They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
Barak led only ten thousand men of Zebulun and Naphtali down from Mount Tabor against Sisera's nine hundred iron chariots in the plain, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear. Israel overcame through faith because heavenly forces fought against Sisera, and though Israel acted with courage God alone discomfited the enemy so the triumph could be ascribed to Him alone. God sent rain so the Kishon swept away the chariots and turned the boggy ground from their strength to encumbrance. The stars that fought were a shower of meteorites falling from heaven in their appointed, ordered, unstoppable courses under God's command. The same powers of heaven that fought then will fight again for God's people in the final battle of Armageddon, showing prayer's power to marshal heaven against the wicked.
Setting and Battle Story
Judges 5:20 stands within the composite record of Judges 3 to 17 of backsliding from God followed by suffering, oppression, captivity and servitude, then returning to God followed by forgiveness and deliverance. That record shows the perversity and unbelief of Israel amid the awful moral surroundings and demoralizing influences of the tribes permitted to remain in the land of promise. It shows also the long-suffering and goodness of God in delivering them.
The verse belongs to Deborah's sublime and impassioned song celebrating Israel's triumph over Sisera. It celebrates deliverance from Jabin king of Canaan after twenty years of oppression and includes Jael's role in that deliverance. The song ascribes all the glory of deliverance to God and bids the people praise Him for His wonderful works. It calls upon the kings and princes of surrounding nations to hear what God wrought for Israel and to take warning not to do them harm, showing that honor and power belong to God and not to men or to their idols. It portrays the awful exhibitions of divine power and majesty displayed at Sinai, sets before Israel their helpless and distressed condition under the oppression of their enemies, and relates in glowing language the history of their deliverance. The destruction of Sisera and his forces effectually subdued the Canaanites and gave the land peace forty years, yet prosperity did not bring Israel nearer to God. It is among the earliest poetry of Israel, risen among the Galilean hills when Barak of Naphtali triumphed over the Canaanites, vindicating Galilee's claim to honor for intellectual vigor and mental freshness and force.
Barak of Kedesh in Naphtali led only ten thousand armed warriors of Zebulun and Naphtali against Sisera, captain of the army of Jabin the heathen king of Canaan, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear, having been kept from procuring weapons. Sisera assembled an immense and well-equipped force with nine hundred chariots of iron, dreaded chariots fitted with scythe-like knives on the axles to cut down ranks like wheat, led up the Kishon valley to the foothills a few miles south and west from the base of Tabor. Barak with his little band ascended Mount Tabor from the north and held a strong position in the mountains, looking with terror on the vast armies in the plain beneath, until Deborah the prophetess assured him that the day for signal victory had come. Then Barak led his army down into the open plain and boldly charged on territory belonging to Issachar in the northwestern part of the land allotted to the Hebrews, where the surface of the country made the chariots an encumbrance rather than strength. The charioteers retreated down the Kishon valley and Barak pursued after the chariots and the host unto Harosheth of the Gentiles, and all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword and there was not a man left. Sisera fled on foot over or around Mount Tabor to seek protection from Heber on the opposite side of the mountain, and there perished in the tent when Jael the wife of Heber smote him with a tent pin.
The victory is one of the great battles associated with Megiddo, the Old Testament battlefield where Israel fought its enemies. By it the Israelites first gained possession of the Plain of Jezreel. By heavenly help in Deborah's victory over Sisera Israel won the great triangular plain of Esdraelon from the Canaanites. The plain lies between the hills of Samaria and those of Galilee, with natural entrances at the pass of the Kishon at Tel el-Kasis, the glen between Tabor and Nazareth, the valley south of En-gannim, the entrance from the Jordan Valley at Jezreel, and the entrance from Sharon at Megiddo. It is extremely fertile but boggy and almost impassable in winter, and its defencelessness is shown in its never having towns upon it and only one or two villages. Won then, it continued to be traversed by foreign war and traffic and remained to the end the classic battlefield of Bible history.
The song in Judges 5:1-31 shows God using a woman in a public capacity to His glory. Deborah as prophetess helped Barak, as an example of a woman serving publicly without violating the apostolic instructions against women usurping authority over men.
The account is a crisis in the work of the Lord in which those who discerned the importance of the time accepted the message God sent and brought salvation to themselves and to the people, while those who could not discern the providence of God and did not believe His testimony brought a curse upon themselves. Jael was a tender-hearted woman of a tender-hearted family on friendly terms with the enemy, yet in the crisis she defended the cause of God by killing the enemy of Israel and was blessed above women in the tent. Zebulun and Naphtali jeoparded their lives unto death in the high places of the field, but those who did not see the importance of giving themselves to the work of the Lord were cursed bitterly for not coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty.
