Judges 5:30

Have they not sped?.... Or "found" (u) the enemy, Barak and his army, or the spoil of them? no doubt they have: have they not divided the prey?

The mother of Sisera 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?

Have they not divided the prey? i.e. it is certain they have got the prey, only they tarry to view it and distribute it, according to every man’ s quality and merit. Of them that take the spoil, Heb. of the prey; the prey put for the men of prey, those, or who take the prey; as kindred is put for a man of kindred, or a kinsman, ; and Belial, for a man of Belial, ; and days, for a man of days, or an old man, .

Judges 5:30 Have they not sped? have they [not] divided the prey; to every man a damsel [or] two; to Sisera 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?Ver. 30. Have they not sped?] Yes, they are sped, they have their passport, and your hopes hop headless. To every man a damsel or two.] The Hebrew word signifieth, vulvam vel uterum; so they call the Israelitish damsels by way of contempt, as Lavater observeth.

(30) Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey?—Literally, Are they not finding? are they not dividing the spoil? Is not the wealth of their booty the cause of their delay? (Comp. Exodus 15:9 : “The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil.”) To every man.—Literally, as in the margin, to the head of a man. (Comp. Exodus 16:16; Numbers 1:2; 1 Chronicles 12:23.) A damsel or two.—Literally, a maiden, two maidens; only that the word used is strongly contemptuous, as though a captive Hebrew girl could only be described by a term of scorn. In these internecine wars the men were killed and the women reserved as slaves (Numbers 31:17-18). Commentators quote a remarkable parallel from Gibbon (2, ch. 11), where he says that two or three Gothic female captives fell to the share of each of the soldiers of Claudius II. (“Tantum mulierum cepimus,ut binas et ternasmulieres victor sibi miles possit adjungere.”—Trebellius Pollio, 8) The reading of the Peshito is, “a heap, two heaps,” as in Judges 15:16. Of divers colours.—Literally, of dyed robes.Of divers colours of needlework.—Of dyed robes of embroidered webs.Of divers colours of needlework on both sides.—A dyed robe, two embroidered webs.Meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?—Literally, as in the margin, for the necks of the spoil. As this gives no good sense, our version follows those which here understand “spoil” as equivalent to “spoiler.” The old versions take “spoil” in apposition to the rest of the sentence: e.g., the LXX. have, “dyed robes of embroidered webs for his neck, as spoils,” and a similar meaning is involved in the loose paraphrase of the Vulgate. Others explain it to mean that the dyed robes are to be carried on the necks of the female slaves and the captive cattle. Ewald reads shegal (“queen “) for shellal (“prey “)—a brilliant and probable conjecture; for if the booty of the soldiers and the general is mentioned, the royal ladies would be hardly likely to forget themselves. In any case, the mother of Sisera is characteristically described (as Bishop Lowth has pointed out) as talking neither of the slaughter of the enemy nor the prowess of the warriors, but only of the gay and feminine booty. (Comp. “Faemineo praedae et spoliorum arderet amore,” Æn. xi. 728.) Nothing can exceed the power and skill with which in a few words the vanity, levity, and arrogance of these “wise princesses” are described, as they idly talk of colours and embroidery, and, as it were, gloat over the description; while, at the same time, an unwomanly coarseness (racham, for “maiden”) mingles with their womanly frivolity. Only we must bear in mind that they too, like Deborah and Jael, though in an ignobler way, are the creatures of their age and circumstances.

30. The verse has suffered from corrupt repetitions: spoil four times, divers colours three times. Omitting the superfluous words we may restore the text as follows: Are they not finding, dividing the spoil? a wench or two for each man; a spoil of dyed garments for Sisera; a broidered cloth or two for my neck (?). A wench or two: the word (only here in this sense in the O.T.) is used by Mesha in his inscription of the women captured from the Israelites (Moab. St. l. 17). Spoil of dyed garments lit. ‘booty of dyes,’ i.e. dyed stuffs. A broidered cloth or two, the construction is the same as in line 2; for the word cf. Ezekiel 16:10; Ezekiel 16:13; Ezekiel 16:18; Psalms 45:14; strictly it means variegated work, either woven or embroidered, see Exodus 38:23; spoils of this kind were much valued, cf. 2 Samuel 1:24. The end of the last line is obscure: the text runs for the necks of the spoil, as though these rich stuffs would be used to caparison the animals led in the triumph of the captors! The parallelism suggests a personal reference corresponding to Sisera; so LXX ‘for his neck as a spoil.’ Ewald ingeniously proposed for the last word queen (Psalms 44:9; Nehemiah 2:6), changing only one letter. On the whole it seems preferable to omit the word, and read for my neck or for his neck; but there can be no certainty about the restoration.

Render the latter part of the verse “a booty of dyed garments for Sisera, a booty of dyed garments and of party-colored cloth, a dyed garment and two party-colored clothes for the necks of the

30. The spoil — The spoil, or booty, as the context shows, was supposed to consist of captive girls and rich garments. None but oriental females would speculate in the manner here portrayed.