Judges 4-6

1. Deborah
In this passage, Israel again does evil in God's sight, and so He sells them into the hands of Jabin, a Canaanite king.  Israel then cries out to God for help; God speaks through the prophetess Deborah to Barak, commanding him to defeat Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army.  After some reluctance on the part of Barak, he and Deborah defeat Sisera's forces.  Sisera escapes the battlefield but is later killed by Jael; she uses a tent peg and a hammer to strike the fatal blow.

Barak's reluctance to lead the forces of Naphtali and Zebulun against Sisera and his troops showed how far Israel had slipped (spiritually) since the time of Shamgar.  Indeed, Israel was spiritually bankrupt, and so they had stopped focusing on God; instead, they focused on what they could see - Sisera and his 900 iron chariots, a fearsome force - and quaked in fear.

2. The Song of Deborah
In this passage, Deborah and Barak sing a song to commemorate the victory that God has given them over the Canaanites.  They praise God for achieving this great victory given Israel's sad state under the rule of Jabin.  They also chastise several tribes - including Reuben, Dan and Asher - for not joining them on the battlefield.  In addition, they praise Jael for her bravery, as she has killed Sisera in her own tent.  The passage closes by noting that Israel subsequently enjoyed a 40-year period of peace.

It is interesting to note that Deborah and Barak's song praises several tribes - including Ephraim, Benjamin, Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali - while other tribes are chastised as noted above.  Clearly, the Israelites - when left to their own devices - would adopt an "every man for himself" mentality.  Only God could truly unify the tribes and induce the Israelites to have empathy for each other.

3. Gideon
In this passage, Israel again does evil in God's sight, and so He gives them into the hands of the Midianites.  Israel then cries out to God for help; God commands Gideon to deliver Israel from the hands of Midian.  Now Gideon is reluctant to follow God's leading, and so He encourages him by 1) burning up a sacrifice that he offers, 2) making a wool fleece wet with dew while keeping the ground around it dry, and 3) keeping the fleece dry while making the ground around it wet with dew.  Between the first and second above-mentioned actions on the part of God, Gideon destroys some pagan altars that his father had built.

Verse 13 of this passage is rather telling, as Gideon asks God's angel, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us...but now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."  Gideon fails to acknowledge the inherent sinfulness of Israel that is the root cause of their being enslaved by the Midianites.  One must wonder what God thought when Gideon made this statement; clearly Gideon was spiritually deficient, yet God resolved that He would be glorified through him.