Judges 4:1-5

Deborah Summons Barak

4:1 The Israelites again did evil in the Lord’s sight ¹  after Ehud’s death. 4:2 The Lord turned them over to ²  King Jabin of Canaan, who ruled in Hazor. ³  The general of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. ⁴  4:3 The Israelites cried out for help to the Lord, because Sisera ⁵  had nine hundred chariots with iron-rimmed wheels, ⁶  and he cruelly ⁷  oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.

4:4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, ⁸  wife of Lappidoth, was ⁹  leading ¹⁰  Israel at that time. 4:5 She would sit ¹¹  under the Date Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel ¹²  in the Ephraimite hill country. The Israelites would come up to her to have their disputes settled. ¹³ 

[4:1]  ¹ tn Heb “did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

[4:2]  ² tn Heb “the Lord sold them into the hands of.”

[4:2]  ³ tn Or “King Jabin of Hazor, a Canaanite ruler.”

[4:2]  ⁴ tn Or “Harosheth of the Pagan Nations”; cf. KJV “Harosheth of the Gentiles.”

[4:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Sisera) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:3]  ⁶ tn Regarding the translation “chariots with iron-rimmed wheels,” see Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands, 255, and the article by R. Drews, “The ‘Chariots of Iron’ of Joshua and Judges,” JSOT 45 (1989): 15-23.

[4:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “with strength.”

[4:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “ a woman, a prophetess.” In Hebrew idiom the generic “woman” sometimes precedes the more specific designation. See GKC 437-38 §135.b.

[4:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “she was.” The pronoun refers back to the nominative absolute “Deborah.” Hebrew style sometimes employs such resumptive pronouns when lengthy qualifiers separate the subject from the verb.

[4:4]  ¹⁰ tn Or “judging.”

[4:5]  ¹¹ tn That is, “consider legal disputes.”

[4:5]  ¹² map For location see Map4 G4; Map5 C1; Map6 E3; Map7 D1; Map8 G3.

[4:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “for judgment.”