Judges 4 Footnotes

4:15-16 If every man in Sisera’s army died in battle, how was Sisera still alive afterward (vv. 17-21)? All of his men (that is, the foot soldiers as distinguished from generals) could have been slain. Or “not a single man was left” who remained on the battlefield because some fled the battle and escaped—a not uncommon occurrence in modern, as well as ancient, warfare. (Compare Saul’s statement to Samuel, 1Sm 15:20, in which he claimed to have utterly destroyed the Amalekites; yet David later had to fight the same Amalekites—1Sm 27; 30; 2Sm 1.) Finally, the author of Judges did not mean to assert that every soldier in the Canaanite army died. He states that Jabin ruled from Hazor, but Sisera was from another town (Jdg 4:2,13) and organized his army from there. Some of the Canaanite forces would have remained at Hazor as Jabin’s personal guard.