The Song of Deborah

I. Introduction

The text of the Song of Deborah is largely recognized to be very early Hebrew; it is generally ascribed to sometime in the twelfth-century BC. As such, the song presents us invaluable glimpses into the sociopolitical makeup of Israel shortly after its conquest of Canaan, and therefore especially revealing is Israel’s early structure as also its prospects in the Promised Land. Of greater value is its theological importance, which is personified by Deborah. This study is interested in the following aspects of the Song of Deborah, as supported by its prose counterpart:

An investigation of verb usage in the song (linguistic interest).
Israel’s early structure as revealed by the song (historical interest).
Israel’s prospects in the Promised Land as revealed by the song (historical interest).
The theological importance of the song (theological interest).

II. Translating the Song of Deborah

We translated the song into English as an exercise some years ago, and then as now we were students of biblical Hebrew. Our main resources were the Blue Letter Bible website and their linguistic tools (BLB), and G. Pratico and M. V. Van Pelt’s Basics of Biblical Hebrew (Pratico). We are sure we could not have located all the verbs, nor parsed them properly, without the help of the Blue Letter Bible. Pratico and Van Pelt’s text was invaluable in confirming the stems and conjugations indicated by the Blue Letter Bible, and in the area of identifying person, number, and gender, the one area we did not have a popular consensus to fall back on (most Hebrew verbs reflect person, number, and gender; English verbs do not—context does so in the latter).

A. Parsing Hebrew Verbs

With some experience one can become adept at distinguishing Hebrew verbs from other Hebrew grammatical constructs such as adjectives, nominals, nouns, prepositions, etc. This is obviously the first hurdle that must be cleared in the correct parsing of Hebrew verbs (in this setting parsing=identifying/classifying as the eye scans across the verb). Notwithstanding, a significant remaining challenge arises when confronting the so-called weak class of verbs. These weak verbs, which appear in the Qal and all the derived stems (Pratico 137 for a useful flowchart), typically have weak consonants in their consonantal root (character map). Roots are “seed kernels” from which other Hebrew words are derived; they are primitive forms; verbal stems are one such derivation, albeit a primitive one—verbal stems thus have consonantal roots at their core (Pratico 121). In addition, weak verbs may also consist of geminate and/or biconsonantal roots. We said all that to say this: Weak verbs manifest a vowel pattern change that accommodates the idiosyncratic vocalization they generate in a verb, and it is this vowel pattern change that is a significant translational challenge, for it can cause one to incorrectly classify a verbal stem, and thus verbal meaning (verbal stems communicate verbal meaning, verbal conjugations communicate verbal function [Pratico 128]). Context can usually be relied on to bring clarity, but not always; said challenge manifests itself more so with respect to possible confusion between verb classes. Imperfect weak verbs, for example, because they have both a prefix and a suffix, are readily susceptible to misidentification because of the spelling variation induced by a changing vowel pattern. Misidentification then degrades translation through imprecise perceived verbal meaning, with the result that the true sense of the clause containing the verb may be lost, and it only takes one such lost clause for an entire passage to be misunderstood. The Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament does not contain such a weak verb construction, and is therefore much more straightforward to translate; that is not to say that this Greek does not pose its own significant peculiar translational challenges.

B. The Song of Deborah Verbs

If our parsings are correct, the stem breakdown for the passage would be:

75 verbs in the Qal stem (simple [unnuanced] action, active voice), 6 in the Niphal stem (simple action, reflexive/passive voice), 14 in the Piel stem (intensive action, active voice), 3 in the Pual stem (intensive action, passive voice), 3 in the Hiphil stem (causative action, active voice), 0 in the Hophal stem (causative action, passive voice), and 2 in the Hithpael stem (intensive action, largely reflexive voice). Thus the preponderance of the 103 total verbs we found were simple-active verbs (Qal ~73%) and intensive-active verbs (Piel ~14%). In the Qal stem, the preponderance of the verbs were in the perfect (completed action) conjugation (~46%) and the imperfect (incomplete action) conjugation (~17%). In the Piel stem, the preponderance of the verbs were in the imperfect conjugation (~42%) and the imperative (direct address/command) conjugation (~25%) (Tab. 1). The Qal verbs are less problematic insofar as translation is concerned because they convey simple, straightforward action. The Piel verbs are more difficult because the notion of “intensive” action is sometimes nebulous. For example, consider Jdg 5:11:

[Our Translation]: By the voice of archers between the places of drawing water, where they recount [3NH, character map] righteous acts of Jehovah, righteous acts of his villages in Israel, then go down to the gates have the people of Jehovah.

