In the camp on the lofty summit of Tabor, Barak had done more than train his men. Time had been given them in which to provide themselves with arms. Deborah declares that in the days of the oppression a shield or spear had not been seen ‘among forty thousand in Israel.’[[315]] The statement receives explanation from what we are told of the policy of the Philistines at a later date. When they had laid the Israelites under tribute in the time of Samuel, they banished all the smiths from the land of Israel, to prevent ‘the Hebrews’ from making themselves ‘swords and spears’ (1 Sam. xiii. 19). Agricultural implements alone were allowed (ver. 20). It would seem that a similar policy had been pursued by the Philistines and Canaanites in the earlier age of Deborah, though probably with less success. At all events Heber the Kenite, or itinerant ‘smith,’ still pitched his tent in Israelitish territory, and his wife Jael sympathised with the Israelites rather than with their Canaanitish lords.
When Thothmes III. of Egypt met the confederated kings of Canaan in the plain of Megiddo, they were led by the Hittite sovereign of Kadesh on the Orontes. It is possible that Barak was called upon to meet a similar combination of forces. Sisera is not a Semitic name, while, as Mr. Tomkins has pointed out, it finds striking analogies in such Hittite names as Khata-sar, Khilip-sar, and Pi-siri. The Hittite power at Kadesh on the Orontes had not yet passed away. It still existed in the time of David, when it formed one of the frontiers of the Israelitish kingdom.[[316]] In the age of the Tel el-Amarna letters we find the Hittites intriguing in Palestine along with Mitanni or Naharaim, and it is not likely that they would have been less disposed to resume their old influence in that country when Egypt was no longer to be feared. Sisera may not only have been the commander of the Canaanitish forces, but also a Hittite prince, nominally the ally of Jabin, but in reality his suzerain lord. He dwelt, we are told, in ‘Harosheth of the Gentiles,’ an otherwise unknown place. It may have been in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ (Is. ix. 1), but it may also have been further north among the Gentile Hittites of Kadesh.[[317]]
The battle took place on the banks of the Kishon, and ended in a complete victory for the Israelites. The nine hundred iron chariots of Sisera availed him nothing; ‘the stars in their courses’ had fought against him. He escaped on foot to the tent of Heber the Kenite, whose wife Jael received him as a guest, and then murdered him by driving a peg of the tent through his temples while he lay asleep. When Barak arrived in pursuit, Jael showed him the corpse of his enemy.
The pæan of triumph, ‘sung by Deborah and Barak’ on the day of the victory, is one of the oldest fragments of Hebrew poetry. To its antiquity and the archaic character of its language are due the many corruptions of the text. Some of the passages in it are quite unintelligible as they stand, and the conjectural emendations that have been proposed for them are seldom acceptable except to their authors.[[318]] But, as a whole, the pæan is not only a magnificent relic of ancient Hebrew song, full of fire and vivid imagery, it is also a document of the highest value for the historian. It gives us a picture of Israelitish life and thought in the age of the Judges, untouched by the hands of compilers and historians, and few have been hardy enough to question its genuineness. It is a solid proof that the traditional view of Israelitish history is more correct than that which modern criticism would substitute for it, and that the ‘development’ of Israelitish religion, of which we have heard so much, is a mere product of the imagination. The belief in Yahveh displayed in the Song is as uncompromising as that of later Judaism; Yahveh is the God of Israel, who has fought for His people, and beside Him there is no other god. The monotheism of Deborah is the monotheism of the Pentateuch. Nor is the song less of a witness to the truth of the history which we have in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua. It tells us that Yahveh revealed Himself to Israel on Mount Sinai, and it distinguishes the tribes one from the other, and assigns to them the territories which bore their names.
The Song began with words which, as we see from Deut. xxxiii. 2, Ps. lxviii. 7, were a common property of Hebrew poetry.
‘For the avenging of Israel,
When the people gave themselves as a freewill offering,
Praise ye Yahveh!
Hear, O ye kings, give ear, O ye princes,
I will sing unto Yahveh, even I,