Deborah

Deborah (Heb. Devorah, “bee”) is the only woman named among Israel’s judges, “a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth,” who judged Israel from her palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim (Jdg.4.4–5). For twenty years the Canaanite king Jabin of Hazor, with his commander Sisera and nine hundred iron chariots, oppressed the northern tribes. At the word of the LORD, Deborah summoned Barak of Kedesh-Naphtali to muster ten thousand men of Zebulun and Naphtali at Mount Tabor. Barak agreed only if she went with him, and Deborah accepted with the warning that the honour of victory would go to a woman (Jdg.4.9). The LORD routed Sisera’s chariots in the valley of the Kishon — a sudden flood mentioned in chapter 5 — and Sisera himself died by a tent peg in the hand of Jael. The Song of Deborah in Judges 5, one of the oldest poems in scripture, celebrates the muster of the tribes, the stars fighting from heaven, and Jael’s deed. The land then had rest for forty years (Jdg.5.31).