[Compare YLT]: “By the voice of shouters between the places of drawing water, there they give out righteous acts of Jehovah, righteous acts of His villages in Israel, then ruled in the gates have the people of Jehovah.” Red font added.

[Compare NLT]: “[They that are delivered] from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the LORD, [even] the righteous acts [toward the inhabitants] of his villages in Israel: then shall the people of the LORD go down to the gates.” Red font added.

The Septuagint has DWSOUSIN here (character map) which is literally connected with giving.

The red verb is Piel and its conjugation is imperfect. The intensive action is hard to catch here, but compare to the Piel of Jdg 5:2:

[Our Translation]: “For freeing freemen in Israel, for a people willingly offering themselves praise [BRK, character map] ye Jehovah.”

[Compare YLT]: ‘“For freeing freemen in Israel, for a people willingly offering themselves bless ye Jehovah.”’ Red font added.

[Compare NLT]: ‘”Israel’s leaders took charge, and the people gladly followed. Praise the LORD!”’ Red font added.

The Septuagint has EULOGEITE here (character map) which is literally connected with speaking a good word.

In this example the imperative conjugation and the context make it much clearer that the author means something like “really put your heart into it”—PRAISE Jehovah. The point is that with a fair portion of the song’s verbs in the Piel stem, any one translation is not etched in stone so to speak. The same difficulties arise with Hebrew verbs in the Hiphil and Hophal stem (causative action, active and passive voice respectively). That is to say, the same ambiguity arises in catching the causative nuance, but these stems are less attested in the Song of Deborah.

III. The Historical Importance of the Song of Deborah

The Song of Deborah, like the Song of the Sea (=The Song of Moses, Exd 15:1-18, a Redemption song like the Song of Deborah; Exd 15:20-21 for the Song of Miriam), is one of the earliest examples of Hebrew poetry. Its historical importance then, as also the historical importance of its prose counterpart (Judges 4), is connected with the insights we gain concerning Israel’s structure and prospects in the Promised Land after the conquest of Canaan by Joshua (by God), owing to the song’s composition not long afterward (relative dates are discussed more fully below). Moreover, there is general agreement that the song was composed very near the time of the battle which it describes. The period of Israelite judges to which Deborah belongs begins after the death of Joshua, probably around the middle to late fourteenth century BC [1].

A. Israel’s Structure as Revealed in the Song of Deborah

From the prose text we learn that Israel was suffering oppression at the hands of one Jabin of Hazor, a confederate king of Canaan (Jdg 4:1-3; note that Joshua had defeated another Jabin in the main thrust of the Conquest: Jos 11:1-14, 21-23, 14:6-15; “Jabin”). John Bright believes Israel existed here as a loose tribal league. He points out that when foreign oppression and threats arose, so did a judge in Israel “who would call out the clans and repel the foe” (Bright 167).This is exactly the motif we see in the Song of Deborah. That not all the tribes responded to Deborah and Barak’s battle cry probably confirms the notion that no central government with executive power existed, as Bright supposes (Bright 167; Asher, Dan, and Gilead [=Gad, East Manasseh, and Reuben] abstained; Deborah belonged to Ephraim, though some say Issachar, and Barak to Naphtali—all three of these joined the fight). Moreover, because neither Judah or Simeon are mentioned in the song may indicate that this tribal league consisted of only ten members at this time (Bright 166). Matthew Henry thinks that they are not mentioned because their location was too remote from the fight and they were thus not expected to be present (Henry). In the interest of clarifying relevant geographical locations, Mount Tabor (the Mount of Transfiguration?), Israel’s encampment before the fight (Jdg 4:6), is located in lower Galilee southwest of Lake Galilee on the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley (=Plain of Esdraelon in Greek) in Issachar “Twelve Tribes of Israel-Map;” the map shows Megiddo and Taanach in West Manasseh, the location of the rout (Jdg 5:19). The Kishon River flows west-northwest through the Jezreel Valley from its source at Mount Gilboa and empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

