Jg. 5: Deborah's Song

Judges 5:31 "'So may all your enemies perish, O LORD! But may they who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.' Then the land had peace forty years."

With victory is singing. This is another example. Moses had a couple. Israel had a couple. Music is important to worshiping God. Music is a way to express appreciation to God. It would be easy to read this as a song, just an artistic rendering of what God has done, and how man appreciates him. But I think there are many insights about the nature of man and the nature of creation in Deborah's song.

First of all, Deborah describes how the earth trembles, the clouds pour down water, and the mountains quake in God's mere presence. Next, and more wondrous and mystifying is the section in verse 20:

From the heavens the stars fought,
from their courses they fought against Sisera.

Is this some sort of endorsement of astrology? Hardly. The stars are a part of creation. My presumption here is that even then, travelers (including Sisera) navigated using the stars. Could God have nudged the stars around to confuse Sisera? The river is credited as sweeping enemies away. Each corner of the earth, and each section of creation seems to take part in this advancing of Israel. This will of God. Creation has consistently obeyed.

There is reward and blessing for those who take part in the battle...curses (or at the very least denigration) for those who do not.

There is a retelling of Sisera's slaying by Jael. The song makes it appear as though Sisera struggled or was conscious when he died, but the point is, he died. And Jael was the killer.

The song takes a particularly dark turn in verse 28, when it portray's Sisera's mother as watching and waiting for her son...the commander to return, and he never does, nor would she stop waiting, and she and her ladies perpetuate the false hope that he is busy dividing plunder.

I love the challenge at the end..."May those who love you be like the sun, when it rises in its strength." Would creation be something to model one's character after?

Then at the end, it doesn't say "peace happily ever after," it says "peace for forty years." The cycle. 40 years appears to be some sort of a cycle...a stage...