"Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song."
Judges 5:12 · King James Bible
The story
Deborah is the fourth of Israel's judges (Judges 4–5), the only woman named to that office. Israel has been oppressed for twenty years by Jabin king of Canaan and his fearsome general Sisera, whose army has nine hundred iron chariots. Deborah sits under a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and Israel comes to her for judgment.
She summons Barak, a warrior of Naphtali. "Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor?" She tells him to gather ten thousand men. Barak answers, "If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go." Deborah says she will go — but the honour of the victory will not be his. The Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.
Barak's ten thousand come down from Mount Tabor. The Lord routs Sisera's chariots — "the river of Kishon swept them away" (5:21). Sisera flees on foot and hides in the tent of a woman named Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She gives him milk, covers him with a mantle, and when he falls asleep exhausted, she drives a tent-peg through his temple. Israel is delivered.
Judges 5 is the Song of Deborah — one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the Bible. It celebrates the mothers of Israel who arose, the tribes who came and the tribes who did not, the stars that fought against Sisera from heaven, and Jael blessed above women. It ends: "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might." The land had rest forty years.
Why she matters
Deborah is a reminder that Scripture gives no ceiling to what God will do through a faithful woman when a nation has grown weary and needs someone to arise. She is prophetess, judge, poet, and the calm voice at Barak's side in a chariot war. Christian households have long taught their daughters her song.
Where to read
Judges 4 and 5 (KJV). Read chapter 4 for the story, chapter 5 for the song.