The waters

first beginnings of Carmel. The plain is luxuriant with weeds and corn. One solitary tree rises from the midst of it. The great caravan route from Damascus to Egypt passes, and probably at that time already passed, across it. At the head of this curve stood another unsubdued Canaanitish fortress, Megiddo, afterwards the station of a Roman of Megiddo. Legion,' whence its present name Ledjûn. Towards the cover of this, it may be, secure fastness, but still keeping along the level plain, the Canaanitish army moved. Its final encampment was beside the numerous rivulets which, descending from the hills of Megiddo into the Kishon, as it flows in a broader stream through the corn-fields below, may well have been known as 'the waters of Megiddo.'1 It was at this critical moment that (as we learn directly from Josephus,2 and indirectly from the song of Deborah) a tremendous storm of sleet and hail gathered from the east, and burst over the plain, driving full in the faces of the advancing Canaanites. 'The stars3 in their courses fought with Sisera.' As in like case in the battle of Cressy, the slingers and the archers were disabled by the rain, the swordsmen were crippled by the biting cold. The Israelites, on the other hand, having the storm on their rear, were less troubled by it, and derived confidence from the consciousness of this Providential aid. The confusion became great. The 'rain descended,' the four rivulets of Megiddo were swelled into powerful streams, the torrent of the Kishon rose into a flood, the plain became a morass. The chariots and the horses, which should have gained the day for the Canaanites, turned against them. They became entangled in the swamp; the torrent of Kishon— the torrent famous through former ages-swept them away in its furious eddies; and in that wild confusion 'the strength of the Canaanites was trodden down,' and 'the horsehoofs

1

1 Judg. v. 19. The whole of this scene

I traversed in 1862.

combined with the repetition of the word 'fought' from the previous verses, suggests the possibility that what is meant is the contrast between the fighting of the stars for Sisera, and the flood of the Kishon against him.

stamped and struggled by the means of the plungings and 'plungings of the mighty chiefs' in the quaking morass and the rising streams. Far and wide the vast army

The fall of Meroz.

The flight. fled, far through the eastern branch of the plain by Endor. There between Tabor and the Little Hermon, a carnage took place, long remembered, in which the corpses lay fattening the ground. Onwards from thence they still fled over the northern hills to the city of their great captain— Harosheth of the Gentiles.2 Fierce and rapid was the pursuit. One city, by which the pursuers and pursued passed, gave no help. 'Curse ye Meroz, curse ye with a curse its 'inhabitants, because they came not to the help of 'Jehovah.' So, as it would seem,3 spoke the prophetic voice of Deborah. We can imagine what was the crime and what the punishment from the analogous case of Succoth and Penuel, which, in like manner, gave no help when Gideon pursued the Midianites. The curse was so fully carried out, that the name of Meroz never again appears in the Sacred history. Of the Canaanite fugitives, none reached their own mountain fortress: even the tidings of the disaster were long delayed. From the high latticed windows of Harosheth, the inmates of Sisera's harem, his mother and her attendant princesses, are on the stretch of expectation for the sight of the war-car of their champion, with the lesser chariots around him. They sustain their hopes by counting over the spoils that he will bring home,-rich embroidery for themselves; female slaves for each of the chiefs. The prey would never That well-known chariot of iron would never return. It was left to rust on the banks of the Kishon, like Roderick's by the shores of the Guadalete. In the moment of the general panic, Sisera had sprung from his seat and escaped on foot, over the northern mountains towards Hazor. It must have been three days after the battle that he reached a spot, which V. 23.)

come.

"Which perished at Endor, and 'became as dung for the earth.' (Ps. xxxiii. 10.)

Eusebius and Jerome, however, mention a spot near Dothan, of this name. (Onomasticon de Locis Heb.)

2

seems to gather into itself, as in the last scene of an eventful drama, all the characters of the previous acts. Between Hazor, the capital of Jabin, and Kedesh-Naphtali, the birthplace of Barak-each within a day's journey of the other-lies, raised high above the plain of Merom, amongst the hills of Naphtali,1 a green plain, which joins almost imperceptibly with that overhung by Kedesh-Naphtali itself. This plain is The oak of still, and was then, studded with massive terebinths. Zaanaim. Naphtali itself seems to have derived from them the symbol of its tribe, a towering terebinth.' These trees were marked in that early age by a sight unusual in this part of Palestine. Underneath the spreading branches of one of them there dwelt, unlike the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, a settlement of Bedouins, living, as if in the desert, with their tents pitched, and their camels and asses around them, whence the spot had acquired the name of 'the Tere'binth,' or 'Oak, of the Unloading of Tents.' Between Heber, the chief of this little colony, and the King of Hazor there was peace. It would even seem that from him, or from his tribe, thus planted on the debatable ground between Kedesh and Hazor, Sisera had derived the first intelligence of the insurrection.4 Thither, therefore, it was that, confident in Arab fidelity, the wearied general turned his steps. He approached the tent, not of Heber, but, for the sake of greater security, the harem of the chieftainess Jael, the 'Gazelle." It was a fit name for a Bedouin's wife-especially for one whose family had come from the rocks of Engedi, 'the spring ' of the wild goat,' or 'chamois.' The long, low tent was spread under the tree, and from under its cover she advanced to meet him with the accustomed rever'Turn in, my lord, turn in, and fear not.' She covered him with a rough wrapper or rug, on the slightly raised divan

Jael.

ence.

