Judges 5:31

31 May all your enemies perish like this, LORD! But may your allies be like the sun, rising in its strength. And the land was peaceful for forty years.

Judges 5:31 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 5:31

So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord!
&c.] As Sisera and his army did, and be disappointed as his mother and her ladies were; which is not only a wish or prayer that it might be, but a prophecy that so it would be:

but let them that love him;
that love the Lord superlatively and sincerely, with all their heart and soul, and from love serve and fear him:

[be] as the sun when he goeth forth in his might;
in the middle of the day, when its heat and light are the greatest, and in the summer solstice, in the month of June, when the sun is in Cancer, as Ben Gersom and Abarbinel observe, and it is hottest: the sense is, let the true friends of God be as bright and as glorious, and increase in light, lustre, and splendour, as that glorious luminary in midday, and be no more liable to be resisted and stopped by their enemies, and as much out of the reach of them as that is:

and the land had rest forty years;
these are not the words of Deborah, whose song ends with the last clause, but of the writer of this book; which years, according to most, are to be reckoned from the death of Ehud, including the twenty years' bondage under Jabin, as Ben Gersom and Abarbinel; so that strictly speaking the rest was but twenty years; one would think they should be reckoned from the victory obtained over Jabin king of Canaan.

Judges 5:31 In-Context

29 Her wisest attendants answer; indeed, she replies to herself:

30 "Wouldn't they be finding and dividing the loot? A girl or two for each warrior; loot of colored cloths for Sisera; loot of colored, embroidered cloths; two colored, embroidered cloths as loot for every neck."

31 May all your enemies perish like this, LORD! But may your allies be like the sun, rising in its strength. And the land was peaceful for forty years.