King James Version · The judges
Judges 5
Touch any underlined name to see who or where it is. Tap a verse number to see where it is taken up elsewhere.
Then sang and the son of Abinoam on that day, saying, ye 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 ; I will sing to of Israel. , when thou wentest out of , when thou marchedst out of the field of , the earth trembled, and dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before , even that Sinai from before of Israel. In the days of the son of , in the days of , the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways. The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. They chose new gods; then was war : was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? is toward the governors of Israel, that offered themselves willingly among the people. ye . Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in , and walk by . They that are from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse acts of , even acts toward the inhabitants of his villages in Israel: then shall the people of go down to the . Awake, awake, : awake, awake, utter a song: arise, , and lead thy , thou son of Abinoam. Then he made him that remaineth over the nobles among the people: made me over the mighty. Out of was there a root of them against ; after thee, , among thy people; out of came down governors, and out of they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of were with ; even , and also : he was sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of there were great of . Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of there were great searchings of . abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan in ships? Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches. and were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the in the of the field. The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of in by the waters of ; they took no gain of money. They fought from ; the stars in their courses fought against . of swept them away, that ancient river, the river . O , thou hast trodden down strength. Then were the horsehoofs broken by the means of the pransings, the pransings of their mighty ones. ye Meroz, said , ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of , to the help of against the mighty. above women shall the wife of the be, shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote , she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down . The mother of looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? 29Her ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil? So let all thine , O : but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The judges, 1200 BC to 1050 BC ›
No central government and no standing army. The great empires are weak, which is precisely why Israel's troubles come from close neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the newly arrived Philistines on the coast.
- Egypt
- Broken into competing power centres and no longer able to project force into Canaan. Its withdrawal is the single biggest reason this period has no imperial overlord.
- Mesopotamia
- Assyria exists but is dormant, hemmed in and looking east. The century that would have crushed a stateless Israel simply has not arrived yet.
- The coast
- The Philistines settle their five cities after arriving from the Aegean world, bringing Mycenaean-style pottery, a taste for pork, and an early advantage in ironworking. Further north the Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon start the trading expansion that will eventually give the alphabet to Greece.
- Further afield
- Greece has entered its dark age: the palaces are gone, Linear B is forgotten, and writing disappears from the Aegean for three centuries. In China the Zhou dynasty replaces the Shang in 1046 BC and issues the doctrine that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings, an idea with an interesting resemblance to the book of Judges.