After another period of Israelite unfaithfulness, Jabin king of Canaan oppresses Israel through his commander Sisera, who has hundreds of iron chariots. The oppression lasts for years.

Deborah is introduced as a prophetess and judge. Israelites come to her for judgment, and she summons Barak with a command to gather troops at Mount Tabor. Sisera will be drawn toward the Kishon River, where he will be delivered into Barak’s hand.

Barak agrees to go only if Deborah goes with him. She agrees but tells him that the honor of the campaign will not ultimately belong to him, because Sisera will be delivered into the hand of a woman.

The battle turns decisively against Sisera’s army. Sisera abandons his chariot and flees on foot to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. Jael welcomes him, gives him something to drink, and covers him. When he falls asleep, she kills him with a tent peg.

Barak arrives in pursuit, and Jael shows him the dead commander. Israel’s pressure against Jabin continues until the king is destroyed.

Judges 5 retells and interprets the victory through poetry. Deborah and Barak sing of leaders who volunteered, tribes that joined or failed to join the struggle, the forces of nature, Jael’s action, and the defeat of Sisera.

The prose and song together preserve a story in which expected power structures are repeatedly unsettled: a prophetess directs the campaign, a powerful chariot army collapses, and the feared commander meets his end not on the battlefield but in Jael’s tent.