B. Israel’s Prospects in the Promised Land as Suggested by the Song of Deborah

We learn from Jdg 5:19 that other Canaanite kings tried to aid Jabin’s military commander Sisera. This is telling in that it suggests that Israel was by this time, that is, since the death of Joshua around the middle to late fourteenth century BC, but before around the middle of the twelfth-century BC—the purported date of the song—a common enemy, and a force to be reckoned with. That Israel should be a common enemy here rather brings into question the view that Israel emerged as a subculture within Canaanite civilization, for one would expect a Canaanite Israel to have long been confederated with the other kings of the confederation [2]. In the eyes of Israel’s enemies, then, Israel’s prospects must have been viewed as threatening, which means that Israel’s prospects were in and of themselves quite promising at this time. The prospects in view here are those associated with nationhood—hold on territory, if not outright territorial expansion, economic increase, cultural spread/infusion [3]. Notice that a perceived threat of cultural infusion, if assessed correctly, again bespeaks of a people radically foreign to the indigenous, and not a subculture within the same.

C. Jabin’s Iron Chariots

John Bright relates that just before 1400 BC the Hittites were reviving from a weakened position and exerting pressure on northern Syria (Bright 109). The Hittites actually gained control of Syria and were able to maintain control of it until late in the thirteenth century BC (the powerful Hittite empire fell around 1200 BC, early in the reign of Ramesses III; coincident with the disappearance of the Hittites is the appearance of the Sea Peoples [the Philistines and the Tjeker], who settled the coastal cities of Palestine Katzenstein 58). It is possible that the Hittites, with an eye to expansion southward, provided the iron chariots of Jdg 4:3 (cf. Jos 17:16-18; [Bright 176]). This is an important historical consideration because it suggests that the oppression Israel endured at the hands of Jabin may have been sanctioned by the Hittites, who probably saw Israel as a major obstacle to their expansion southward. This idea further suggests some kind of alliance between the Hittites and the Canaanite confederation that was oppressing Israel. Moreover, all this suggests again that Israel was hardly an insignificant presence in Palestine at this time, and lends robust credence to the biblical claim in the Book of Joshua of a conquest of Palestine by Israel, probably not too long before the date of the song. Certain scholars, however, balk at the idea of a single conquest by a single individual/nation in a fairly short period in Palestine’s late Bronze Age, because burn layers at different sites like Aphek, Hazor, Megiddo, etc., have been dated to different periods; another reason oft cited is that Hazor was burned to the ground by Joshua (Jos 11:13), but by the time of our song (c. 1150 BC), the city is presented as an intact metropolis by Scripture, indeed, the headquarters of the Canaanite confederation (Jdg 4:2). These scholars suppose that too little time passed for Hazor to regain such a status/condition. They reason this way largely because they base their dates on a Nineteenth Dynasty Exodus (c. 1306-1200 BC) [4]. Let us examine these arguments. If Joshua and Israel entered the Promised Land around 1400 BC, a date that coincides with the Hittite ascendancy, and largely subdued it around, conservatively, 1375 BC, that means there would have been around two-hundred-twenty-five years to rebuild Hazor and for it to regain its old status (1375-1150; actually somewhat less because the event of the song precedes the song of course; still, plenty of time) [5]. We cannot address the varied burn layer dating issue except to say it is uncertain how much Carbon-14 was introduced into the samples or washed out of them prior to their dating [6]. When we turn more specifically to the case of Hazor, we find its burn stratum dated to around the time of our song—c. 1150 BC. We suppose that this stratum’s makeup is possibly influenced in part by the event/s attending Jdg 4:24, which relates the destruction of Jabin by Israel subsequent to his humiliation at the hands of Deborah and Barak.

These little glimpses into the sociopolitical environment related by the song give us invaluable insight not only into the immediate situation at hand in the song, but also into the foundation and fabric of other books of the Old Testament, particularly the historical books. In the end they testify to the connectedness and precision of Scripture.

