1. and Ehud had died. The Hebrew indicates a pluperfect by placing the subject before the verb and using the suffix conjugation (qatal) of the verb: Ehud’s death leaves a hiatus, and Israel reverts to its wayward behavior.

2. Jabin, king of Canaan. This designation is a kind of hyperbole because there was no single king of Canaan. Hazor, however, was an important city, and so its king would have exercised considerable power among the city-states of Canaan. Later in the chapter, Jabin is called “king of Hazor.”

3. iron chariots. As elsewhere, this characterization is an exaggeration, perhaps meant to emphasize the fearsome power of the chariots, because in this era the chariots were wooden, with at most iron reinforcing elements.

4. a prophet-woman. The translation mirrors the structure of the Hebrew, which does not say neviʾah (“prophetess”) but ’ishah neviʾah. The introduction of the “woman” component, which is not strictly required by idiomatic usage, highlights the prominence of woman vis-à-vis man that is evident both in Deborah’s relation to Barak and in the story of Jael and Sisera.

she it was who judged Israel at that time. The figure of Deborah manifests the ambiguity of the role of “judge,” shofet. She is called a prophet because she evidently has a direct line of intelligence about God’s strategic plans for Israel. In this, she resembles the martial judges, who are invested with the spirit of God. She is not called a judge, perhaps because she herself, as a woman, does not go out to the battlefield, but she is the subject of the verb “judge,” a capacity she exercises in the judicial sense, as becomes entirely clear in the next verse.

6. Has not the LORD God of Israel charged you. Deborah would know what God commands Barak because she is a prophet.

draw around you. The Hebrew verb says merely “draw,” although the evident meaning in context is to muster or rally. This verb is pointedly repeated in God’s speech in the next verse: Barak is to draw fighters around him, and God will then draw the enemy into a place where he will be defeated.

8. If you go with me, I will go. Barak’s hesitancy makes it evident that the male commander needs this woman behind him in order to go out to battle. Thus he becomes a kind of proxy for Deborah, who is to all intents and purposes also a “judge” in the military sense.

9. for in the hand of a woman the LORD will deliver Sisera. The sentence has a double meaning. The woman in the first instance is the “prophet-woman” Deborah, who can rightly take credit for the victory. It also turns out to be Jael, whose actual hand, driving in the tent peg, will finish off Sisera.

10. Zebulun and Naphtali. In this prose version, which is almost certainly later than the poetic version in chapter 5, there are only two tribes involved and not an alliance of several tribes.

at his heels. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “at his feet.”

11. Kayin. This name is conventionally represented as “Cain” but is here spelled as it is to indicate that the ethnic group is the same as Heber’s identifying ethnic tag, “the Kenite.”

14. Has not the LORD sallied forth before you? In almost all the reports of battle in the Deuteronomistic History, YHWH figures as the warrior-god who defeats the enemy, and there is little representation of human acts of martial prowess or strategic cunning. The next verse invokes a characteristic locution: the LORD “panics” the enemy, thus causing his defeat.

15. Sisera got down from the chariot. The same Hebrew verb is used here as when Barak “came down” from Mount Tabor: the first coming down is a rapid descent in an attack, and the second is a flight on foot from an encumbered or perhaps damaged chariot.

18. Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me. Her words, with an alliteration of sibilants in the Hebrew (surah, ʾadoni, surah ʾelay), are soothingly reassuring, almost seductive.

19. she opened the skin of milk and gave him to drink. Sisera has asked for water; Jael in a gesture of hospitality offers him milk. The detail picks up a line from the poem (5:25), but whereas the poem, in an epic flourish, has her offering the milk in a “princely bowl,” the prose narrative turns this into the homey realistic receptacle of a skin bag. It also highlights, as the poem does not, the ironic suggestion of Jael’s playing a maternal role toward the man she is about to kill: first she covers him with a blanket, then she gives him milk to drink and readjusts the blanket.

20. should a man come and ask you, ‘Is there a man here?’ The repetition of “man” (’ish) plays against the previous repetitions of “woman” as the man speaking is about to be undone by a woman.

21. and it sunk into the ground. This grisly detail indicates that Jael has driven in the sharpened tent peg with terrific power.

22. Come, that I may show you the man you seek. She was instructed to answer the question “Is there a man here?” by saying “there is not.” Meeting Barak in front of her tent, she volunteers the information that there is a man within before being asked, but she withholds the fact that it is a dead man.

and, look, Sisera was fallen, dead, the peg in his temple. As with the report of the courtiers seeing the dead Eglon in chapter 3, the character’s visual point of view is marked by the presentative hineh, “look,” and the sequence of details follows his visual intake: the identity of the man, Sisera; the fact that he is lying on the ground; the fact that he is dead; the instrument of death thrust through his temple.

23. God laid low Jabin king of Canaan. Jabin had not taken part in the battle. Now, after the defeat of his principal force and his armored corps under the command of Sisera, he and his kingdom are laid low by the Israelites.

24. the hand of the Israelites came down ever harder. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the hand of the Israelites went ever harder.”