Deborah

Israeli prophet and military leader

• Born: fl. c. 1200 b.c.e.-1125 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Central Israel

Early Life

The biblical figure named Deborah (DEHB-oh-rah) is believed to have lived between 1200 b.c.e. and 1125 b.c.e. These years, falling between the death of Joshua and the institution of the monarchy in ancient Israel, are recounted in the biblical book of Judges. Tradition assigns Joshua as Moses’s successor, charged with leading the loose federation of Hebrew tribes that were resettling ancestral lands in the area then known as Canaan. Whether or not the initial stage of resettlement proceeded as a unified military effort under Joshua, instability marked the years chronicled in Judges. Archaeological evidence supports a scenario of periods of war and crisis alternating with peaceful intervals during the twelfth and eleventh centuries b.c.e. Most towns in the region apparently suffered destruction, indicating a time of turmoil and uncertainty.

The Bible views the era as a cycle of lapses into idolatry, punished by Yahweh (the god of Abraham) through the agency of outside aggressors, followed by repentance and subsequent deliverance by divinely appointed leaders, or “judges.” In Deborah’s lifetime, the Israelites had become enslaved to Jabin, the king of Canaan. Scripture states that following the death of the judge Ehud, the people had fallen under the sway of gods other than Yahweh, who, in turn, had given them up to their Canaanite oppressors.

The vulnerability of the Israelite population during Deborah’s formative years would have highlighted her role as childbearer, particularly in a patriarchal society in which a man could sell his daughter as payment for debts. The primacy of survival, however, also required that women labor alongside men for the good of the community. Deborah’s development may have been affected by her tribal affiliation. Residing in the hill country in what is now central Israel, she was most likely a member of the tribe of Ephraim. The central position of that tribe’s area of settlement, along with the fact that the religious center of Shiloh was located in the territory, engendered in the Ephraimites a proud and even militant spirit.

Life’s Work

The fourth chapter of the biblical book of Judges introduces Deborah as a prophet to whom people came to settle controversies. She is described as bestowing her counsel under a palm tree, apparently a sacred site popularly associated with the burial place of Deborah, the nurse of the matriarch Rebecca.

Some see in this image the kahin (or kahina), known from nomadic Arabic tribes as a kind of magician or fortune-teller holding court and dispensing judgments in a sanctified place. A common phenomenon in antiquity, prophecy was essentially oracular; that is, it involved communication of the divine will regarding a specific matter. The prophet thus played a prominent role in the political life of a community by delivering messages in the name of a god. Nothing in the biblical account indicates that Deborah as a woman functioned in the role of prophet any differently than would a man. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that, as a woman whose priority was childrearing, her calling was, at best, part-time during her childbearing years and may not even have begun until later in life.

As one to whom they came with their troubles and concerns, Deborah was no doubt keenly aware of her people’s suffering under Jabin. Headed by Jabin’s field commander, Sisera, the Canaanite army was equipped with iron chariots, giving them considerable military superiority over the Israelites, who were still technologically in the Bronze Age. This advantage enabled the Canaanites to control the passage through the valleys that separated the mountain tribes in the center of the land—including Ephraim, where Deborah resided—and those in the north, in Galilee, thus ensuring their subjugation of the Israelites.

Despite this obstacle, after twenty years of domination, Deborah initiated a war of liberation by summoning a military commander, a man named Barak, out of Kedesh-Naphtali in the northern reaches of the territory. Because of the similarity of meaning between the name Barak (“lightning”) and that of Deborah’s apparent husband, Lapidoth (“torches”), some medieval commentators identify Barak as her spouse. Most commentators, however, fail to find this identification borne out by the context. Based on the ambiguity stemming from the Hebrew word esheth, signifying either “woman” or “wife,” and the question of whether or not Lapidoth is a proper noun, at least one commentator, Pseudo-Philo, in Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (first century c.e.; Biblical Antiquities, 1917) interprets esheth lapidoth to mean “fiery woman,” or “enlightener.” The phrase therefore refers to Deborah herself and not her marital status (though given the social conventions of the time, it is doubtful that Deborah was unmarried, whether or not her husband is named in the biblical account).

In any event, in her role as prophet and now as judge, Deborah relayed Yahweh’s command that Barak gather a force of ten thousand volunteers to Mount Tabor, at the boundary of the territories of the northern tribes of Zebulun, Naphtali, and Issachar. Barak, convinced of Deborah’s power and influence, refused to act unless she accompanied him. She agreed, declaring that Sisera would suffer defeat at the hand of a woman.

