Deborah

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Deborah or Dvora was a prophetess and the fourth Judge and only female Judge of pre-monarchic Israel in the Old Testament (Tanakh). Her story is told twice in chapters 4 and 5 of Judges. The first account is prose, relating the victory of Israelite forces led by General Barak, whom Deborah called forth but prophesied would not achieve the final victory over the Canaanite general Sisera himself. That honor went to Yael, the wife of Heber, a Kenite tentmaker. Yael killed Sisera by driving a tent peg through his head as he slept.

Judges 5 gives this same story in poetic form. This passage, often called The Song of Deborah may date to as early as the 8th century BC, which would make it one of the oldest passages of the Bible and the earliest extant sample of Hebrew poetry. Two dates are given in the text, 28:30 and 28:31, the first pointing to the fall of Ephraim (722 BCE), the other to a time near the beginning of the royal house of Israel.

It is also significant because it is one of the oldest extant passages that portrays fighting women. The poem may have been included in the Book of the Wars of the Lord mentioned in Numbers 21:14.

Little is known about Deborah's personal life. She was apparently married to a man named Lapidoth (meaning "torches"), but this name is not extant outside of the Book of Judges and might simply mean that Deborah herself was a "fiery" spirit. She was a poet and she rendered her judgments beneath a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the land of Benjamin. Some people refer to her as the mother of Israel. After her victory over Sisera and the Canaanite army, there was peace in the land for forty years.

See also

• Biblical judges
• Book of Judges
• List of women warriors in folklore, literature, and popular culture
• Animal names as first names in Hebrew

External links

• Book of Judges article (Jewish Encyclopedia)
• Debbora - Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Biblical Hebrew Poetry - Reconstructing the Original Oral, Aural and Visual Experience
• Song of Deborah (Judges 5) Reconstructed

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 15:31:34 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation