera and all his army before Barak (Judges 4:15). The song tells how the stars fought from heaven and a sudden flood of the river Kishon swept the enemy away, so that the chariots Israel had feared were useless (Judges 5:20–22). The LORD’s power was shown over an army that looked unbeatable and over the forces of nature as well.

Singing after the LORD had saved them was how Israel remembered what he had done. Moses and the children of Israel sang to the LORD after he brought them through the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1), and Deborah’s song stands in that line. Psalm 68 opens by calling on God to arise and scatter his enemies (Psalm 68:1). A song is sung again and taught to children, so the victory, and the God who gave it, stayed in Israel’s memory from one generation to the next. This song is among the oldest poems in the Bible. Since the chapter before it has already told what happened, the song gives its room to who did it and why, and to the way each tribe answered the call.

“Then sang Deborah and Barak” uses the verb shîyr, which simply means to sing, to put words to a tune. What makes this song praise is the one it is sung to, “the LORD”, as verse 3 says. Deborah, Dᵉbôwrâh, was a prophetess who judged Israel, and in a time when Israel’s leaders were men, God’s choice of her for this work was remarkable. Barak, Bârâq, was the Israelite commander she summoned to lead the men of Israel against Sisera. He is named as the son, bên, of Abinoam, ʼĂbîynôʻam, a name meaning “father of pleasantness”, that is, gracious. Naming a man by his father was the common way of identifying someone in Israel, and it ties Barak to his family from Kedesh in Naphtali.

The two of them sing together, the prophetess and the commander, and the song honours each for the part God gave them while it gives all the glory to the LORD. Barak had hesitated at first. He would go to the battle only if Deborah went with him, and she told him that the honour of the journey would go to a woman (Judges 4:8–9). He went all the same, he did the work God gave him, and now he sings beside her. God gives his people different gifts, and the same Spirit works through all of them (1 Corinthians 12:4–7).

“On that day”, with yôwm, the ordinary word for day, places the song right after the victory, while the rescue was fresh. “Saying” is ʼâmar, the everyday verb for speaking, and it opens the words of the song, which run to the end of the chapter.

The song’s first command is “Praise ye the LORD”. The verb is bârak, whose root sense is to kneel. From that it comes to mean blessing God as an act of worship, and elsewhere blessing a person with some good. Here the whole people are told to bless the LORD. The one they bless is Yᵉhôvâh, “the LORD”, God’s own name, the self-existent and eternal one, the name by which the God of Israel bound himself to his people. So the first word of the song gives the victory to him. David ends a song of deliverance in the same way, blessing the LORD who lives and who is his rock (Psalm 18:46).

The second reason for praise is “when the people willingly offered themselves”. The verb is nâdab, which means to impel, and so to volunteer, as a soldier does, or to offer something freely of one’s own accord. It belongs to the language of freewill gifts to God, as when the children of Israel brought a willing offering for the work of the tabernacle (Exodus 35:29). The word for “people”, ʻam, means a people gathered as one body, and it can also mean a tribe or a body of troops. Here the people are the men who came out to fight under Deborah and Barak.

So the verse blesses the LORD for the rescue and, in the same breath, for those who stepped forward. The LORD won the battle, and he chose to win it through men who gave themselves of their own will, at the risk of their lives and against great odds. The song later praises the tribes that came and grieves over those that held back, among them Reuben and Dan (Judges 5:15–17), which makes the willingness of those who came shine all the more. Scripture remembers this spirit elsewhere. Amasiah is remembered as a man who willingly offered himself to the LORD (2 Chronicles 17:16), and a psalm speaks of the LORD’s people as willing (Psalm 110:3). God treasures a willing heart in those who serve him.

Verse 3 widens the audience to the rulers of the earth. “Hear” is shâmaʻ, to hear with understanding, often with the sense of paying attention and obeying. “Give ear” is ʼâzan, to broaden out the ear with the hand, the way someone cups an ear to catch every word. The “kings” are melek, the ordinary word for a king, and the “princes” are râzan, from a root that probably means to be heavy, that is, weighty and honourable, and so a prince or ruler. The two calls say the same thing in two parallel lines, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the pairing makes the summons strong.

After calling the kings to listen, the singer turns to her own vow: “I, even I, will sing unto the LORD”. The Hebrew repeats the pronoun “I” for emphasis. Deborah was a prophetess and a judge, and her first response to the victory is her own worship, offered openly before the world. Leadership among God’s people begins in that kind of devotion.

“Will sing” is shîyr, the same verb as “sang” in verse 1. The next line, “I will sing praise”, uses a different verb, zâmar, which properly means to touch the strings of an instrument, and so to make music in praise. The two lines share the English word “sing”, and together they speak of voice and music given to the LORD.

The one she sings to is “the LORD God of Israel”: Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD’s own name, ʼĕlôhîym, God, and Yisrâʼêl, Israel, a name meaning “he will rule as God”, given to Jacob and carried by his descendants. “The LORD” stands twice in verse 3, and the full title makes plain which God has done this. He is the God who bound himself to Israel and has now acted for them. A psalmist makes the same vow to sing to the LORD as long as he lives (Psalm 104:33), and another psalm calls on those the LORD has redeemed to give thanks to him (Psalm 107:1–2).

Deborah’s song celebrates freedom from an earthly oppressor, and it points ahead to a greater rescue. God raised up Deborah and Barak to deliver Israel, and he sent his Son to deliver his people from sin and death. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Humanity’s oppressor was sin itself, for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and through his own death Jesus destroyed the power of death and set free those who were held by the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). On the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15).

The willing offering of verse 2 has its fullest form in him. Jesus laid down his life of his own accord, and no one took it from him (John 10:18). His people answer as Israel’s volunteers did. We offer God “the sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15) and present ourselves to him as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). The kings of verse 3 meet their answer in Christ’s kingship, for at the name of Jesus “every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:10). And the song of Deborah has an echo in heaven, where the redeemed sing a new song to the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:9–10) and the song of Moses and of the Lamb (Revelation 15:3–4). In him all who believe are “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

These three verses show us a God who hears his oppressed people, acts for them, and sets them free. They show him working through ordinary people who offer themselves, and honouring the part each of them plays, prophetess, commander and volunteer alike. They also show that his deeds belong to the whole world, so that even kings are summoned to hear of them.

The song gives us words for our own thanks. Deborah sang on the very day of the victory, and she sang as one person among many, “I, even I”. The God she praised is the LORD who saved his people then, and who has given the far greater victory in his Son.