DEB'ORAH (ileb. bee). A heroine who helped to deliver the Israelites from the oppres sion of the and who in tradition becomes a prophetess and a 'judge.' She was the wife of Lapidoth, and dwelt in the hill country of Ephraim (Judges iv. 4-5). For twenty years, the story goes, Israel hail been oppressed by the Canaanites, when Deborah stirred up Barak, son of Abinoam of Kedesh in Napthali, and the two with an army went against Sisera. leader of the force of the Canaanite King Jabin, descended upon him from :Mount Tabor, and routed his army (ib. iv. 10-16). Sisera himself, in flight, was slain while asleep by a woman, Jael, wife of Heber, the Kenite (ib. iv. 11-22). A forty years peace followed this success (ib. v. 31), though it should be added that the number forty is to be regarded as a general term for a generation. The so-called of Deborah" (ib. v. 2-31) celebrates this victory, but there are sonic strik ing discrepancies between the song and the prose narrative in chap. iv. That the song is a con
temporary record may be inferred from the archaic language and its general character. It is universally regarded by scholars as one of the oldest bits of literature in the Old Testa ment, but it makes no mention of Jabin, and commemorates the discomfiture of Sisera. Geo graphical discrepancies are also to be noted, and it would appear that the prose narrative, which is of course considerably later, refers to another event in which Jabin is chiefly involved, and that the two occurrences have been welded to gether by making Sisera the leader of Jabin's army. On the Song of Deborah, consult Cooke, The History and .song of Deborah (London, 1892). The text is obscure in some places and corrupt in others. but there is enough left to give this composition a unique position in the history of ancient poetry among the Semites.