Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 5:4
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.
4, 5. Jehovah’s advent. These verses describe the awful coming of Jehovah to help His people in the battle: the Godhead approaches in storm and thunder, in the very storm which brought disaster upon Sisera’s army, Jdg 5:20 f. Similar accompaniments of Jehovah’s presence are alluded to in Mic 1:3-4; Isa 64:1; Psa 18:7-15; Psa 50:3; Psa 97:2-6. The ancient dwelling-place of Jehovah, before the establishment of the sanctuary on Zion, was not in Canaan but at Sinai (J’s name, and P’s) or Ho reb (E and D) Exo 3:1 , 1Ki 19:8, situated at a distance, of ‘eleven days by the Mt Seir road from Kadesh-Barnea’ (Deu 1:2), probably in Midian, E. of the Gulf of ‘Abah; from thence He issued across the field i.e. region of Edom into Canaan for the deliverance of His people. Cf. Deu 33:2; Hab 3:3; Zec 9:14.
wentest forth marchedst ] Cf. Hab 3:12 f., and Psa 68:7 (imitated from here).
Seir ] the mountain range E. of the ‘Arbah, from the S. of the Dead Sea to the Gulf of ‘A bah, in which the field of Edom lay, Gen 32:3; Gen 36:8. Seir was the home of Esau, Deu 2:5; Jos 24:4.
the heavens also dropped ] The object water is suspended till the next line, an instance of the parallelism noted above (1). But instead of dropped the LXX. A gives were in commotion, which perhaps implies the Hebr. word for swayed; this correction is adopted by some scholars. The last two lines of this v. and the second of Jdg 5:5 are copied in Psa 68:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Compare Psa 68:7-9, and Hab 3:3-16. The three passages relate to the same events, and mutually explain each other. The subject of them is the triumphant march of Israel, with the Lord at their head, to take possession of Canaan, and the overthrow of Sihon, Og, and the Midianites. This march commenced from Kadesh, in the immediate neighborhood of Self, and the victories which followed were an exact parallel to the victory of Deborah and Barak, accompanied as it had been with the storm which made Kishon to overflow his banks.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. When thou wentest out of Seir] Here is an allusion to the giving of the law, and the manifestation of God’s power and glory at that time; and as this was the most signal display of his majesty and mercy in behalf of their forefathers, Deborah very properly begins her song with a commemoration of this transaction.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Seir and
Edom are the same place; and these two expressions note the same thing, even Gods marching in the head of his people from Seir or Edom towards the land of Canaan. Whilst the Israelites were encompassing Mount Seir, there were none of the following effects; but when once they had done that, and got Edom on their backs, then they marched directly forwards towards the land of Canaan. The prophetess being to praise God for the present mercy, takes her rise higher, and begins her song with the commemoration of the former and ancient deliverances afforded by God to his people, the rather because of the great resemblance this had with them, in the extraordinary and miraculous manner of them.
The earth; either,
1. The inhabitants of the earth or land; or,
2. The earth, properly taken, as the following passages are; God prepared the way for his people, and struck a dread into their enemies by earthquakes, as well as by other terrible signs.
The clouds also dropped water, i.e. thou didst send most dreadful showers of rain, storms and tempests, thunder and lightning, and other tokens of thy displeasure, upon thine enemies; as may appear by comparing this with other parallel texts.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4, 5. Allusion is here made, ingeneral terms, to God’s interposition on behalf of His people.
Seir . . . the field ofEdomrepresent the mountain range and plain extending along thesouth from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf.
thou wentest outindicatesthe storm to have proceeded from the south or southeast.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the fields of Edom,…. Here properly begins the song, what goes before being but a preface to it; and it begins with an apostrophe to the Lord, taking notice of some ancient appearances of God for his people, which were always matter of praise and thankfulness; and the rather are they taken notice of here, because of some likeness between them and what God had now wrought; and this passage refers either to the giving of the law on Sinai, as the Targum and Jarchi; see De 33:2; or rather, as Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and others, to the Lord’s going before Israel, after they had encompassed the land of Edom, and marched from thence towards the land of Canaan, when they fought with Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites, and conquered them; which struck terror into all the nations round about them, and the prophecies of Moses in his song began to be fulfilled, Ex 15:14; and which dread and terror are expressed in the following figurative phrases:
the earth trembled; and the like figure Homer a uses at the approach of Neptune, whom he calls the shaker of the earth, perhaps borrowed from hence; it may design the inhabitants of it, the Amorites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines, Canaanites, and others:
and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water; which, as it may literally refer to the storm and tempest of rain that might be then as now, see Jud 4:15, so may figuratively express the panic great personages, comparable to the heavens and the clouds in them were thrown into, when their hearts melted like water, or were like clouds dissolved into it.
