Myth #92:

Deborah rallied Israel against the Canaanites.

The Myth: Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying, Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves. Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes; I, even I, will sing unto the LORD; I will sing praise to the LORD God of Israel. LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel. In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways. The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. (Judges 5:1–7)

The Reality: Deborah is a mythological character based on the Egyptian goddess Neith.

The Book of Judges has two separate accounts of the story of Deborah—Judges 4 in prose and Judges 5 in poetic form. The latter is often referred to as the Song of Deborah. Although the two versions tell the same general story, there are significant differences between them.

Both versions portray Deborah as a judge over Israel and an inspirational leader who rallied Israel against Canaanite oppression. The leader of the Israelite army was Barak and the enemy leader was Sisera. In a major upset against the better-equipped Canaanites, Barak defeated Sisera’s massive war machine (over nine hundred iron chariots) and the losing general fled for his life. He arrived at the camp of Heber the Kenite, a supposedly neutral party and sought hospitality. Heber’s wife, Jael, offered him some food, but when he wasn’t looking she drove a tent peg through his skull. In the poetic version he was eating at the time and in the prose version, he was asleep.

In the poetic version, the battle took place at the waters of Megiddo, which was located in the territory of Manasseh; in the prose version, the battle took place at Mt. Tabor located either in the territory of Issachar, Zebulun or perhaps Naphtali, somewhere near the conjunction of all three tribes.

The older poetic version has a role call of the various tribes that did or didn’t take part; the prose version names only Zebulun and Naphtali. While both versions name Sisera as the opposing general, the poetic version describes the enemy as a coalition of Canaanite kings; the prose version specifically names Jabin, King of Hazor, as the powerful Canaanite king against whom Israel rebelled. “Jabin, King of Hazor” is the same name as that of the ruler defeated earlier by Joshua, at which time Joshua supposedly destroyed the city of Hazor. (The city of Hazor was located in the northern tip of Naphtali, by the northern border of Israel.)

Another difference between the two versions is that in the poetic version Barak is unquestionably heroic whereas the prose version makes him somewhat wishy-washy and requires that he be aided by Deborah in order to shore up his courage against the enemy.

The later prose version is a loose adaptation of the earlier poetic version and modified to enhance the prestige of Zebulun and Naphtali vis-à-vis Ephraim, the territory where Deborah came from. Our focus here will be on the poetic version.

The various names and poetic images in the story indicate an underlying mythological source for the story. The name Deborah means “bee.” Her husband’s name, Lapidoth, means “flashes” or “lights.” Barak’s name means “lightning.”

In Lower Egypt, where Israel was held captive, the bee was the symbol of kingship, and one of the most important goddesses in Lower Egypt was Neith, who had a temple known as the “House of the Bee.” The Egyptians identified Neith as both a warrior goddess and a nurturer. They portrayed her with a pair of crossed arrows over a shield but she also appeared as the patroness of weaving and as a mortuary goddess associated with the mummy shroud. For these reasons, the Greeks identified her with the goddess Athena. Herodotus tells us that a feature of Neith worship involved a great festival known as the Feast of Lamps, during which her devotees kept numerous lamps burning through the night. Her association with a Festival of Lamps reminds us that Deborah was married to “lights.”

Neith also functioned on occasion as a judge. In The Contendings of Horus and Set, Neith appears twice in a judiciary role. Early in the story, we are told that the struggle between Horus and Set had been going on for eighty years, but that the dispute remained unresolved, so the gods asked Neith for guidance. She replied that the office should go to Horus, and added that if the gods didn’t award judgment to Horus, “I shall become so furious that the sky will touch the ground.”

This description of the sky touching the earth as a punishment sounds like a description of lightning, and “lightning” (i.e., Barak) was Deborah’s instrument of retribution.

