Parashat
Be-Shalah 5768/
Lectures on
the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of
“I,
Deborah” – Two Remarks on the Haftarah of Be-Shalah
Professor
Moshe Zipor, Emeritus
Department of Bible
1. Archaic (outdated) words
In her song, Deborah describes the sorry state of security
and the depressed atmosphere “in the days of Shamgar son of Anath, in the days
of Yael”: the roads were empty, no
one daring to travel; people withdrew into their towns, behind fortifications,
and for fear of enemies there remained no unwalled cities.
Such were the conditions, she sang,
“Till I arose [shakamti], I, Deborah, till I arose, a mother in
On this, Rav
A haughty person … if
he is a prophet, he loses his power of prophecy. We learn this from Deborah; as
it is written, “Deliverance ceased, ceased in
However, “I, Deborah” can be interpreted differently.
In the haftarah of Parashat
Va-Yera it is written, “At this season next year, you [spelled a-t-y,
read in the margin as at] will be embracing a son” (II Kings
One should not necessarily think that the grammatical form that is given in the margins as the way the word should be read (kri or kre) is necessarily the correct one and that the spelling in the text (called the ketiv) is a corruption, for this verb form with final yod for the second-person singular feminine appears elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 3:4: “Just now you called [written qrty, which can be vocalized as qarati, a first-person form that makes no sense in context] to Me, ‘Father’” and a marginal remark gives the proper reading as qarat (= you called). Likewise, in Jeremiah 31:20, we read: “Keep in mind the highway, the road that you traveled” [written hlkhty, as if first-person halakhti, but the kri in the margin is halakht = you traveled, as occurs later on in the same verse), and many other instances.
This form with final vowel /ī/ is used for the second-person
singular feminine in Arabic and other Semitic languages.
In other words, the form that appears in
the biblical text is proper, but archaic, having been superseded by the form
without a final vowel. This would
also seem to be the explanation for Jeremiah 2:20:
“For long ago you broke [shavarti]
your yoke, tore off [nitaqti] your yoke-bands, and said, ‘I will not
work,’” in which passage the prophet compares
Perhaps the verses in the Song of Deborah can be explained
similarly. The words, “Awake [uri],
awake, O Deborah,” are a call of encouragement by the audience hearing
Deborah’s song, and immediately afterwards comes the rallying call to Barak,
the warrior: “Arise, O Barak, take
your captives, O son of Abinoam!”
In antiquity it was common for the audience to join in as the poet sang.
In the same way one can explain Judges
5:7 which follows the description of the depressed state the country was in.
The audience then responded, “[All this
was the condition] till you arose [shaqamti], O Deborah, till [you]
arose, O mother, in
If we accept this interpretation, then there is no issue of Deborah being haughty or self-aggrandizing here. Perhaps in her song she intended only to praise the warriors, including Yael for her brave deed, and not to say a thing about her share in the battle. She may have seen herself merely as the one transmitting the word of the Lord and encouraging the people to go to war, and now she was singing a song of deliverance. Only after the battle had concluded as it did, with Yael and not Barak (or another of the warriors) being the one to kill Sisera, Yavin’s army commander, did her earlier words to Barak become clear (she essentially gave a prophecy without truly knowing what it was about): “For then the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman” (Judges 4:9). At that time, before the battle, one might have thought that the “woman” would be Deborah herself, whom Barak had asked to go along with him. In fact, it was Yael.
2. The
battle of Deborah and Barak – A Second Splitting of the
The narrative of Barak’s battle against Sisera and the Song
of Deborah, in Judges, chapters 4 and 5, corresponds in many ways to the
narrative of the splitting of the
Judges 4-5 |
Exodus 14-15 |
|
Sisera was informed [va-yugad] (that
Barak … had gone up to So Sisera ordered all his chariots – nine hundred iron chariots and all the troops (‘am) he had |
When the king of ordered his chariot … six hundred of his picked chariots and took his men (‘am) with him |
|
“They must be dividing the spoil they have found” |
The foe said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil |
|
And the Lord threw … into panic Sisera and all his chariots and army |
The Lord looked down … and threw… into panic the Egyptian army … all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots and horsemen |
|
This is the day on which the Lord will deliver Sisera into your hands The Lord is marching before you |
Thus the Lord delivered (The Lord went before them, |
|
The stars fought from heaven, … fought against Sisera |
For the Lord is fighting for them against |
|
Not a man was left |
Not one of them remained |
|
… had fled on foot |
Let us flee from the Israelites |
|
On that day God subdued King Yavin … before the Israelites |
Thus the Lord delivered … that day |
|
On that day Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang I will sing, will sing to the Lord |
Then Moses and the Israelites sang I will sing to the Lord |
|
Hear, O kings! |
(The peoples hear) |
|
Advanced from the country of |
(the clans of |
The book of Judges, it seems, wishes to portray the Lord’s
deliverance in the battle of Barak and Deborah as a reenactment of the miracle
of the splitting of the
[1] The future deliverance of