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 [150]LAPIDOTH, [151]JABIN [2].) word; thing; a bee (a bee). (B.C. 1857.) + The nurse of Rebekah. (Genesis 35:8) Deborah accompanied Rebekah from the house of Bethuel, (Genesis 24:59) and is only mentioned by name on the occasion of her burial under the oak tree of Bethel, which was called in her honor Allon-bachuth. + A prophetess who judged Israel. Judges 4,5. (B.C, 1316.) She lived under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in Mount Ephraim, (Judges 4:5) which, as palm trees were rare in Palestine, "is mentioned as a well-known and solitary landmark." She was probably a woman of Ephraim. Lapidoth was probably her husband, and not Barak as some say. She was not so much a judge as one gifted with prophetic command (Judges 4:6,14; 5:7) and by virtue of her inspiration "a mother in Israel." The tyranny of Jabin, a Canaanitish king, was peculiarly felt in the northern tribes, who were near his capital and under her jurisdiction. Under her direction Barak encamped on the broad summit of Tabor. Deborah's prophecy was fulfilled, (Judges 4:9) and the enemy's general perished among the "oaks of the wanderers" (Zaanaim), in the tent of the Bedouin Kenite's wife, (Judges 4:21) in the northern mountains. Deborah's title of "prophetess" includes the notion of inspired poetry, as in (Exodus 15:20) and in this sense the glorious triumphal ode, Judges 5, well vindicates her claim to the office.
Deborah