Judges 4:1-12

¹After Ehud died, the Israelis again started doing things Yahweh said were very evil.

²So he allowed the army of Jabin, one of the kings of Canaan land, who ruled in Hazor city, to conquer the Israelis. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-Haggoyim.

³Sisera's army had 900 chariots. For twenty years he oppressed the Israelis. Then they pleaded to Yahweh to help them.

⁴At that time Deborah, who was the wife of Lappidoth, was a prophetess who had become the leader in Israel.

⁵She would sit under her palm tree at a place between Ramah and Bethel, in the hilly area where the descendants of Ephraim lived, and people would come to her and ask her to settle disputes between them.

⁶One day she summoned Barak, the son of Abinoam, when he was in Kedesh, in the area where the descendants of Naphtali lived. She said to him, “This is what Yahweh, the God whom we Israelis worship, is commanding you to do: 'Take with you a thousand men, some from the descendants of Naphtali and some from the descendants of Zebulun, and lead them to Tabor Mountain.

⁷Yahweh will lure Sisera, the commander of King Jabin's army, to come with his chariots and his army, to the Kishon River, a few miles away. I will enable your men to defeat them there.' ”

⁸Barak replied, “I will go only if you go with me.”

⁹She replied, “Okay, I will go with you. But because that is what you have decided to do, Yahweh will enable a woman to defeat Sisera, and the result will be that ◄you will not be honored/people will not honor you► for doing that.”

¹⁰So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh. There he summoned men from Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men came to him, and then they went together with Deborah to Tabor Mountain.

¹¹At that time Heber, one of the descendants of the Ken people-group, had moved with his wife Jael from the area where that group lived, and set up his tent near the big oak tree at Zaanannim, near Kedesh. Heber was a descendant of Moses' brother-in-law Hobab.

¹²Someone told Sisera that Barak had gone up on Tabor Mountain with an army.