One of Neith’s most important aspects, however, was her identification in some quarters as a mother goddess associated with creation. One of her hymns (from a wall at the Temple of Esna) contains some startling resemblances to portions of the Song of Deborah. The hymn describes the Creation and the birth of Re, the chief deity. And in one passage it says:

I will strengthen him [Re] by my strength, I will make him effective by my efficacy, I will make him vigorous by my vigor. His children will rebel against him, but they will be beaten on his behalf and struck down on his behalf, for he is my son issued from my body, and he will be king of this land forever. I will protect him with my arms.

By way of comparison, Deborah appears as a woman warrior and Judges 4:5 connects her to the role of a nurturing woman. It says that she judged Israel and “dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah.” This tree is widely understood to be the Tree of Weeping under which a different Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca, was buried (Gen. 35:8). From earlier discussions, we saw that Rebecca corresponded to Isis and Deborah the Nurse would have looked after the Horus-Jacob child. So, Deborah the Warrior is linked to Deborah the Nurse, caregiver to Horus.

Neith and Deborah both acted as judges, both acted as warriors, both had connections to nurturing, both had close connections to “lights” and both threatened to use “lightning” for retribution.

The hymn to Neith identifies her as a mother figure in a cosmic sense and Deborah is identified in the Song of Deborah as “a mother in Israel.” Outside of this phrase, there is no hint in Deborah’s story that she actually has any children, indicating that “a mother in Israel” has a symbolic connotation. The phrase is used only one other time in the Bible and on that occasion it does mean something more than just an ordinary parent. In 2 Samuel 20, Joab set out to kill an enemy of David’s named Sheba, who had taken refuge in a city named Abel. As Joab laid siege to the city, a wise woman came to the wall and called out to him, “I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel: why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the LORD?” Here, the reference to a mother in Israel refers to the city itself rather than the woman. After all, there were many mothers in the city. If the phrase meant only that an Israelite mother would be killed in an attack, it would more likely say that he would destroy mothers in Israel. The context indicates that the “mother in Israel” was the city itself, one of the places that nurtured the Hebrew people.

Similarly, Deborah as a “mother in Israel” is depicted not as the mother of a child but as a nurturer of Israel. That Deborah is an allegorical mother in Israel can be seen from the Song of Deborah itself, which portrays the coming battle as one of cosmic proportions.

LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel. (Judg. 5:4–5)

The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? (Judg. 5:7–8)

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength. (Judg. 5:20–21)

So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. (Judg. 5:31)

Earth trembled, the sky fell, mountains melted, new gods appeared, the stars fought, rivers overflowed, the sun acted as a mighty warrior—these descriptions bespeak a cosmic battle of gods. Right after Deborah is called “a mother in Israel,” we are told that the enemy chose new gods and that war was in the gates. Compare the themes in the biblical poem with the Egyptian hymn to Neith.

1. Deborah and Neith each talk about her role as a mother.
2. Deborah and Neith each talk about how their actions led to an increase in population.
3. In both stories, we find a rebellion of new gods battling against heaven.
4. In both stories, the mother, in her role as mother, promises to intervene in the fighting.
5. In both stories, the mother fights on the side of the chief deity.
6. In both stories, there is talk about the enemy being struck down.
7. In both stories, the side representing the chief deity wins.
8. In both stories, the sun is described as a mighty male warrior.

In the prose version of Deborah’s story, Barak was made effective as a warrior by Deborah’s participation, and, in the Egyptian hymn, Re was made effective as a warrior by the actions of Neith.

Egyptian influence was widespread in Canaan throughout the period of the Judges and the early monarchy. Solomon even built an Egyptian temple for one of his wives. The name and image of Neith would have been well known and it is not unlikely that poetic images of her circulated widely as did poems, hymns, and songs about other Egyptian, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian deities.

The Song of Deborah is a compilation of several smaller poems that were reworked into a larger story. Hebrew scribes enjoying the literary aspects of some Egyptian hymn about Neith borrowed portions, added them to some other source materials, and created a new poetic account of a legendary heroine named Deborah.