Moderns make Deborah out to be a feminist. Not so. She served privately by her own door.
What do they say? The same song, but the second verse; a little louder and a little worse? Here they go again: “When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord” (Jdg 4:1). So once again we read, “the Lord sold them” (v 2). Essentially they had put their own souls up for sale by indulging in idolatry. So the Lord used “the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor” to apply the spanking! You recall there was another Jabin ruling there in Joshua’s day, and who formed the alliance of nations defeated at the waters of Merom. Now, a few generations later, they’re at it again. Verse 2 adds, “The commander of his army was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth Hagoyim.” The word goy, popularly pronounced “guy,” simply means a Gentile, a non-Jew. The prefix ha– is the Hebrew “the” and the suffix –im makes it plural. So Sisera lived in Harosheth of the Gentiles, emphasizing the battle lines. This time it was twenty years of harsh oppression, and Jabin’s troops had rapid deployment capabilities, boasting “nine hundred chariots of iron” (v 3). This was high-tech; Israel didn’t enter the Iron Age until the days of David. Enter Deborah, Israel’s secret weapon. Her name doesn’t mean “hornet,” like those God used to “drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite” (Ex 23:28). They have a sting but no sweetness. No, Deborah is the Hebrew word for a bee. In her private ministry as a prophetess, sitting under her own palm tree “between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim” (Jdg 4:5), she came to the realization that God had raised up a reluctant judge who needed some encouragement. Barak means “lightning.” I wonder what will happen when the Bolt meets the Bee!