BOOK 7 OF 66 · HISTORY · KING JAMES BIBLE

Judges 5

Judges book home•Chapter 5 of 21•31 verses

Chapter overviewAt a glance + deeper study

REVIEWED OVERVIEW

Judges 5 Overview

Deborah and Barak sing about the LORD’s victory over Sisera. The song looks beyond the bare military facts to celebrate God’s intervention, the willingness of some tribes, and the shameful refusal of others to join the fight. It ends by contrasting Sisera’s mother waiting in vain for his return with the prayer that the LORD’s enemies perish and those who love him be as the sun.

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Before you read Judges 5

Coming from

Chapter 4 narrated the defeat of Jabin’s army, Sisera’s flight, and Jael’s killing of Sisera.

In this chapter

The same victory is interpreted through inspired poetry, drawing attention to divine power, tribal participation, courage, refusal, and the reversal of Sisera’s expectations.

Leads into

Chapter 6 moves to the next cycle after forty years of rest, when Midian devastates Israel and the LORD calls Gideon.

Key understandingExplore deeper

Judges 5 is a victory song, not simply a second prose outline of chapter 4. Poetic language about the heavens, clouds, river, stars, and marching earth celebrates the LORD’s intervention and should be read as poetry unless the text requires a woodenly literal description. The song also reveals a major concern of Judges: Israel is a confederated people whose tribes share responsibility, yet some respond to the crisis and others stay home.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Truth 1

The song gives the LORD the ultimate credit for Israel’s victory rather than treating the battle as a human achievement alone.

Truth 2

Willing service is praised: leaders and people who offered themselves are remembered with honor.

Truth 3

Neutrality during a covenant crisis is not presented as harmless; Meroz is cursed for refusing to come to the help of the LORD.

Truth 4

The defeat of Sisera reverses the expectations of the powerful: the conqueror’s household imagines spoil while he lies dead.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Connection 1

Exodus 15 is an earlier song of victory that likewise celebrates the LORD’s triumph after a historical deliverance.

Connection 2

Psalm 68:7–9 uses imagery similar to Judges 5 when recalling God going before his people and the earth shaking.

Connection 3

Judges 4 should be read alongside this chapter because prose narrative and victory song illuminate the same event from different angles.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Keep this clear 1

Do not force every poetic image into a scientific or chronological reconstruction of the battle. Hebrew victory poetry uses elevated imagery to proclaim the meaning of the event.

Keep this clear 2

The song’s praise of Jael belongs to the context of Israel’s deliverance from a military oppressor; it is not a general blessing on private violence.

Keep this clear 3

The tribal praises and rebukes concern participation in this historical battle and should not be turned into arbitrary spiritual categories for modern groups.

Read Judges 5 watching for…

How often the song names the LORD as the source of victory.

Which tribes willingly join the fight and which do not.

The role of the Kishon river in the song’s picture of the battle.

The strong contrast between Jael and Sisera’s mother.

The closing contrast between the LORD’s enemies and those who love him.

Chapter outline6 sections

1-5Deborah and Barak sing of the LORD’s coming and power 6-11The song recalls Israel’s trouble and the LORD’s deliverance 12-18The tribes are called and their responses are remembered 19-23The battle is described and Meroz is cursed 24-27Jael is praised for killing Sisera 28-31Sisera’s mother waits, and the song ends with rest in the land

Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying,

Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.

Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes; I, even I, will sing unto the LORD; I will sing praise to the LORD God of Israel.

LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.

The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel.

In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways.

The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.

They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?

My heart is toward the governors of Israel, that offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the LORD.

Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk by the way.

They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the LORD, even the righteous acts toward the inhabitants of his villages in Israel: then shall the people of the LORD go down to the gates.

Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.

Then he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles among the people: the LORD made me have dominion over the mighty.

Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people; out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.

And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; even Issachar, and also Barak: he was sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart.

Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.

Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches.

Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.

The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money.

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.

Then were the horsehoofs broken by the means of the pransings, the pransings of their mighty ones.

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD, to the help of the LORD against the mighty.

Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.

He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.

She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots?

Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself,

Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?

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. And the land had rest forty years.

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Judges 5:1

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