JUDGES 5: BIBLICAL POETRY

And now for something completely different than Judges 4, because we are going to leave the world of prose and enter into the world of Hebrew poetry. First we need to recognize how it is structured, not through the use of rhyme or rhythm, but with parallel ideas.

Identical Parallelism – Psalm 1:1

Happy are those

    who walk not         in the counsel          of the wicked,

    or stand                  in the way               of sinners,

    or sit                      in the seat                of scoffers.

There may be some progression of thought in the verbs here (walk, stand, sit), but not so in the nouns. This verse is best understood as one idea – don't associate with ungodly people.

Incomplete Parallelism – Psalm 1:5

Therefore the wicked     will not stand          in the judgment,

nor             sinners         (stand)                     in the congregation of the righteous.

Introverted Parallelism – Psalm 1:2

But their delight               is in the law of the LORD

                                X

and on his law                  they meditate day and night

Antithetic Parallelism – Psalm 1:6

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.

Judges 5:2: Let's turn to the beginning of Judges 5 and try to compress the thought into prose.

“When the princes in Israel      take the lead,

when the people                       willingly offer themselves.

                        Praise the LORD!”

In other words, when all the people of Israel are willingly united.

The poetic introduction to the story lasts through verse 9. We know this because that is where the second half of the inclusio appears.

Judges 5:9: “My heart goes out to the commanders of Israel who offered themselves willingly among the people. Praise the LORD!”

Note the repetition of the chorus: “praise the LORD!” as well as typical reversal in the language at the end, an example of what is called a chiasm:

people

        willingly

                offer themselves

--------------------

                offer themselves

        willingly

people

Judges 5:3: Hear,          O kings;

                    give ear,     O princes.

This is another example of identical parallelism. It begins a series of verses in which Deborah and Barak in turn address kings, princes, God, themselves, those who ride on donkeys or sit on rich carpets or who walk by the way, Benjamin, Reuben, Dan, and finally Deborah's own soul in verse 21. This type of figure of speech is called apostrophe, addressing someone else who may not be present.

Judges 5:4-5: Next are examples of hyperbole (exaggeration) and anthropomorphism (personification):

“LORD, when you went out...

        the earth trembled

                and the heavens poured

                the clouds indeed poured water

        the mountains quaked

before the LORD...”

These verses may be attributing human characteristics to forces of nature. But they could also be literal, as we shall see later.

Judges 5:7:  Here Deborah is not pictured as a prophet, judge or army commander, but a mother – an image that shows the love and care she had for her people. This brings in an emotional component we didn't get in Judges 4. It also introduces the whole idea of imagery used in the Bible (especially in poetry), which is a huge subject in itself.

A recent book entitled Dictionary of Biblical Imagery contains 1,000 pages of fine print that just skims the surface of that topic. To take one example of imagery, Joel 1 pictures a hoard of locust as army and in Joel 2 he describes an army as a hoard of locust. And all the stops are pulled out by John in Revelation 9 when these two images are combined with other allusions to create monsters.

The locusts are like horses equipped for battle (a combination of Joel 1 and 2), and their teeth were like lion's teeth (Joel 1:6)

Their tails were like scorpion's tails. There is only one mention in OT of punishment by means of scorpions, and that is found in I Kings 12 in King Rehoboam's threat to the people of Israel. Also, during the time of the Maccabees the Greeks punished rebels with a whip called “the scorpion.” So the scorpion image may remind us of the power of hostile rulers. Then there are thrown in allusions to the Parthians, Rome's only real enemy at this time. They rode into battle on horses, wore their hair long like a woman's, had polished bronze helmets that looked like gold crowns, and shot arrows from their horses while retreating. The monsters will torture people for five months, which may stand for the life cycle of locust or the time period that Roman troops harassed the Jews during their revolt. Revelation is filled with a rich mix of images drawn from both the Old Testament and current events.

Again, back to the text at hand:

Judges 5:14-18: Then we have a list of the various tribes who followed Barak into battle and get some clarification as to why only two tribes are mentioned in Judges 4. Apparently, some of the other tribes were reluctant to fight.

But this appears to be a contradiction with Chapter 4 where it seemed as if only the two tribes were commanded by God to come. It is through these apparent contradictions in parallel accounts that we are sometimes forced to wrestle with to try to make sense of them. It may lead to insights into God's foreknowledge and predestination. For example, did He perhaps know in advance that only two tribes would obey the command?

In any case, through the use of sarcasm, irony, personification and rhetorical questions, the tribes that chose not to follow are subjected to a taunt song. And here it is important to recognize the use of some figures of speech in which the intended meaning may in fact be the exact opposite of the literal meaning, and this has been greatly misunderstood at times.

Judges 5:20-21: Here are examples of hyperbole and apostrophe. These verses also clarify the question in Judges 4 as to how God threw panic into the enemy and chariots. He apparently caused the dry river bed to flood, miring all the chariots and neutralizing their strategic value in a battle on level ground. At this point, an alert reader might be reminded of another time when God caused a flood that wiped out an army on chariots, followed by a female prophet bursting into song to commemorate the victory – the crossing of the Red Sea followed by Miriam's song. This repeated theme shows that God is still protecting the people of Israel.

Judges 5:22: “Then loud beat the horses' hoofs with the galloping, galloping of his steeds.” "Galloping" in Hebrew is an example of onomatopoeia: dahara dahara.

Judges 5:25-26: Look at the pronouns in these verses:  He initiates the action as if he were in charge, but it is she who is fully in control from that point on. Notice that the poet has left out Sisera's request to say he wasn't there to anyone coming to the door since that would slow down the action and take away from the ironic contrasts.

Judges 5:27: And then we end up with a staccato repetition of one-syllable words that mimic a series of hammer blows.

        He sank,

                he fell,

                        he lay still

                              at her feet

                              at her feet                   

        he sank,

                he fell;

where he sank, there he fell dead.

At this point we shouldn't get hung up on the apparent contradiction with the previous chapter as to whether he was struck while he was up or lying down or whether he got up after the first blow. Just appreciate the literary skill with which the story is being told.

Now we come to an almost cinematic technique called cross-cutting or parallel editing, where scenes taking place at the same time but at different locations are spliced together to build suspense. In the early cowboy movies, for example, the audience wasn't that sophisticated so the movie would have captions such as “Meanwhile Back at the Ranch.”

Judges 5:28-30: These verses provide a total change of perspective with an imaginative conversation between Sisera's mother and her ladies-in-waiting back at the enemy camp. As in the movies, cross-cutting is an especially useful technique for illustrating ironic contrasts. In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part I (1972), parallel editing is used in one sequence that has been called “one of the most powerful and beautifully written scenes in movie history.” The cross cutting back and forth during the christening scene shows the contradictory life of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). In the church, Michael accepts God and renounces Satan. But parallel editing shows the hit men recruited by Michael murdering his enemies at the same time. The paradox is evident. While Michael is fulfilling his religious obligations, he is also using the occasion to give himself an alibi for the murders. The same technique was used millennia earlier in Judges where the reality of Sisera's death is starkly contrasted with his mother's high expectations.

Judges 5:31 “So perish all your enemies, O LORD! But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might.”  Then with this thunderbolt, the poet brings us back to reality. Another reversal of expectations like that of Sisera in the tent.