And she said, I will surely go with thee,
She made no hesitation about it, but agreed at once to go with
him for his encouragement; perceiving some degree of weakness in
him, and yet an hearty and sincere inclination to engage in the
work proposed, and that this might be no hinderance, she readily
assents to it: adding,
notwithstanding the journey thou takest;
the way or course he steered, the methods he took in insisting on
it that she should go with him:
shall not be for thine honour;
as a general of an army, who is commonly solicitous to have the
whole glory of an action:
for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a
woman;
meaning either herself, for she being judge of Israel, and going
along with him, would have the glory of the victory ascribed to
her, as usually is to the principal person in the army; and so it
would be said in future time, that the Lord delivered Sisera and
his army, not into the hand of Barak, but into the hand of
Deborah, whereby he would not have all the honour which otherwise
he would have, if she went not with him; or else Jael, Heber's
wife, is meant, into whose hands Sisera did fall, and by whom he
was slain; but this seems to have no connection with Deborah's
going or not going with him, it did not depend upon that one way
or another; unless it can be thought that thus it was ordered in
Providence as a rebuke of his diffidence and weakness, that
because he would not go without a woman, Sisera should fall not
into his hands, but into the hands of a woman; and if so, this is
a clear instance of Deborah's having a spirit of prophecy, and of
a prediction of a future contingent event:
and Deborah arose, and went with Barak to
Kedesh;
that is, they went together from the palm tree between Ramah and
Bethel in Mount Ephraim, to Kedesh in Mount Naphtali, in order to
raise the ten thousand men that were to fight with Sisera.
