4 with many tears, the nurse of Jacob.1 The other was a solitary palm, which, in all probability, had given its name to an adjacent sanctuary, Baal-Tamar,2 'the sanctuary of the palm,' but which was also known in after times 'as the palm-tree of Deborah.'3 Under this palm, as Saul afterwards under the pomegranate-tree of Migron, as S. Louis under the oak-tree of Vincennes, dwelt Deborah the wife of Lapidoth, to whom the sons of Israel came up to receive her wise answers. She is the magnificent impersonation of the free spirit of the Jewish people and of Jewish life. On the coins of the Roman Empire, Judæa is represented as a woman seated under a palm-tree, captive and weeping. It is the contrast of that figure which will best place before us the character and call of Deborah. It is the same Judæan palm, under whose shadow she sits, but not with downcast eyes, and folded hands, and extinguished hopes; with all the fire of faith and energy, eager for the battle, confident of the victory. As the German prophetess Velleda roused her people against the invaders from Rome, as the simple peasant girl of France, who by communing with mysterious angels' voices roused her countrymen against the English dominion, when princes and statesmen had well-nigh given up the cause, so the heads of Israel 'ceased and ceased, until that she, Deborah, arose, that 'she arose, a mother' in Israel.' Her appearance was like a new epoch. They chose new chiefs that came as new gods among them. It was she who turned her eyes and the eyes of the nation to the fitting leader. As always in these wars, he was to come from the tribe that most immediately suffered from the yoke of the oppressor. High up in the north, almost within sight of the capital of Jabin, was the sanctuary of the tribe of Naphtali-Kedesh-Naphtali. It is a spot which, Naphtali. though mentioned nowhere else in direct connexion with the Sacred history, retained its sanctity long afterwards." Kedesh from her patriarchal namesake, by whose Planted on a hill overlooking a double platform, or green upland plain, amongst the mountains of Naphtali, its site is covered with ancient ruins beyond any other spot in Western Palestine, if we except the ancient capitals of Hebron, Jerusalem, and Samaria,. Tombs of every kind, rock-hewn caves, stone coffins thrust into the earth, elaborate mausoleums, indicate the reverence in which it must have been held in successive generations of the Jewish people. In this remote sanctuary lived a chief, who bore the significant name—which afterwards reappears amongst the warriors of Carthage-'Barak'-'Barca'-'Lightning.' His famemust have been wide-spread to have reached the prophetess in her remote dwelling at Bethel. From his native place she summoned him to her side, and delivered to him her prophetic command. He, as if oppressed by the presence of a loftier spirit than his own, refuses to act, unless she were with him to guide his movements, and (according to the Septuagint version) to name 2 the very day which should be auspicious for his effort: 'For I know 'not the day on which the Lord will send his good angel with 'me.' She replies at once with the Hebrew emphasis: 'I will 'go, I will go ;' adding the reservation, that the honour should not rest with the man who thus leaned upon a woman, but that a woman should reap the glory of the day of which a woman had been the adviser. It was from Kedesh that the insurrection, thus organised, spread from tribe to tribe. The temperature of the zeal of the different portions of the nation can be traced almost in proportion to their nearness to the centre of the agitation. The main support of the cause was naturally derived from the northern tribes, who were the chief sufferers from the oppressor, and who fell most immediately within the range of Barak's influence. The leading tribe, conjointly with Barak's own clan of Naphtali, but even more conspicuously, was Zebulun,3 as though the spirit of the neighbouring population was less crushed than that which lay The gathering of the tribes. close under the walls of Jabin's capital. The sceptres or standards of Zebulun stamped themselves on the mind of the beholders, as the two kindred tribes drew near to 'the high 'places of the field'1 of the upland plain of Kedesh, ready 'to 'throw' their lives headlong into the mortal struggle. With them, but in a subordinate place, were the chiefs of Issachar,2 roused apparently by Deborah herself, as she passed over the plain of Esdraelon on her way to Kedesh. To her influence also must be ascribed the rising of the central tribes around her residence at Bethel. From the mountain which bore the name of Amalek came a band of Ephraimites. The war-cry of Benjamin, After thee, Benjamin!'3 was raised, and from the north-eastern portion of Manasseh came representatives bearing some high title which distinguished them from the surrounding chiefs. Three portions of the nation remained aloof. Of Judah nothing is said. Dan and Asher, the two maritime tribes, clung the one to his ships in the harbour of Joppa, the other to the sea-shore by the Bay of Acre. The Trans-Jordanic tribes met by one of the rushing streams of their native hillsthe Arnon or the Jabbok-to decide on their course. 