Judges 4:8-21

New International Version

⁸ Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”

⁹ “Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.” So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh.^{(A) 10} There Barak summoned^(B) Zebulun and Naphtali, and ten thousand men went up under his command. Deborah also went up with him.

¹¹ Now Heber the Kenite had left the other Kenites,^(C) the descendants of Hobab,^(D) Moses’ brother-in-law,^[a] and pitched his tent by the great tree^(E) in Zaanannim^(F) near Kedesh.

¹² When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor,^{(G) 13} Sisera summoned from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River^(H) all his men and his nine hundred chariots fitted with iron.^(I)

¹⁴ Then Deborah said to Barak, “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands.^(J) Has not the Lord gone ahead^(K) of you?” So Barak went down Mount Tabor, with ten thousand men following him. ¹⁵ At Barak’s advance, the Lord routed^(L) Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot.

¹⁶ Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim, and all Sisera’s troops fell by the sword; not a man was left.^{(M) 17} Sisera, meanwhile, fled on foot to the tent of Jael,^(N) the wife of Heber the Kenite,^(O) because there was an alliance between Jabin king of Hazor^(P) and the family of Heber the Kenite.

¹⁸ Jael^(Q) went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

¹⁹ “I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk,^(R) gave him a drink, and covered him up.

²⁰ “Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is anyone in there?’ say ‘No.’”

²¹ But Jael,^(S) Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep,^(T) exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.^(U)