Heaven Fighting for Israel
Sisera's nine hundred chariots of iron did not prevent his defeat, for Israel under Deborah and Barak overcame through faith because heavenly forces fought against him. Though Israel acted with courage and promptness, God alone discomfited the enemy, and the wonderful triumph is to be ascribed to Him alone. Jehovah sent rain over the plain as Barak descended from Mount Tabor, so that the Kishon swept away the Canaanite chariots and forces and the horsemen and charioteers fled. The ground made the chariots an encumbrance rather than strength, turning strength to weakness, and this stopping of an army belongs with God's stopping of armies by thunder and hail.
After negligence and backsliding had let the heathen repossess much of the land, re-establish Baalism, and bring God's people into great distress and danger of violence that drove many from their homes, the Lord through Deborah the prophetess called His people to arise and drive the enemy from their borders. Barak of Kedesh in Naphtali led only ten thousand armed warriors of Zebulun and Naphtali from the north onto Mount Tabor, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear for lack of weapons. Sisera, captain of Jabin the heathen king of Canaan, led his idolatrous host with nine hundred chariots of iron up the Kishon valley to the foothills a few miles south and west from the base of Tabor, the conflict began on territory belonging to Issachar, then the charioteers retreated down the Kishon valley and Barak pursued after the chariots and the host unto Harosheth of the Gentiles where all the host fell by the sword with not a man left, and Sisera fled on foot over or around Tabor to Heber's tents where he perished when Jael his wife smote him with a tent pin. The fighting from heaven was not merely poetic, nor were the stars astrological powers, for stars is used broadly for meteors and other heavenly bodies, and the stars fought by a shower of aerolites or meteorites falling upon Sisera's army and striking the enemy from heaven.
The stars fought in their appointed, ordered courses under God's command, and their set paths are fixed and certain like the rising and setting of the sun, which human beings cannot interfere with or alter. Their movement in their courses carries a fixed, unstoppable certainty, so complete that even the expansion of crowded, strong nations bursting for room is no more certain. The stars in their courses fighting against God's enemies was one part of all the elements combining to effect the overthrow of the Canaanites in their controversy with Almighty God, alongside the receding waters of Jordan, the fall of Jericho, the standing still of the sun and moon for retribution, hail from heaven battering routed legions, and the Kishon sweeping away fleeing fugitives. Warfare with Jehovah is most unequal strife, ending not by submission, arbitration, or accommodation but by stern judgments punishing the rejection of unnumbered mercies and the vilest prostitution of temporal blessings. God's providence moves upon the appointed path of divine purpose and promise, those who oppose Him oppose to their own destruction, man must submit to the divine will or perish in disobedience, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The stars fighting against Sisera and his forces shows prayer's power to marshal the heavens against the wicked, bringing heavenly forces to battle on God's side and against His enemies. God does not abandon the battle, for His help may be unseen yet even the powers of heaven can join the forces of His people. He fights from heaven for His people by turning the forces of nature against their enemies and by providence preparing the way for them to act at the appointed time in their crisis. A wind carrying threatening fire away from their dwelling and a heavy downpour cutting off the spread of flames and making further burning impossible restrains armed attackers, awes them into silence, causes them to lower weapons and flee in panic while confessing that Jehovah fights for and helps His servants, leaving the delivered to praise His goodness for protecting those who trust Him. The stars in their courses fought for God's people, assuring those who choose righteousness that God actively works for them so that even persecution and earthly loss serve their good.
Prophecy and Present Application
The battle at Megiddo in the days of Deborah and Barak is an object lesson connected with the sixth and seventh plagues of Revelation 16. In that battle the powers of heaven fought for God's people against Sisera and the Canaanites in the days of the judges when Deborah the prophetess was a mother in Israel. Those same heavenly powers fighting for God's people will fight for them again in the final battle of Armageddon.
The stars fighting from heaven against Sisera pictures obstacles giving way before a person who holds a resolute, definite purpose. The same fighting of the stars from their courses against Sisera marks God's opposition in Cervera's defeat to his attack made during religious services. That defeat warns that God's commandments and sacred sanctions cannot be safely defied.
Heaven fighting against oppressive power means the stars in their courses opposing it, and in South America the stars in their courses are fighting against Rome. There the course of events and the revulsion of feeling against papal domination are working against her interests through popular resistance, student strikes and mass petitions against the papal presence, and expulsion movements. The same working includes disestablishment of the church, exclusion of ecclesiastics from civil power, secularization of cemeteries, civil marriage laws, and prohibition of Roman processions. It includes also laws establishing religious freedom and freedom of worship and conscience.
