Wisdom Truck 9

 

This one I'm going to subtitle, "The Sure Thing".  And it's going to take us a while to get there.  So let me thumbnail the story as best I can to get us there.

We're now in the time of the Judges, and if you've been with me long enough, you know that Israel went in cycles back then.

And we are at the sin point once again. The judge is Deborah, the 'deliverer' Barak.  The enemy, Sisera, general for Jabin, king of "Canaan".  Deborah and Barak, led by God, crush Sisera's army and Sisera himself dies of a splitting headache.  That you can get from the main story in Judges 4.  But the meat of the story comes in Judges 5, when Deborah and Barak compose a song of victory, and bring in the things a dry telling of the tale cannot.

First things first, though- what was the sin?  As you ask that question, first ask, "How did a woman become judge of Israel?"  Because that was one big sin:  The men were cowards.  Did they have reason?  Sure.  Sisera had 900 chariots of iron- the highest of tech back then, when Israel was having to outsource to even get bronze swords.  But follow- Point one: Deborah's hubby was Lapidah, a name which means, "torch", but he was barely a sparkler in the story.  Barak means, "Lightning" and yet, what do we find out about him?

Jdg 4:6  And she sent and called for Barak, the son of Abinoam, out of Kadesh in Naphtali, and said to him, Has not Jehovah the God of Israel commanded? Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali, and of the sons of Zebulun with you. 

This implies he had already been told to gather an army by God- and was just sitting there!  And his response made it even worse:

Jdg 4:8  And Barak said to her, If you go with me, then I will go. And if you will not go with me, I will not go. 

He had faith in Deborah- but not in God!  I'd like to take the time to tell why Deborah was so special- basically, she was "the mother of her country"- but time is a premium, so let me put it like this:  In all the time of the judges, she was the ONLY judge to whom the people CAME TO HER.  Even Samuel rode a circuit, but Deborah stayed beneath the Oak tree near which her namesake was buried (which is the part that would take too long).  Another layer of cowardice come with what seems to be an out-of-place mention:

Jdg 4:11  And Heber the Kenite had broken away from the Kenites, he being of the children of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses. And he pitched his tent by the oak in Zaanaim, near Kedesh. 

Jdg 4:17  And Sisera fled on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. 

Heber was blood relation to Isareal, and was friends with Jabin, "because why make the boss mad?"  And it gets even worse. Above, we saw that Barak was commanded to gather troops from the tribes of Napthali and Zebulun; the song says Issachar also pitched in.  But the song also makes note of 4 tribes that did not...

Jdg 5:15  And my commanders in Issachar were with Deborah; as was Issachar, so was Barak. They were sent into the valley at his feet. Among the divisions of Reuben resolves of heart were great! 

Jdg 5:16  Why did you sit between the sheepfolds to hear the bleatings of flocks? At the divisions of Reuben searchings of heart were great! 

Jdg 5:17  Gilead remained beyond the Jordan; and why did Dan stay in ships? Asher sat at the shore by the water, and remained by his havens. 

Reuben talked about it, but never came; Gilead (Reuben and Manasseh), and Dan.  Significance here starts with what Jacob foretold about Reuben:

Gen 49:3  Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: 

Gen 49:4  Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch. 

"Unstable as water" says it all- but also hints that another of the sins was sexual in nature.  Dan was the biggest source of idolatry in Israel- why that tribe is NOT mentioned in Revelation.  So now we have cowardice, sex, and idolatry as the sins- but enough people came to Deborah for judgment that God acted.

And act he did:  Sisera charged into the valley of the river Kishon- and God let loose a torrent:

Jdg 5:20  They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. 

Jdg 5:21  The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength. 

Mired in the torrent, the charioteers were easy pickings for Barak's men.  Hold on, though, there were yet two more examples of cowardice:

Jdg 5:23  Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD, to the help of the LORD against the mighty. 

Who Meroz was, and why they stood by, we don't know.  But you get the point- God was angry at Israel for cowardice, because cowardice was the result of NOT TRUSTING GOD.

The last example? Well the price of Barak not doing it on his own was that he wouldn't get the glory; neither would Heber, to whose tent Sisera fled.  And though Heber was "buddy-buddy" with the bad guys, his wife Jael was another matter:

Jdg 4:21  Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. 

So how do we get to the sure thing?  Actually, there were two of them- one true and one false.  The true one was that when God says, "Don't be afraid, I'll be with you," He means it!  But the false one is our wisdom verse- in the song of Deborah:

Jdg 5:28  The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? 

Jdg 5:29  Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, 

Jdg 5:30  Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil? 

A "sure thing" that never happened, because the wisdom of Sisera's ladies were nothing before the Promise of God.