True to Deborah’s reckoning, Sisera and his army approached Mount Tabor from the south, along the valley of the river Kishon. The strategy of the poorly armed Israelite tribes was to exploit the flooding of the riverbed and lure Sisera and his nine hundred iron chariots into the muddy river valley. The Israelites descended the mountain and engaged the enemy in Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo, a Canaanite town located near a tributary of the Kishon. As the Israelites had planned, the Canaanites’ chariots sank deep in the mire, leaving their troops to be routed by the Israelites. Not one of Sisera’s camp escaped, though Sisera himself fled by foot to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber, a Kenite with whom Jabin was apparently at peace. Offering Sisera hospitality, Jael then proceeded to drive a nail into his head as he slept. There Barak tracked Sisera down, defeated, as Deborah had said, by a woman—by herself as well as Jael, many would argue. The victory over Sisera that Deborah had inspired ushered in a forty-year span of prosperity for Israel, twice the years of their oppression.

The narrative in Judges 4 names only the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun as fighting in the battle against Sisera. The account of the victory in poetic form that follows in chapter 5, however, cites numerous tribes, either extolling their participation (Ephraim, Benjamin, and Issachar as well as Naphtali and Zebulun) or condemning their absence (Reuben, Dan, and Asher). This hymn of triumph is said to be sung by Deborah and Barak, though the Hebrew verb is in the feminine form. Also in support of the claim that what has become known as the “Song of Deborah” was indeed authored by a woman, commentators note the presence of many feminine images. Chief among them is Deborah as “a mother in Israel.” Her bold actions are understood to be that of a mother fiercely protective of her family—metaphorically, the family of her people. Female authorship is supported as well by the fact that more of the text is devoted to the actions of Jael and Sisera’s mother—imagined as anxiously awaiting her son’s return—than to a recapitulation of the battle.

Significance

The defeat of Sisera, instigated by Deborah, proved decisive in the decline of the Canaanite kingdom, thus easing the resettlement of the area by the Israelites. This proved significant in the history of religion, as both Judaism and Christianity developed from the nation that formed from Israelite expansion into the territory. Deborah’s poetic reconstruction of the defeat has also made a mark in literary history. The Song of Deborah is intensively studied as one of the most ancient texts in Scripture, and it also forms part of the Jewish liturgy.

Commentators have noted how unremarkable Deborah’s judgeship appears in the biblical text. While the Scripture portrays Deborah as a woman of power and influence, interpreters of the biblical tradition have often blunted her impact. Flavius Josephus, in his first century account of Jewish history (Antiquitates Judaicae, 93 c.e.; The Antiquities of the Jews, 1773), omits any mention of Deborah’s role as military strategist or judge, displaying a discomfort with a woman exercising authority over men that appears in rabbinical commentaries as well. The rabbis actually chastise Deborah for sending for Barak rather than going to him.

“We never hear sermons pointing women to the heroic virtues of Deborah as worthy of their imitation,” bemoaned nineteenth century American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Instead, she noted, “the lessons doled out to women” exhorted “meekness and self-abnegation.” Today, the precedent set by Deborah has taken on new significance—in large part as a result of the rise of the women’s movement and the rebirth of the state of Israel, whose fourth prime minister was a woman and whose women have, from the nation’s beginning, served in its military.

Bibliography

Bird, Phyllis. “Images of Women in the Old Testament.” In Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Writing from a feminist perspective, Bird views Deborah as an exceptional woman whose story is recounted in a book that portrays a man’s world, that is, a world dominated by war and issues of power and control.

Brown, Cheryl Anne. No Longer Be Silent: First Century Portraits of Biblical Women. Gender and the Biblical Tradition Series. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. Examines references to Deborah in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities and Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, retellings of the biblical narrative composed during Judaism’s and Christianity’s formative years. Brown’s discussion demonstrates the variability of Deborah’s image in Western religious tradition. Includes bibliography, index, and endnotes.

Klein, Lillian R. From Deborah to Esther: Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2003. Examines biblical portraits of women, including Deborah, and the dynamics of gender, honor, and power therein.

Lacks, Roslyn. Women and Judaism: Myth, History, and Struggle. New York: Doubleday, 1980. Concludes that Deborah’s story counteracts conventional assumptions about women derived from elsewhere in the Bible as well as from rabbinic literature. Includes bibliography, index, and endnotes.

Phipps, William E. Assertive Biblical Women. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Briefly examines Deborah in her various leadership roles. Contends that ancient societies practiced gender egalitarianism to a greater degree than did later generations. Offers endnotes as well as an index and select bibliography.

Williams, James G. Women Recounted: Narrative Thinking and the God of Israel. Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1982. Views the biblical texts from a literary perspective, so that the figure of Deborah owes less to historical accuracy than to ancient literary conventions. Contains a bibliography, endnotes, and an index of biblical passages.