So let all your enemies perish, Yahweh: But let those who love him be as the sun when he goes forth in his might. The land had rest forty years.
Following this victory and the battles that followed (Judges 4:24), the land saw no major wars for 40 years (Judges 5:31). One writer pointed out several features of the ministry of Deborah that reveal Israel’s inverted life during the era of the judges. [Note: Freema Gottlieb, "Three Mothers," Judaism 30 (Spring 1981):194-203.] Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that a woman rather than a man led Israel at this particular time.