Such at least is the conclusion to be drawn from a comparison of the Song of Deborah with the statement that the Shamgar ben Anath, Shamgar the son of Anath, ‘delivered Israel,’ by slaying six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad. Shamgar, as we gather from the Song, lived but a short while before Deborah herself, and it was in his days, we further read, that the Israelitish peasantry were almost exterminated by their enemies. The Philistine invasion in the time of Samuel was but a repetition of earlier raids.
The name of Shamgar testifies to the survival of Babylonian influence in Canaan. It is the Babylonian Sumgir, while Anath is the Babylonian goddess Anat, the consort of Anu, the god of the sky. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets two Syrians are referred to, who bear the names of Ben-Ana and Anat.[[308]] Does this survival of Babylonian names imply a survival also of the Babylonian script and language? At all events the worship of Babylonian deities still survived, and an Israelite and a ‘judge’ was named after one of them.
Deborah couples with Shamgar the otherwise unknown Jael. The reading is possibly corrupt, another name having been assimilated to that of the wife of the Kenite. But it is also possible that it is due to a marginal gloss which has crept into the text.
However this may be, the age of Shamgar overlapped that of the prophetess Deborah. ‘In the days of Shamgar,’ she says, ‘the highways were unoccupied ... until that I, Deborah, arose—that I arose a mother in Israel.’ It was not only from the incursions of the Philistines that the Israelites suffered. In the north the tribes were called upon to face a confederacy of the Canaanitish states. It was the last effort of Canaan to stem the gradual advance of Israel, and the struggle was decided in the plain of Megiddo, as it had been in the older days of Egyptian invasion and conquest.
Megiddo and Taanach were still Canaanitish fortresses; so, too, was Beth-shean, in the valley of the Jordan,[[309]] and the Israelites of Mount Ephraim were thus cut off from their brethren in the north. Here Jabin, the king of Hazor, was the dominant Canaanite prince, whose standard was followed by the other ‘kings of Canaan.’ Twenty years long, we are told, ‘he mightily oppressed the children of Israel,’ ‘for he had nine hundred chariots of iron.’[[310]] Two accounts of the ‘oppression’ and the war that put an end to it have been handed down, one a prose version, which the compiler of the book of Judges has made part of his narrative, while the other is contained in the song of victory composed by Deborah after the overthrow of the foe.
Critics have found discrepancies between the two accounts, and have maintained that where they differ the prose version is unhistorical. In the latter the Canaanitish leader is the king of Hazor, Sisera being his general, who ‘dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles,’ whereas in the song there is no mention of Hazor, and Sisera appears as a Canaanitish king. Moreover, it is alleged that, according to the Song (v. 12), Barak seems to have belonged to the tribe of Issachar, while in the prose narrative he is said to have come from Kadesh of Naphtali, and it is further asserted that Hazor had already been taken and destroyed in the time of Joshua.
The author of the book of Judges, however, failed to see the discrepancies which have been discovered by the modern European critic, and he has accordingly set the prose narrative by the side of the Song without note or comment. As the king of Hazor did not personally take part in the battle on the banks of the Kishon, there was no occasion for any reference to him in the Song, and that the commander of his army should have been one of his royal allies is surely nothing extraordinary. In the Song, Barak is expressly distinguished from ‘the princes of Issachar,’[[311]] and the question of the destruction of Hazor by Joshua has already been dealt with. It is a gratuitous supposition that the introduction of Jabin into the narrative, and the reference to Harosheth, are the inventions of popular legend or interested historians.
The prophetess Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, ‘judged Israel’ at the time of the war. Her name means ‘Bee,’ and a connection has been sought between it and the fact that the priestesses of Apollo at Delphi, of Dêmêter, of Artemis, and of Kybelê, were called ‘bees,’ while the high priest of Artemis at Ephesus bore the title of the ‘king-bee.’[[312]] We might as well look for a connection between the name of her husband and the ‘lamps’ of the sanctuary. Deborah ‘judged Israel’ because she was a prophetess, because she was the interpretress of the will of Yahveh, whose spirit breathed within her. The ‘judgments’ she delivered were accordingly the judgments of Yahveh Himself, and the indwelling of His spirit was the sign of her claim to the office of ‘judge.’ We hear of other prophetesses in Israel besides Deborah; Huldah, for example, who was consulted by the king and the priests in the reign of Josiah. The position held by the prophetess prevented the Israelitish women from sinking into the abject condition of the women among some of the Arab and other Semitic tribes. In fact, women have played a leading part in Hebrew history. It has long ago been noticed that the mother had much to do with the character of the successive kings of Judah, and Athaliah of Samaria filled a prominent place in the history of the northern kingdom. Prophecy was no respecter of persons; it came to rich and poor, to learned and simple, to men and women alike, and upon whomsoever the spirit of prophecy fell, it made him fit to be the leader and the counsellor of his people. Deborah had been marked out by Yahveh Himself to be the judge of Israel.
She dwelt, we are told, under the palm-tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Beth-el in Mount Ephraim. She was, therefore, presumably of Ephraimitish descent, though the conclusion does not necessarily follow, and the palm-tree which was called after her continued to be a landmark on the high-road down to the time when the narrative in the book of Judges was written. There was another tree, a terebinth, and not a palm, which stood within the sacred precincts of Beth-el itself, and also bore the name of Deborah, but this Deborah was said to have been Rebekah’s nurse, whose tomb was pointed out under the branches of the tree.[[313]] The writers of the Old Testament have carefully distinguished between the two trees; it has been reserved for modern criticism to confound them.
With a woman’s insight and enthusiasm, Deborah perceived that the time had come when the highways should no longer be deserted, and when the northern tribes of Israel should be freed from their bondage to the Canaanite, and she also perceived who it was that was destined to lead the Israelitish troops to victory. This was Barak of Kadesh in Naphtali, the near neighbour of Jabin and Sisera. Like the Carthaginian Barcas, he bore a name—‘the Lightning’—which fitly symbolised the vengeance he was born to take on the enemies of Israel.[[314]] But Barak shrank from the undertaking at first, and it was not until the prophetess had consented to go with him to Kadesh that he summoned his countrymen together, and occupied the summit of Mount Tabor. Here, protected by the forests which clothed its slopes, he trained and multiplied his forces until he felt strong enough to attack the foe. Then he descended into the plain of Megiddo, where the Canaanitish host was marching from Harosheth to meet him. It was the old battlefield of Canaan; it was there that in the days of the Egyptian conquerors the fate of the country had been decided and the Canaanitish princes under Hittite commanders from Kadesh on the Orontes had been utterly overthrown.