Barak led only ten thousand men of Zebulun and Naphtali down from Mount Tabor against Sisera's nine hundred iron chariots in the plain, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear. Israel overcame through faith because heavenly forces fought against Sisera, and though Israel acted with courage God alone discomfited the enemy so the triumph could be ascribed to Him alone. God sent rain so the Kishon swept away the chariots and turned the boggy ground from their strength to encumbrance. The stars that fought were a shower of meteorites falling from heaven in their appointed, ordered, unstoppable courses under God's command. The same powers of heaven that fought then will fight again for God's people in the final battle of Armageddon, showing prayer's power to marshal heaven against the wicked.
Setting and Battle Story
Judges 5:20 stands within the composite record of Judges 3 to 17 of backsliding from God followed by suffering, oppression, captivity and servitude, then returning to God followed by forgiveness and deliverance. That record shows the perversity and unbelief of Israel amid the awful moral surroundings and demoralizing influences of the tribes permitted to remain in the land of promise. It shows also the long-suffering and goodness of God in delivering them.
The verse belongs to Deborah's sublime and impassioned song celebrating Israel's triumph over Sisera. It celebrates deliverance from Jabin king of Canaan after twenty years of oppression and includes Jael's role in that deliverance. The song ascribes all the glory of deliverance to God and bids the people praise Him for His wonderful works. It calls upon the kings and princes of surrounding nations to hear what God wrought for Israel and to take warning not to do them harm, showing that honor and power belong to God and not to men or to their idols. It portrays the awful exhibitions of divine power and majesty displayed at Sinai, sets before Israel their helpless and distressed condition under the oppression of their enemies, and relates in glowing language the history of their deliverance. The destruction of Sisera and his forces effectually subdued the Canaanites and gave the land peace forty years, yet prosperity did not bring Israel nearer to God. It is among the earliest poetry of Israel, risen among the Galilean hills when Barak of Naphtali triumphed over the Canaanites, vindicating Galilee's claim to honor for intellectual vigor and mental freshness and force.
Barak of Kedesh in Naphtali led only ten thousand armed warriors of Zebulun and Naphtali against Sisera, captain of the army of Jabin the heathen king of Canaan, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear, having been kept from procuring weapons. Sisera assembled an immense and well-equipped force with nine hundred chariots of iron, dreaded chariots fitted with scythe-like knives on the axles to cut down ranks like wheat, led up the Kishon valley to the foothills a few miles south and west from the base of Tabor. Barak with his little band ascended Mount Tabor from the north and held a strong position in the mountains, looking with terror on the vast armies in the plain beneath, until Deborah the prophetess assured him that the day for signal victory had come. Then Barak led his army down into the open plain and boldly charged on territory belonging to Issachar in the northwestern part of the land allotted to the Hebrews, where the surface of the country made the chariots an encumbrance rather than strength. The charioteers retreated down the Kishon valley and Barak pursued after the chariots and the host unto Harosheth of the Gentiles, and all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword and there was not a man left. Sisera fled on foot over or around Mount Tabor to seek protection from Heber on the opposite side of the mountain, and there perished in the tent when Jael the wife of Heber smote him with a tent pin.
The victory is one of the great battles associated with Megiddo, the Old Testament battlefield where Israel fought its enemies. By it the Israelites first gained possession of the Plain of Jezreel. By heavenly help in Deborah's victory over Sisera Israel won the great triangular plain of Esdraelon from the Canaanites. The plain lies between the hills of Samaria and those of Galilee, with natural entrances at the pass of the Kishon at Tel el-Kasis, the glen between Tabor and Nazareth, the valley south of En-gannim, the entrance from the Jordan Valley at Jezreel, and the entrance from Sharon at Megiddo. It is extremely fertile but boggy and almost impassable in winter, and its defencelessness is shown in its never having towns upon it and only one or two villages. Won then, it continued to be traversed by foreign war and traffic and remained to the end the classic battlefield of Bible history.
The song in Judges 5:1-31 shows God using a woman in a public capacity to His glory. Deborah as prophetess helped Barak, as an example of a woman serving publicly without violating the apostolic instructions against women usurping authority over men.
The account is a crisis in the work of the Lord in which those who discerned the importance of the time accepted the message God sent and brought salvation to themselves and to the people, while those who could not discern the providence of God and did not believe His testimony brought a curse upon themselves. Jael was a tender-hearted woman of a tender-hearted family on friendly terms with the enemy, yet in the crisis she defended the cause of God by killing the enemy of Israel and was blessed above women in the tent. Zebulun and Naphtali jeoparded their lives unto death in the high places of the field, but those who did not see the importance of giving themselves to the work of the Lord were cursed bitterly for not coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty.
