The Story

After Joshua died, God's people kept forgetting God and doing evil, and trouble came on them again. This time the trouble was a king named Jabin, whose army captain was a fierce man called Sisera. Sisera had nine hundred chariots of iron — think of nine hundred war wagons of shining metal, rolling and thundering across the plain! For twenty long years he cruelly oppressed the children of Israel, until at last they cried out to the LORD for help.

God had already placed His helper in Israel. "Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time." Deborah was a wise woman who listened to God, and she sat under a palm tree — the palm tree of Deborah — where the people of Israel came to her with their troubles, and she judged them fairly. One day God gave her a message for a man named Barak. She sent and called him, and told him God's own command: take ten thousand men up to Mount Tabor, and God would draw Sisera and all his chariots to the river Kishon, and deliver him into Barak's hand.

Barak answered that he would go — if Deborah went with him. If she would not go, he would not go either. Deborah did not hesitate; she was willing. She said she would surely go with him, but she warned him the honour of the victory would not be his, for "the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman". So Barak gathered ten thousand men, and Deborah went up with him to the battle.

When Sisera heard, he gathered all his nine hundred iron chariots and all his army by the river Kishon. Then Deborah spoke the word of the moment: "Up; for this is the day in which the LORD hath delivered Sisera into thine hand". Barak charged down the mountain with his ten thousand men — and it was God who fought: "the LORD discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host", throwing that mighty army into confusion, so that not a man of them was left. Sisera jumped down from his chariot and ran away on foot, all the way to the tent of a woman named Jael. Jael gave him milk to drink and covered him, and he fell fast asleep — and there, while he slept, the cruel captain died by Jael's hand, just as Deborah had said: the LORD sold Sisera into the hand of a woman.

So God gave Israel the victory over King Jabin. Then Deborah and Barak sang a great song of praise to God for all He had done. And the last line of the song tells how the story ended: "And the land had rest forty years" — forty years of peace, because one woman had a brave and willing heart, and said yes to God.