advanced to meet His people as they came from the west to Sinai. Before the Lord, who came down upon Sinai in the storm and darkness of the cloud, the earth shook and the heaven dropped, or, as it is afterwards more definitely explained, the clouds dropped with water, emptied themselves of their abundance of water as they do in the case of a storm. The mountains shook (נזלוּ, Niphal of זלל, dropping the reduplication of the ל = נזלּוּ, Isa 63:19; Isa 64:2), even the strong rocky mountain of Sinai, which stood out so distinctly before the eyes of the singer, that she speaks of it as “this Sinai,” pointing to it as though it were locally near. David's description of the miraculous guidance of Israel through the desert in Psa 68:8-9, is evidently founded upon this passage, though it by no means follows from this that the passage before us also treats of the journey through the desert, as Clericus supposes, or even of the presence of the Lord in the battle with Sisera, and the victory which it secured. But greatly as Israel had been exalted at Sinai by the Lord its God, it had fallen just as deeply into bondage to its oppressors through its own sins, until Deborah arose to help it (Jdg 5:6-8).
Verses 6-8
Jdg 5:6-8 6 In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath,
In the days of Jael, the paths kept holiday,
And the wanderers of the paths went crooked ways. 7 The towns in Israel kept holiday, they kept holiday,
Until that I, Deborah, arose,
That I arose a mother in Israel 8 They chose new gods;
Then was war at the gates:
Was there a shield seen and a spear
Among forty thousand in Israel?
The deep degradation and disgrace into which Israel had sunk before the appearance of Deborah, through its falling away from the Lord into idolatry, forms the dark reverse of that glorification at Sinai. Although, after Ehud, Shamgar had also brought help to the people against their enemies by a victory over the Philistines (Jdg 3:31), and although Jael, who proved herself a heroine by slaying the fugitive Sisera, was then alive, things had got to such a pitch with Israel, that no one would venture upon the public high roads. There are no good grounds for the conjecture that Jael was a different person from the Jael mentioned in Jdg 4:17., whether a judge who is not further known, as Ewald supposes, or a female judge who stood at the head of the nation in these unhappy times (Bertheau). ארחות חדלוּ, lit., “the paths ceased,” sc.,