'Great 'was the debate.' The pastoral Reuben preferred to linger among the sheepfolds, among the whistling pipes of the shepherds. 'Great was the wavering' that followed. And the nomadic Gileadites abode in their tents or their cities safe beyond the Jordan valley. These, however, were exceptions. It was a general revival of the national spirit, such as rarely occurred. The leaders are.described as filling their places with an ardour worthy of their position. 'The chiefs became the chiefs,' in deed 6 well as in name. 'The lawgivers of Israel willingly offered as 5 See Ewald, iii. 88, note. 'On Lebanon we met a troop of goats, the goat-herds singing in chorus to the music of a well'played reed-pipe.' (Miss Beaufort's Travels, i. 283.) 6 Judg. v. 15, 16 (Hebrew). 'themselves for the people.'1 'The Lord came down amongst 'the mighty.' And to this the nation responded with a readiness, unlike their usual sluggishness, as under Gideon and Saul. 'The people willingly offered themselves.'2 'They 'that rode on white asses, they that sate on rich carpets of 'state, they that humbly walked by the way,'3 all joined in this solemn enterprise. The meeting on Mount Tabor. The muster-place was Mount Tabor. The marked isolation of the mountain, the broad green sward on its summit, possibly the first beginnings of the fortress which crowned its height in later times, pointed it out as the encampment of the northern tribes, in the centre of which it stood. It has been already noticed that, in all probability, this was the mountain to which the people of 'Zebulun and Issachar' are called by Moses 'to offer sacrifices ' of righteousness.'4 There two at least of the tribes, Zebulun and Naphtali, waited under their leaders for the appearance of the enemy. A village on the wooded slope of the hill still bears the name of Deborah, possibly from this connexion with her history. The enemy were not without tidings of the insurrection. Close beside Kedesh-Naphtali was a tribe, hovering between Israel and Canaan, which we shall shortly meet again, through which (so we are led to infer3) this information came. From Harosheth of the Gentiles-the woodcuttings' or 'quarries ' of the mixed heathen population on the outskirts of Lebanon— came down the Canaanite host, with the chariots of iron, in which, after the manner of their countrymen, they trusted as invincible. Their leader-the first, indeed the only, commander of whom we hear by name on the adverse side of these long wars-was himself a native of Harosheth, and a potentate of sufficient grandeur to have his mother recognised in the surrounding tribes as a kind of queen-mother of the place; and whose family traditions had struck such root, that the name of 'Sisera' occurs long afterwards in the history, and 'Judg. 9, 13 (Hebrew). 2 Judg. v. 2. 3 Judg. v. 10. "Judg. iv. 11. Deut. xxxiii. 19. 3 Taanach. 2 the great Jewish Rabbi Akiba1 claimed to be descended from him. Jabin himself seems not to have been present. But, as in the former battle by the waters of Merom, so now several kings of the Canaanites had joined him ;2 and they, with all their forces, encamped in the plain of Esdraelon, now for the first time the battle-field of Israel, where their chariots and cavalry could act most effectively. They took up their position in the south-west corner of the plain, where a long spur, now clad with olives, runs out from the hills of Manasseh. On this promontory still stands a large stone village. Its name, Taanak,3 marks the site of the Canaanitish fortress of Taanach, beside which, doubtless, as occupied by a kindred unconquered population, the Canaanite kings were entrenched. It is just at this point that the traveller catches the first distinct view of the arched summit of Tabor. From that summit Deborah must have watched the gradual drawing of the enemy towards the spot of her predicted triumph. She raised the cry, which twice over occurs in the story of the battle, 'Arise, Barak ! '4 She gave with unhesitating confidence to the doubting troops the augury which he had asked before the insurrection began—' This,' this and no other, 'is the day when the Lord shall deliver 'Sisera into thy hand.'5 Down from the wooded heights descended Barak and his ten thousand men. The accounts of his descent emphatically repeat that he was 'on foot,' and thus forcibly contrast his infantry with the horses and chariots of his enemies. From Tabor to Taanach is a march of about thirteen miles, and therefore the approach must have been long foreseen by the Canaanitish forces. They moved westwards along the plain, which here forms, as it were, a large bay to the south, between the projecting promontory of Taanach and the 1 See Milman's Hist. of the Jews, iii. 115. 2 Judg. v. 3, 19. 3 Judg. i. 27; v. 19. Ibid. iv. 14 (Hebrew); v. 12. "Ibid. iv. 8 (LXX.), 14; Joseph. Ant. v. 5, § 3. Ibid. iv. 10; v. 15. "It has been suggested to me that the army of Barak, with the Israelite love of the hills, may have kept along the ridges of Little Hermon and the southern hills, and descended upon Sisera from the heights immediately above Taanach. This would account for the flight of the Canaanites towards Endor. |