Down from the Mountain

Barak had gone up Mount Tabor with ten thousand men, and Deborah was with him. Before the account brings Sisera to the river, it pauses beside a tent. Heber the Kenite had moved away from the other Kenites, the descendants of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses. He had pitched his tent by the great tree of Zaanannim, near Kedesh.

For now, that is all we are told about him. A household had moved, and a tent stood near a tree. The men gathering on the mountain fill the larger part of the scene, but the telling has made room for this small place as well. It leaves the tent there and returns to Sisera.

Word reached the commander that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up Mount Tabor. Sisera summoned all nine hundred of his iron chariots and all the men with him. From Harosheth-hagoyim, he brought them to the River Kishon. The force that had weighed upon Israel for twenty years was gathering at the river Deborah had named. Sisera had heard of the men on Tabor, and he had brought his whole force out to meet them.

Nothing in the number had diminished. All nine hundred chariots were called out, with all the men who accompanied Sisera. Barak’s men were on the mountain, and the commander’s force had come to the Kishon. The command spoken before the journey now had both armies in its named places.

Then Deborah spoke to Barak. “Arise, for this is the day that the LORD has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone before you?” She gave him the day as plainly as she had given him the mountain. The time for remaining above the river had ended.

Barak came down from Mount Tabor, and ten thousand men followed him. Earlier, he had said he would go if Deborah went with him. She had come, and now, at her word, he descended. The account passes directly from what she said to what he did.

It tells the battle without a long account of the fighting. “And in front of him the LORD routed with the sword Sisera, all his charioteers, and all his army.” The commander, the charioteers, and the men are named together in the rout. The force Sisera had brought to the river could not hold.

Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot. The man whose strength had arrived on iron wheels left those wheels behind him. While his army was being defeated, he went away from it with only the speed his own feet could give him. His escape took him out of the path Barak was following.

Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth-hagoyim. The pursuit reached the place from which Sisera had summoned them, and the account leaves no surviving company to gather there. Of the army it says, “not a single man was left.” The battle and pursuit had ended in its destruction.

But the commander was no longer with that army. Somewhere beyond the abandoned chariot, Sisera was still moving on foot, and Barak had yet to find him. The story had already set a tent near Kedesh before us. Now a fugitive needed somewhere to enter.