Barak

Scripture: Judges 4–5; Hebrews 11:32

The Oppression and Deborah's Summons (Judges 4:1–9): The familiar cycle. Israel did evil after Ehud died; YHWH sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, whose military commander was Sisera, a man who commanded nine hundred iron chariots and had oppressed Israel harshly for twenty years (4:1–3). Deborah the prophetess was judging Israel under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim (4:4–5). She summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and gave him the word of YHWH directly: "Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand" (4:6–7). The command is explicit and the promise is explicit. Barak replied: "If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go" (4:8). The condition has been read two ways in the tradition: as a failure of nerve that required the prophet as a crutch, or as a recognition that YHWH's word came through the prophet and her presence was the guarantee. Deborah agreed to go, and she told him: "The road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for YHWH will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman" (4:9). Not a punishment. A prophecy. She rose and went with him to Kedesh.

The Battle at the Kishon (Judges 4:12–16): When Sisera was told that Barak had gone up to Mount Tabor, he gathered all nine hundred iron chariots and all the people with him and moved to the river Kishon (4:12–13). Deborah's word to Barak was direct: "Up! For this is the day in which YHWH has given Sisera into your hand. Does not YHWH go out before you?" (4:14). Barak came down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men. "And YHWH routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword" (4:15). The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) illuminates the mechanism of what YHWH did: "From heaven the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera. The torrent Kishon swept them away, the ancient torrent, the torrent Kishon" (5:20–21). The iron chariots that made Sisera formidable, the military technology that had kept Israel under twenty years of oppression, were useless in the flooded wadi. The rain that YHWH brought turned the ground to mud and the river to a weapon. Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot (4:15).

Jael and the Tent Peg (Judges 4:17–22): Sisera fled to the tent of Jael wife of Heber the Kenite, because Heber's clan was at peace with Jabin of Canaan (4:17). Jael welcomed him: came out to meet him, invited him in, covered him with a rug, gave him milk when he asked for water (4:18–19). He told her to guard the tent door; she stood at the entrance while he fell asleep from exhaustion. "But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died" (4:21). When Barak arrived in pursuit, Jael met him: "Come, and I will show you the man you are seeking." He entered, and there was Sisera, dead, the tent peg through his temple (4:22). Deborah's word had come exactly true: YHWH sold Sisera into the hand of a woman. The Song of Deborah's celebration of Jael (5:24–27) is among the most vivid death-poems in the Hebrew Bible: "Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed."

Hebrews 11:32, Among the Faithful: "And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions" (Hebrews 11:32–33). Barak's conditional obedience, his insistence that the prophet go with him, did not disqualify him from the faith list. The author of Hebrews does not adjudicate the question of whether the condition was a failure or a recognition. He includes Barak alongside the others as one through whom faith expressed itself in action. The condition Barak named was met; Deborah went; the battle was fought; the enemy was routed. That the killing blow went to a woman was not the consequence of Barak's failure, it was the fulfillment of Deborah's prior word, spoken before they set out, and the text presents both without contradiction.

Barak is the figure whose faith is real and whose hesitancy is also real, and who is not condemned for either in the canonical text. The Sanctum does not resolve the tension the story holds: was his condition wisdom or weakness? The text leaves it open. What it does not leave open is that when Deborah went with him, Barak went, and YHWH routed Sisera. The Spiritborn in the Sanctum often find themselves in Barak's position, the command is clear, the empowerment is given, and they still want to know the prophet is present before they move.