Heaven Fighting for Israel
Sisera's nine hundred chariots of iron did not prevent his defeat, for Israel under Deborah and Barak overcame through faith because heavenly forces fought against him. Though Israel acted with courage and promptness, God alone discomfited the enemy, and the wonderful triumph is to be ascribed to Him alone. Jehovah sent rain over the plain as Barak descended from Mount Tabor, so that the Kishon swept away the Canaanite chariots and forces and the horsemen and charioteers fled. The ground made the chariots an encumbrance rather than strength, turning strength to weakness, and this stopping of an army belongs with God's stopping of armies by thunder and hail.
After negligence and backsliding had let the heathen repossess much of the land, re-establish Baalism, and bring God's people into great distress and danger of violence that drove many from their homes, the Lord through Deborah the prophetess called His people to arise and drive the enemy from their borders. Barak of Kedesh in Naphtali led only ten thousand armed warriors of Zebulun and Naphtali from the north onto Mount Tabor, while forty thousand in Israel had neither sword nor spear for lack of weapons. Sisera, captain of Jabin the heathen king of Canaan, led his idolatrous host with nine hundred chariots of iron up the Kishon valley to the foothills a few miles south and west from the base of Tabor, the conflict began on territory belonging to Issachar, then the charioteers retreated down the Kishon valley and Barak pursued after the chariots and the host unto Harosheth of the Gentiles where all the host fell by the sword with not a man left, and Sisera fled on foot over or around Tabor to Heber's tents where he perished when Jael his wife smote him with a tent pin. The fighting from heaven was not merely poetic, nor were the stars astrological powers, for stars is used broadly for meteors and other heavenly bodies, and the stars fought by a shower of aerolites or meteorites falling upon Sisera's army and striking the enemy from heaven.
The stars fought in their appointed, ordered courses under God's command, and their set paths are fixed and certain like the rising and setting of the sun, which human beings cannot interfere with or alter. Their movement in their courses carries a fixed, unstoppable certainty, so complete that even the expansion of crowded, strong nations bursting for room is no more certain. The stars in their courses fighting against God's enemies was one part of all the elements combining to effect the overthrow of the Canaanites in their controversy with Almighty God, alongside the receding waters of Jordan, the fall of Jericho, the standing still of the sun and moon for retribution, hail from heaven battering routed legions, and the Kishon sweeping away fleeing fugitives. Warfare with Jehovah is most unequal strife, ending not by submission, arbitration, or accommodation but by stern judgments punishing the rejection of unnumbered mercies and the vilest prostitution of temporal blessings. God's providence moves upon the appointed path of divine purpose and promise, those who oppose Him oppose to their own destruction, man must submit to the divine will or perish in disobedience, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The stars fighting against Sisera and his forces shows prayer's power to marshal the heavens against the wicked, bringing heavenly forces to battle on God's side and against His enemies. God does not abandon the battle, for His help may be unseen yet even the powers of heaven can join the forces of His people. He fights from heaven for His people by turning the forces of nature against their enemies and by providence preparing the way for them to act at the appointed time in their crisis. A wind carrying threatening fire away from their dwelling and a heavy downpour cutting off the spread of flames and making further burning impossible restrains armed attackers, awes them into silence, causes them to lower weapons and flee in panic while confessing that Jehovah fights for and helps His servants, leaving the delivered to praise His goodness for protecting those who trust Him. The stars in their courses fought for God's people, assuring those who choose righteousness that God actively works for them so that even persecution and earthly loss serve their good.
Prophecy and Present Application
The battle at Megiddo in the days of Deborah and Barak is an object lesson connected with the sixth and seventh plagues of Revelation 16. In that battle the powers of heaven fought for God's people against Sisera and the Canaanites in the days of the judges when Deborah the prophetess was a mother in Israel. Those same heavenly powers fighting for God's people will fight for them again in the final battle of Armageddon.
The stars fighting from heaven against Sisera pictures obstacles giving way before a person who holds a resolute, definite purpose. The same fighting of the stars from their courses against Sisera marks God's opposition in Cervera's defeat to his attack made during religious services. That defeat warns that God's commandments and sacred sanctions cannot be safely defied.
Heaven fighting against oppressive power means the stars in their courses opposing it, and in South America the stars in their courses are fighting against Rome. There the course of events and the revulsion of feeling against papal domination are working against her interests through popular resistance, student strikes and mass petitions against the papal presence, and expulsion movements. The same working includes disestablishment of the church, exclusion of ecclesiastics from civil power, secularization of cemeteries, civil marriage laws, and prohibition of Roman processions. It includes also laws establishing religious freedom and freedom of worship and conscience.