IV. The Theological Importance of the Song of Deborah

Psalm 145:4; Mat 23:37

The Song of Deborah is a celebration song; it is a victory song of celebration. It celebrates the mighty goings forth of Jehovah God on behalf of His people when they were sore oppressed. In this way it is entirely consistent with the main thrust of Scripture—God working to rescue His people from the oppression of Sin; from separation from Him—such is a sore, grievous oppression. How bleak the setting when the song opens; how heavy the oppression weighing down God’s people because they had wandered afar off from Him. But God raised up Deborah; He raised up a savior mother in their midst for them. As we have worked with this revealing song over the years, Deborah stands out more and more as a type of Jesus Christ to us:

Deborah was as a mother to Israel (Jdg 5:7)—how tender the picture—and our Lord is as a mother to us, even a mother hen with wing outspread over us—how tender that picture (Mat 23:37).
Deborah “awakens” herself to sing this victory song (Jdg 5:12), as if to say, ‘let no distraction keep me from it,’ as if consumed for the victory of her people (Fig. 1). And how our Lord was consumed for the victory of His people—so that we might sing a blessed song; a blessed victory song; how He set His face for Jerusalem and that old rugged cross (Luk 9:51). Let the redeemed sing His praises and recount His mighty goings forth for us; let us recount how He vanquished the enemies of our soul, who, as in the words of the psalmist, “became as dung for the ground” (Psa 83:9-10).
All looked to Deborah for strength (Jdg 4:6-8), yet she stood alone in the strength of God; so too our Lord was eyed; so too our Lord struggled alone in the strength of God (Jhn 16:32). And God provided victory to each by His strength; here is cause for celebration. Such a victory celebration must be put to song; yea, for all generations to hear that such is the power of God; who notwithstanding, acts as would a mother, on behalf of His beloved.

The song of Deborah is a hallelujah song. It is a continual reverberation of praise to the One who loosened the yoke of oppression.

Deborah consistently praises God for His faithfulness to Israel when they needed Him most. So too, let the redeemed sing victory with Deborah; let us sing praises; let us sing hallelujahs to our Savior; let the redeemed bless the Lord continually.
Deborah praises leaders who lead; followers who willingly follow (Jdg 5:2, cf. Hbr 13:7)—each the hands and feet of the God who redeems. So too let the redeemed lead, and willingly follow, according as each has been determined to do so by God (Rom 12:6-8). And let each bless the other to the glory of God with a heart of singing in the unity of the Spirit of God.

V. Concluding Comments

That the preponderance of the verbs we found were Qal-Perfect-Active would be in keeping with a text that is relating declarative (simple facts) type material that has largely transpired, and that generally has its clausal subjects (God, Deborah, Israel, Sisera, etc.) acting. It is a verbal pattern consistent with the first-hand communication of the dynamics of an event that has transpired; with the first-hand communication of the dynamics of a history.

The Song of Deborah is almost universally recognized to be very early Hebrew; its composition is generally ascribed to sometime in the twelfth-century BC, and to sometime not long after the battle which it describes was fought. The battle and the history attending it are thus roughly dated as well. The text’s early provenance reveals important aspects about Israel’s early structure and prospects in the Promised Land because the composition is just a relatively short period of time removed from Israel’s entry into the Promised Land and its birth as a nation. In our estimation, based on an Eighteenth Dynasty Exodus, on the order of two-hundred-fifty years had passed (1400-1150 BC; we realize much can happen in two-hundred and fifty years, but unless new evidence is unearthed, this is the best we can do; notwithstanding, the song reflects a time before the convolutions of nationhood unfolded which only worsen the scenario for us). Israel’s structure here was probably that of a loose tribal league, with no central government, owing to the seeming independence the tribes are shown to exercise in response to Deborah’s call to arms. That Israel faced a confederation of Canaanite enemies would seem to suggest that its prospects in Canaan were quite good by this time; Israel must have been viewed as a viable threat to the economic and political agendas of this confederation, and no doubt to their Hittite allies. It is hard to say with certainty which of them (confederation or the Hittites) saw Israel as the greater threat; probably the Hittites had more to lose should Israel wax stronger and stronger. It is noteworthy that so thorough was this confederation’s defeat by Israel as related in the song that it and its kings are never mentioned again, as Matthew Henry points out in his commentary on Judges chapter four (Henry). Moreover, it is interesting that the Hittite empire collapsed around this time—the crushing defeat of their southern allies undoubtedly hastening the inevitable [7].

The theological import of the text comes through Deborah, who we have come to understand to be a type of Jesus Christ. The parallels to Jesus, our mighty conquering Savior, who, notwithstanding, acts as would a mother on behalf of His beloved, seem to jump out of the text.

Praised be your Name mighty conquering Savior Jesus.