a ‘ , Iliad. 13. v. 18, 34, 44.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
To give the Lord the glory for the victory which had been gained through His omnipotent help over the powerful army of Sisera, and to fill the heathen with fear of Jehovah, and the Israelites with love and confidence towards Him, the singer reverts to the terribly glorious manifestation of Jehovah in the olden time, when Israel was accepted as the nation of God (Ex 19). Just as Moses in his blessing (Deu 33:2) referred the tribes of Israel to this mighty act, as the source of all salvation and blessing for Israel, so the prophetess Deborah makes the praise of this glorious manifestation of God the starting-point of her praise of the great grace, which Jehovah as the faithful covenant God had displayed to His people in her own days. The tacit allusion to Moses’ blessing is very unmistakeable. But whereas Moses describes the descent of the Lord upon Sinai (Ex 19), according to its gracious significance in relation to the tribes of Israel, as an objective fact (Jehovah came from Sinai, Deu 33:2), Deborah clothes the remembrance of it in the form of an address to God, to bring out the thought that the help which Israel had just experienced was a renewal of the coming of the Lord to His people. Jehovah’s going out of Seir, and marching out of the fields of Edom, is to be interpreted in the same sense as His rising up from Seir (Deu 33:2). As the descent of the Lord upon Sinai is depicted there as a rising of the sun from the east, so the same descent in a black cloud amidst thunder, lightning, fire, and vapour of smoke (Exo 19:16, Exo 19:18), is represented here with direct allusion to these phenomena as a storm rising up from Seir in the east, in which the Lord advanced to meet His people as they came from the west to Sinai. Before the Lord, who came down upon Sinai in the storm and darkness of the cloud, the earth shook and the heaven dropped, or, as it is afterwards more definitely explained, the clouds dropped with water, emptied themselves of their abundance of water as they do in the case of a storm. The mountains shook ( , Niphal of , dropping the reduplication of the = , Isa 63:19; Isa 64:2), even the strong rocky mountain of Sinai, which stood out so distinctly before the eyes of the singer, that she speaks of it as “this Sinai,” pointing to it as though it were locally near. David’s description of the miraculous guidance of Israel through the desert in Psa 68:8-9, is evidently founded upon this passage, though it by no means follows from this that the passage before us also treats of the journey through the desert, as Clericus supposes, or even of the presence of the Lord in the battle with Sisera, and the victory which it secured. But greatly as Israel had been exalted at Sinai by the Lord its God, it had fallen just as deeply into bondage to its oppressors through its own sins, until Deborah arose to help it (Jdg 5:6-8).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(4) Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir.See Psa. 68:7-9; Hab. 3:3-12. The majority of commentators, both ancient and modern, suppose that the reference is to the promulgation of the law on Sinai, as described in Exo. 19:16-18, Deu. 33:3. But the mention of Seir and Edom seems to show that this is not the case, and, indeed, the imagery is different, and the context requires a more pertinent allusion. It the thunders and lightnings of the fiery law are alluded to, we can only suppose that a contrast is intended between the glory which Israel derived from that revelation and their recent abject condition; but the train of thought is clearer if we explain the allusion of the march of Israel from Kadesh Barnea to their first great conquest on the east of the Jordan. This march seems to have been signalised, and the battles of Israel aided, by the same majestic natural phenomena as those which had helped them to defeat Sisera, as though Jehovah Himself were the leader of their vanguard. Though the earthquakes and rains which made so deep an impression upon them are not recorded in the Pentateuch, the memory of the circumstances is preserved in these three passages.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. Thy going out from Seir What going out from Seir is here meant? There is an allusion to the desert-journey of Israel, and the theophanies connected with it, especially the theophany at Sinai; and the same occurs in substance again in Psa 68:7-8, and Hab 3:3-4. That sublime theophany was the grand independence day of Israel, always fresh, and to be celebrated in the greatest of national hymns; but to explain this verse and the following as a reference exclusively to that ancient time, and as having no other application, is to meet insuperable difficulty in bringing the passage into any sort of harmony with the context. We, therefore, reject such an explanation of these words. The trembling earth, the dropping heavens, the quaking mountains, together with the statements of Jdg 5:20-21 that the heavens fought, and the Kishon swept the hosts of Sisera away, all point to a terrible thunder storm which God sent on that occasion to discomfit the enemies of his people. See note on Jdg 4:15. The inspired poetess saw in that tempest a sublime theophany, which reminded her of the ancient scenes at Sinai, and she very naturally passes from her address to the heathen kings (Jdg 5:3) to speak of this miraculous interposition of Jehovah. She clothes her description in imagery drawn from the theophany at Sinai. Compare the use of similar imagery in Psa 18:7-15. The going out from Seir, and through the fields of Edom, is, therefore, to be explained as the approach, from that southern quarter of the heavens, of the tremendous tempest in which Jehovah moved forth from his seat on Sinai, and marched to the rescue of his people. See note on next verse. This view, which is that of Robinson and some of the best scholars, seems to us much more tenable than that of most expositors, which makes Jdg 5:4-5 the description of a scene which had no connexion at all with the subject matter of this song.
