deborah

1 definition found

deborah - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

  Deborah
  a bee. (1.) Rebekah's nurse. She accompanied her mistress when
  she left her father's house in Padan-aram to become the wife of
  Isaac (Gen. 24:59). Many years afterwards she died at Bethel,
  and was buried under the "oak of weeping", Allon-bachuth (35:8).
  
    (2.) A prophetess, "wife" (woman?) of Lapidoth. Jabin, the
  king of Hazor, had for twenty years held Israel in degrading
  subjection. The spirit of patriotism seemed crushed out of the
  nation. In this emergency Deborah roused the people from their
  lethargy. Her fame spread far and wide. She became a "mother in
  Israel" (Judg. 4:6, 14; 5:7), and "the children of Israel came
  up to her for judgment" as she sat in her tent under the palm
  tree "between Ramah and Bethel." Preparations were everywhere
  made by her direction for the great effort to throw off the yoke
  of bondage. She summoned Barak from Kadesh to take the command
  of 10,000 men of Zebulun and Naphtali, and lead them to Mount
  Tabor on the plain of Esdraelon at its north-east end. With his
  aid she organized this army. She gave the signal for attack, and
  the Hebrew host rushed down impetuously upon the army of Jabin,
  which was commanded by Sisera, and gained a great and decisive
  victory. The Canaanitish army almost wholly perished. That was a
  great and ever-memorable day in Israel. In Judg. 5 is given the
  grand triumphal ode, the "song of Deborah," which she wrote in
  grateful commemoration of that great deliverance. (See LAPIDOTH
  �T0002240, JABIN [2].)