Debora song

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The Song of Deborah is a paean to the prophetess and judge Deborah , she according to the biblical story of the Old Testament according to one of the Israelites sang winning the battle.

This piece of Hebrew poetry is probably one of the oldest pieces of the Old Testament and was probably written around 1200 BC. The Deboralied ( Ri 5  EU ) is an epically told folk song and forms the basis for the story in Ri 4  EU . It is linguistically demanding, the translation options are not clear. The text may reflect a northern Israeli dialect. Some breaks can be seen; apparently there are several layers of processing.

The Deboried is one of the songs of victory. The victory over the general Sisera is celebrated. But YHWH is primarily praised, less human ability. The Deboralied stands in the tradition of other Old Testament songs, e.g. B. The Mirjamlied . Here, too, is a woman the singer. Other songs outside of the Psalms are e.g. B. 1 Sam 2  EU ( Hannah ), 2 Sam 22  EU ( David's song of victory ) and Isa 38  EU ( Hezekiah ).

structure

  • V. 1: Introduction
  • Verses 2–5: Praise for the appearance ( epiphany ) of God
  • V. 6-8: Description of the need
  • Verses 9-12: Appeal to Debora and Barak
  • Verses 13-18: Praise and blame to the tribes
  • V. 19-23: Description of the victory
  • Verses 24-27: Praise of Jaël's deed
  • Verses 28-30: Mother Sisera's waiting in vain
  • V. 31a End with echoes of Ps 68,2–4  EU
  • V. 31 b: Completion of the judges' scheme

Here is the beginning of Deborah praises of God ( Ri 5.3 to 5  EU , as amended by NIV ):

Hear you kings, listen up, you princes!
I want to sing
in honor of the Lord, I want to play in honor of the Lord, the God of Israel.

Lord, when you set out from Seir,
when you came up from the grassland of Edom
, the earth trembled, the heavens poured out,
yes, water poured out of the clouds.
The mountains shook before the gaze of the Lord,
before the gaze of the Lord, the God of Israel.

content

The song begins with a hymn of praise to God who comes to help his people. The call of Debora and Barak to fight went to the northern tribes, who had to choose. So follows the enumeration of the tribes ( Ephraim , Machir (probably Manasseh ), Benjamin , Zebulun , Isachar , Naphtali ) who were willing to follow Deborah and Barak. Other tribes such as Ruben , Gilead and Ascher have held back and are therefore reprimanded. It is noticeable that more tribes take part in the fight here than in Ri 4  EU .

From Ri 5.24  EU the victory is described and Jaël is praised for the murder of Sisera. The story goes of how she drives a stake through his temple and kills him. Sisera's mother, who is waiting for her son to return, is sung about in Judges 5 : 28–30  EU . The song ends in Ri 5,31  EU with a quotation from the psalm , praising those who love God. At the end a probably secondary verse is added with the formula of rest typical for the book of judges: “And the country had rest forty years”, which concludes the entire Debora Barak story.

History of origin

For a long time, the Debor song was counted among the oldest components of the judges' book . Rudolf Smend described the Debor song in 1966 as the only truly authentic source from the time of the judges, which other Old Testament scholars such as Jörg Jeremias took up .

Verses 6–30, which are said to come from the end of the time of the judges or the beginning of the time of the kings (1st half of the 11th century BC), were regarded as the basis of the song. The basic stock was later edited as hymns with the additions Ri 5,2-5  EU and the verse Ri 5,31a  EU , which has psalm echoes. The conclusion was formed by Ri 5.1  EU with the author's information and V. 31 as the framework of the Debora narrative. Originally a battle near the waters of Megiddo was described ( Judgment 5,19  EU ), in which only the tribes Naphtali and Zebulon were involved, but which is stylized as a conflict between Canaan and all of Israel. It is also noticeable that Ri 5,6  EU places the story in the vicinity of Judge Shamgar , Debora's predecessor.

Other interpreters regard the Debora song merely as a profane or later Hellenistic victory song or as a song of praise to YHWH . It can also be understood as a hymn to the Canaanite goddess of love and war, Anath .

interpretation

Interpretation inherent in the text

The Debor song shows that women in Old Testament Israel could occupy important positions such as the office of military leader and judge. Likewise, women were given the gift of the Holy Spirit with which YHWH takes people into his service.

Mythological interpretation

According to one interpretation, Debora stands as the mother of Israel ( Ri 5,7  EU ) for the entirety of the shepherds and peasant populations of the central Palestinian hill country. The figure of Debora is a demythologized reference to the old Palestinian belief in gods. She embodies the female goddess of war Anath. In order to grant the monotheism of YHWH, in the tradition the goddess became a mortal woman, namely Debora.

Feminist interpretation

In Ri 5,5  EU the women Debora and Jael stand as warriors for YHWH. Jael's act is portrayed as self-defense. Inadvertently, however, Jael leads YHWH to victory through her deed. She wants to avoid the threatened rape by Sisera and comes before him by piercing his head with a stake. He dies between her feet ( Judgment 5,27  EU ). Usually indicates the description "feet are" in the Bible to the intercourse out (see also Ruth 3.7 to 8  EU ). Sisera dies humiliated and feminized, in a sense penetrated by a woman. Sisera's mother herself describes in Ri 5.30  EU the normality of kidnappings and rape in war. She embodies the patriarchy for which the worth of a woman is below that of a man. Debora and Jael break out of this path.

literature

  • Uwe Becker : Judges and royalty. Editorial history studies on the judges' book (= supplements to the journal for Old Testament science , vol. 192). DeGruyter, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-11-012440-8 , pp. 123-139.
  • Volkmar Fritz : The emergence of Israel in the 12th and 11th centuries (= Biblical Encyclopedia, Vol. 2). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-17-012331-9 .
  • Donald Guthrie, J. Alec Motyer (Ed.): Commentary on the Bible. Old and New Testament in one volume. ("The new bible commentary revised"). Special edition. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1992, ISBN 3-417-24615-6 .
  • Renate Jost : Gender, sexuality and power in the anthropology of the book of judges. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-17-018556-X (plus habilitation thesis, Neuendelttelsau University).
  • Heinz-Dieter Neef : Debora narrative and Debora song. Study on Jdc 4,1–5, 31 (= Biblical-Theological Studies, Vol. 49). Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2002, ISBN 3-7887-1890-0 .

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