Heavens did drop Poured down floods of water, that speedily swelled the Kishon and other streams so as to sweep multitudes of the warring host away. Compare Jdg 5:21.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Greatness of Yahweh ( Jdg 5:4-5 ).
Jdg 5:4-5
“Yahweh, when you went out of Seir,
When you marched out of the field of Edom,
The earth quaked, the heavens also dropped,
Yes, the clouds dropped water.
The mountains flooded down at the presence of Yahweh,
Even yon Sinai, at the presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel.”
The greatness of Yahweh was now described in terms of natural phenomenon. The connection of Seir with Sinai suggests that we have here a picture of Yahweh marching with His people out of the wilderness to capture the land of Canaan for Himself. ‘Seir, the field of Edom’, was connected with the old Edom (Gen 32:3) and that stretched right back into the wilderness.
The quaking earth was a reminder of God’s revelation of Himself at Sinai (Exo 19:18), while the waters flooding down were particularly appropriate in view of the way in which He destroyed the Canaanites at the Kishon. The thought is of a mighty storm which she may reasonably have connected with the phenomena at Sinai (Exo 19:16), while linking Sinai with what he had done at Kishon. For this is poetry. Compare Psa 68:7-9 which clearly has the song of Deborah in view. Thus the God of the covenant fulfilled His part in the covenant at Kishon. The floods of water from the skies flowed down ‘from Mount Sinai’.
She may also have had in mind the blessing of Moses. There Moses had said, ‘Yahweh came from Sinai, And rose from Mount Seir to them, He shone forth from Paran, and He came from ten thousands of holy ones’ (Deu 33:2 compare Psa 68:17). It is clear reference to the fact that their mighty covenant God, with Whom they had dealt at Sinai, had come with them. He was not a far off God in a holy mountain, He was One Who was with them, the ‘I am’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 5:4. Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir The argument of this ode is, the delivery of the people of Israel, by the assistance of God, from bondage; which the sacred writer briefly proposing at the beginning, and having summoned the kings and princes of the neighbouring nations to take note of so great an event, she enters upon the praises of God, not from the recent benefit, but from the miracles performed of old, at their departure out of Egypt.
O JEHOVAH! when thou wentest out of Seir, When thou marched’st out of the land of Edom, The earth trembled; the heavens thundered; The clouds dropt down water.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Here is a beautiful retrospect to the Lord’s former mercies for his people, and to his former manifestations on Mount Sinai. The Holy Ghost taught the Prophet Habakkuk to record similar things. Hab 3:3-4 . It is always profitable to connect in one and the same view, God’s past with his present mercies. It shows his unchangeableness in his love to his people. And it serves to beget faith in the same for what is to come. God in Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Heb 13:8 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jdg 5:4 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.
Ver. 4. Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir. ] When thou marchedst before thy people through the wilderness. Thus this good woman recogniseth mercies long since received, that she may the better praise God for the present deliverance. A worthy pattern for us to imitate, with whom, as with children, eaten bread is soon forgotten. It is good to begin our thanksgivings high enough: and as shopkeepers, by turning over their books to look up one debt, take notice of many more: so should it be with us in revising and celebrating God’s favours.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
when. Compare Exo 19:18.
dropped = dripped.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Lord: Deu 33:2, Psa 68:7, Psa 68:8, Hab 3:3-6
the earth: 2Sa 22:8, Job 9:6, Psa 18:7-15
dropped: Psa 77:17
Reciprocal: Gen 33:14 – unto Seir Psa 46:3 – mountains Psa 97:5 – hills Psa 114:4 – General Isa 64:1 – that the Isa 64:3 – thou didst Jer 4:24 – mountains Jer 10:10 – at Mic 1:4 – the mountains Hab 3:10 – mountains
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jdg 5:4. Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir Thus the prophetess, by a sudden apostrophe, addresses him, not as their present deliverer, but as the God who had formerly exerted his miraculous power to bring them into the promised land; leaving her hearers to recollect, that it was the same power which had now subdued the Canaanites, that at first expelled them; the same power which had now restored to the Israelites the free enjoyment of their country, that at first put them in possession of it. In other words, being to praise God for the present mercies, she takes her rise higher, and begins her song with the commemoration of the ancient deliverances afforded by God to his people; and the rather, because of the great resemblance this had to them, in the miraculous manner of them. Seir and Edom are the same place, and these two expressions mean the same thing, even Gods marching at the head of his people, from Seir or Edom, toward the land of Canaan. The earth trembled God prepared the way for his people, and struck a dread into their enemies, by earthquakes, as well as by other terrible signs. The heavens dropped That is, thou didst send storms and tempests, thunder and lightning, and other tokens of thy displeasure upon thine enemies. The books of Moses, indeed, do not mention any earthquake as happening during their march from Seir in Edom, to war against Sihon and Og, and take possession of their land; but it is highly probable, from what is repeatedly spoken of the terror occasioned by their march, and the universal fear that was spread round because of them, that it was attended with such commotions of nature. See Psa 68:7-8; Isa 64:3; Hab 3:6; Deu 1:19-20.