Judges 4

Judges 4:1-24

Judges 4:4

Compare Knox’s courteous farewell to Queen Mary, at their first interview: ‘I pray God, Madam, that you may be as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland, if it be the pleasure of God, as ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel’.

The story of Deborah, indeed, forms a frequent difficulty in the writings of Knox, particularly in * The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,* which is designed to prove, from Scripture and nature, that the authority wielded by women is contrary to God and order. As R. L. Stevenson points out, ‘The cases of Deborah and Huldah can be brought into no sort of harmony with his thesis. Indeed, I may say that, logically, he left his bones there; and that it is but the phantom of an argument that he parades thenceforward to the end. Well was it for Knox that he succeeded no better; it is under this very ambiguity about Deborah that we shall find him fain to creep for shelter before he is done with the regiment of women.’ The reference in the last sentence is to Knox’s subsequent retractation of this thesis, in his letter to Queen Elizabeth, in which he admits that if ‘in God’s presence she humbles herself, so will he with tongue and pen justify her authority, as the Holy Spirit hath justified the same in Deborah, that blessed mother in Israel’.

Reference. IV. 4. W. J. Dawson, * The Comrade Christ,* p. 151.

Judges 4:8

Notwithstanding all we may fondly fancy, we can scarcely be called a generation of ‘Uebermenschen’. We are doubters, scoffers, grumblers; but we have not the stuff of which ‘Uebermenschenthum’ is made. For that, we should first of all need to believe in ourselves and who does that nowadays?

From * The Letters Which Never Reached Him,* p. 34.

References. IV. 8. J. Keble, * Sermons for the Christian Year,* p. 279; * Sermons for Sundays after Trinity* (part i.), p. 64. IV. 8, 9. S. Leathes, * Truth and Life,* p. 99. IV. 9. M. S. Glazebrook, * Prospice,* p. 132. J. M. Neale, * Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year,* p. 167.

Judges 4:14

The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

Burke.

Judges 4:14

It was most especially in the graver moments of its history that Israel awoke to the full consciousness of itself and of Jehovah. The name ‘Israel’ means ‘El doth battle,’ and Jehovah was the warrior El, after whom the nation styled itself. The camp was, so to speak, at once the cradle in which the nation was nursed and the smithy in which it was welded into unity; it was also the primitive sanctuary. Jehovah went forth with the host to battle, and in its enthusiasm His presence was seen.

Wellhausen.

Judges 4:21

In * Old Mortality* Scott introduces the same incident in the conversation between Morton and Mistress Maclure, the old, charitable, covenanting widow. ‘“Ae night,” said the latter, “sax weeks or thereby afore Bothwell Brigg, a young gentleman stopped at this puir cottage, stiff and bloody with wounds, pale and dune out wi’ riding, and his horse sae weary he couldna drag ae foot after the other, and his foes were close ahint him, and he was ane o’ our enemies. What could I do, sir? You that’s a sodger will think me but a silly auld wife but I fed him, and relieved him, and keepit him hidden till the pursuit was ower.” “And who,” said Morton, “dares disapprove of your having done so?” “I kenna,” answered the blind woman, “I gat ill-will about it amang some o’ our ain folk. They said I should hae been to him what Jael was to Sisera. But weel I wot I had nae Divine command to shed blood, and to save it was baith like a woman and a Christian.”’

References. IV. 21. H. Melvill, * Penny Pulpit,* No. 1677, p. 455; * ibid.* No. 1677. IV. 22. Spurgeon, * Sermons,* vol. vi. No. 337.

Judges 4:1-24

Judges 4:5

Where ambition hath possessed itself thoroughly of the soul, it turns the heart into steel, and makes it uncapable of a conscience. All sins will easily down with the man that is resolved to rise.

Bishop Hall.

Reference. IX. 8-15. A. Raleigh, * From Dawn to the Perfect Day,* p. 132.