BARAK (ba'rakl, (Hell luz7e-rawk', light ning flash), son of Abinoant of a Galilean city of refuge in the tribe of Naphtali (Judg. iv:6; Comp. Josh. x xi :32). Hence he be.onged to the district Much had suffered most .it the hands of the Canaanites: perhaps be had bLen actually their prisoner.
When Jabin, king of Canaan, had for twenty years grievously oppressed the Israelites, the pruphetess Deborah sent for Barak. the son of Abinoam, a man of Issachar, who lived in and, from God, directed him to levy an army of to.000 men of Naphtali and Zebulun, the tribes which had been principally enslaved, and march them to Mount Tabor, where the Lord would deliver Sisera, and the mighty host of Jabin, into his hand. Ile refused to attempt this unless she would go along with lum; she consented ; but told him that his cowardice should be punished by the Lord's giving the chief honor of the vic tory, the death of the general, into the hand of a woman. They had scarcely levied their troops,
and marched from Kedesh to Tabor, when Sisera was at their heels, with a prodigious army. It seems scarcely one of Barak's toapoo had either sword or spear ; but the Canaanites were struck with a panic, when they saw the Hebrews come down from the hill to attack them ; the slaughter was so universal that few escaped (B. C. t i2o). Barak and Deborah composed a song to com memorate their victory, and to praise God on account of it ; and to celebrate the Hebrew princes, and Jae] the wife of Heber, the Kenite, for their instrumentality therein ; and to con demn the tribes of Asher, Dan, and Reuben for their inactivity ( Judg iv and v).
Barak appears in the list of the faithful worthies of the Old Testament ( Itch. xi :32).