Deborah

• cruelty persisted in reign of

70:1.17Mil­i­tary mercy has been slow in com­ing to man­kind. Even when a woman, Deb­o­rah, ruled the He­brews, the same whole­sale cru­elty per­sisted. Her gen­eral in his vic­tory over the gen­tiles caused “all the host to fall upon the sword; there was not one left.”

• defeated Sisera at Taanach

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

• Deborah

150:3.1The Sab­bath ser­vices of the apos­tolic party had been put in the hands of the women by An­drew, upon in­struc­tions from Je­sus. This meant, of course, that they could not be held in the new syn­a­gogue. The women se­lected Joanna to have charge of this oc­ca­sion, and the meet­ing was held in the ban­quet room of Herod’s new palace, Herod be­ing away in res­i­dence at Ju­lias in Perea. Joanna read from the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing woman’s work in the re­li­gious life of Is­rael, mak­ing ref­er­ence to Miriam, Deb­o­rah, Es­ther, and oth­ers.