Judges 4 and 5
The story sets out with the Israelites again doing evil in
the sight of the Lord and God using one of their enemies, this time Jabin, King
of Canaan. God used the Israelites
enemies to get their attention. I wonder
if God does the same in our own life today at times.
Sisera was the Commander of
the army and he had quite the army, 900 chariots in total and had
cruelly suppressed the Israelites for 20 years. We get a glimpse of what life was like for
the people in 5:6-7. The roads were abandoned and village life ceased. It wasn’t safe to be outside. Imagine what that does for community life and
for the fear factor. We talked about
fear at the ladies retreat. It can be
debilitating and imagine the fear the Israelites were under for 20 years with
King Jabin at the helm and Sisera doing the nasty work.
An unlikely person came forward and stood in the gap for
Israel, a woman. A prophetess and Judge
called Deborah. She had a place of
prominence and helped to settle disputes amongst the people. I am figuring she had a lot of wisdom to
offer the children of Israel. Notice in
5:7 that she calls herself a mother in Israel.
It was not just a job to her. She
cared for the people of Israel like a mother does her children. Their wellbeing was important to her.
Sidenote: Deborah’s
name means bee. When you look at the
characteristics of a bee she was well named.
Bees are hard workers, no nonsense creatures and they have a goal
insight. They are focused to achieve
that goal and they will protect themselves and others if the need arises.
Deborah called for Barak who was going to be the one to
defeat King Jabin’s army. This was a big
ask. First of all Israel wouldn’t have
that many weapons to fight with. Any
weapons they would have had would have been taken from them by their enemies. Read 5:8. If you are going to go in and overthrow a
country you want them to be defenseless so they can’t fight back. Sisera had 900 iron chariots and they were
going to face each other on a plain. Who
has the advantage on a plain….Sisera where his iron chariots could be put to
full use. How were the Israelites going
to be any match for this oppressor.
Another sidenote ……Satan loves to come against us and rob us
of what we have in God. When we feel
defenseless we succumb to the enemies attacks.
Remember to go into battle knowing who is on your side and also what
resources are available to you.
Okay back to Judges….Barak takes on the job but he asks for
Deborah to go with him. Some would see
this as a weakness on his part that he wasn’t fully obedient but we see later
on that its Barak that rallies the troops from his own tribe of Naphtali and
the neighbouring tribe of Zebulun.
10,000 men and they followed him.
Are you going to follow a leader who doesn’t lead. Here were 10,000 men willing to lay down
their lives under Barak’s leadership.
That has to count for something.
Also the fact that Deborah agreed to accompany Barak on this
mission would suggest that it wasn’t out of the will of God. However, there was a condition attached and
that being that the honour would go to a woman rather than to a man. This didn’t seem to phase Barak as he went
anyway and fulfilled his part in it all.
The Kenites were distant relatives of the Jews through
Moses but were now friends with crazy
tyrants like King Jabin and Sisera.
However, despite this “friendship” God used it for a victory over the
oppressors as we will see.
So how did Barak and his troops defeat Sisera and the iron
chariots. One source I read was that
this all happened in the dry season of around July to September. There would be no way that Sisera would want
to lose his chariots in the mud so he must have been confident that he would
win this battle against the Israelites.
However, what He didn’t know was
that God was in charge of the weather and if He wants to send a freak storm in
the dry season then He can. Notice that
the battle was strategically planned be near the Kishon River. The banks of this river overflowed
(5:21)which turned the plains to mud.
The iron chariots were of no use.
Deborah boosts Barak’s confidence by telling him he will win
the battle because of God’s involvement.
We are always more confident going into a war if we know we are going to
win. God was ahead of them already
working things out. Not only did God
send a freak storm which would have made them also think that their own gods
were going against them as they worshipped the god of Weather but he also
confused their minds threw them into a panic. (15) and they fled on foot. All Sisera’s troops died that day.
Now we have this interesting story of Sisera and Jael. Sisera escaped also on foot and fled to the
tent of Jael. Sisera thought he had
reached a safe haven with Jael as the Kenites were friendly towards King
Jabin. He went into her tent to seek
refuge which is already taking a risk.
Only the husband would be allowed in our tent not some other man. The fact that he was able to sleep when a
whole army was after him already shows that he thought he had made it. Sisera told Jael to lie if anyone came and
asked her where he was. According to one
writer this could show that she knew the Israelites had won the battle and he
was on the run for his life. If we were
reading this story for the first time we might think that Deborah was going to
be the women to put an end to Sisera’s life (4:9) but it was to be Jael. He died in a quite a dramatic way by having a
tent peg hammered through his head. In
this culture it was the women who put up the tents so she would have been very
handy with a hammer and used it to good use in this situation.
One writer made the comment (Wiersbe) that it was
embarrassing enough for a captain of an army to be seeing fleeing the battle
but to be killed by fleeing was humiliating and to be killed by a woman was the
most disgraceful thing of all.
Now some of you might have an issue with Jael and her
methods. However, we need to think about
the time that she lives in. The
Israelites had been under terrible bondage because of Jabin and Sisera. It is noted that if King Jabin and Sisera had
won the battle then hundreds of Jewish girls would have been captured and raped
by their oppressors. (5:30) As one commentator
put it “There was a war on, and this courageous woman finally stopped being
neutral and took her stand with the people of God.”
Let us end with Romans 15:4
Everything
that was written in the past was written to teach us. The Scriptures give us
patience and encouragement so that we can have hope.
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