'Josh. xix. 33, Allon-Zaananim, Judg. iv. 11, mistranslated' Plain of Zaanaim.' 2 Gen. xlix, 21 (Hebrew).

3 Dr. Williams (Lecture at Dublin, 1868, p. 30) supposes that in the physiognomy and manners of the present inhabitants

may be traced a remnant of the Kenites. * Judg. iv. 12.

4

5 From the security of the wife's tent, the valuables, culinary utensils, &c., are kept in it.

1

inside the tent; and he, exhausted with his flight, lay down, and then, lifting up his head, begged for a drop of water to cool his parched lips. She brought him more than water. She unfastened the mouth of the large skin, such as stand by Arab tents, which was full of sweet milk from the herds or the camels. She offered, as for a sacrificial feast, in the bowl2 used for illustrious guests, the thick curded milk, frothed like cream, and the weary man drank, and then (secure in the Bedouin hospitality which regards as doubly sure the life of one who has eaten and drunk at the hand of his host) he sank into a deep sleep, as she again drew round him the rough covering which for a moment she had withdrawn. Then she saw that her hour was come. She pulled up from the ground the large pointed peg or nail3 which fastened down The murder. the ropes of the tent, and held it in her left hand ; with her right hand she grasped the ponderous hammer or wooden mallet of the workmen of the tribe. Her attitude, her weapon, her deed, are described both in the historic and poetic account of the event, as if fixed in the national mind. She stands like the personification of the figure of speech, so famous in the names of Judas the Maccabee, and Charles Martel; the Hammer of her country's enemies. Step by step we see her advance; first, the dead silence with which she approaches the sleeper, as he lay on his side, 'slumbering with the weariness of one who has run far and fast,' then the successive blows with which she hammers, crushes, beats, and 'pierces through and through' the temples, till the point of the nail reaches the very ground on which the slumberer is stretched; and then comes the one convulsive bound, the contortion of

The word translated 'brought forth,' Judg. v. 25, has this meaning.

2The milk was presented to us in a 'wooden bowl; the liquid butter in an 'earthenware dish' (Irby and Mangles, 481). Once we had milk sweetened and 'curdled to the consistency of liquid jelly, 'too thick to be drunk, and only to be taken up with the hands' (482). In a meal with Aghyle Aga, a Bedouin chief, between Tiberias and Tabor, in 1862, we had both these beverages. The sour milk

(Lebban) was in a large pewter vessel, like a small barrel; a cup floated in it to skim and drink the contents. The sweet milk (Halib) was in a smaller pewter vessel, round like a pan, to be drunk by raising it to the lips. In both were dipped the large flexible cakes of Arab bread, which lay in profusion on the carpets.

3 Iron, in Jos. Ant. v. 5, § 4.

The word Maccab ('Hammer') is the very one used in Judg. iv. 21. See Lecture XLVIII.

agony with which the expiring man rolls over from the low divan, and lies weltering in blood between her feet as she strides over the lifeless corpse.1

At this moment Barak, the conqueror, appeared. He might be in direct pursuit of the fugitive chief. He might be approaching his native place, now hard by. Out from the tent, as before, came the undaunted chieftainess, and showed the dead corpse as it lay with the stake or tent-pin fixed firm in the shattered head. With this ghastly scene of the Three Neighbours of the hills of Naphtali, thus at last brought face to face, under the Terebinth of Kedesh, the direct narrative suddenly closes, as though its work were done. But Deborah's song of victory breaks in, and continues in its highest strains the echo of that day. In company with the returning The song of Deborah. conqueror, or herself leading the chorus, after the manner of Hebrew women, the Prophetess poured forth the hymn which marks the greatness of the crisis. It could be compared to nothing short of the day when Israel passed through the desert. The storm which had been sent to discomfit the Canaanite host recalled the trembling of the earth, the heavens and the clouds dropping water, the mountains melting from before the Lord. Barak, with his long train of spoils and prisoners, had 'led captivity captive.' The sentiment even of the woman's delight in the dresses won in the spoils transpires through the warlike rejoicing the pieces of embroidery are counted over in imagination as they are torn away from the mother and the harem of Sisera for the women of Israel. The feelings and the words of the song ran on through subsequent times, and in the Prophet Habakkuk, and still more in the 68th Psalm, we catch again the very same strains; the march through the desert; the flight of kings; the dividing of the spoil by those who tarried at home.2 It was, as the close of the hymn expresses it, like the full burst of

All these details may be seen by examining word by word the original of Judg. iv. 21; v. 26, 27.

2 Habak. iii. 3, 10, 13, 14; Ps. lxviii. 7, 8, 12, 13.