Judges 5:19-31. \u00a0Remember that Israel had no king at this time so verses 18-19 must be referring to the Canaanite armies and they took no plunder. \u00a0That is to say they were not winning. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Verses 20 and 21 tell us why. \u00a0Most references to stars in the Old Testament refer to stars. \u00a0And this could be some sort of meteor shower that hits only the Canaanite army. \u00a0That would fit with the other disaster of the river flooding. \u00a0In a couple of passages stars refer to either humans or angles. \u00a0In Joseph’s dream (Genesis 37:9-10) the stars represent his brothers. \u00a0In Job 38 God is talking to Job trying to get Job to understand just how powerful He is. \u00a0 In Job 38:7 He is describing what was going on when He created the universe and talks about the “stars singing together, the sons of God shouting for joy”. \u00a0In Job chapters 1 and 2 the term “sons of God” is used for angles. \u00a0The verse in chapter 38 is probably a parallel (side by side comparison or contrast), something Hebrew authors liked to do a lot. \u00a0So “morning stars” would be parallel with “sons of God”. \u00a0Both would be a poetical reference to angles. \u00a0Daniel 8:10 may be a similar situation. \u00a0So the stars could be angles coming to the battle to fight for Israel. \u00a0On the other hand the flood of the river was just that. \u00a0In all of these cases though it is clearly God who is controlling the events.<\/p>\n
In verses 23 and 24 we see another possible example of a parallel form. \u00a0This time the parallel is a contrast. \u00a0We do not know anything about Meroz but the writer sees to be drawing a comparison with Jael. \u00a0The comparison is of opposites though. \u00a0Meroz would have been an Israelite town \u00a0in the area of the battle. \u00a0It is clear that they were not on board with what God was doing. \u00a0It’s not that God needed their help it is more like they weren’t cheering as God did His thing. \u00a0These people were fans of the Canaanites, they had been infected with the Canaanite culture and religion. \u00a0In contrast to them is Jael. \u00a0Jael was the wife of a man named Heber. \u00a0He was related to Moses by marriage. \u00a0Heber’s ancestor (father, grandfather, or great-grandfather) would have been Moses’ brother in law. \u00a0Heber’s family were called Kenites. \u00a0It appears that the Kenites were allies of the Israelites. \u00a0Except for Heber who had gone his own way and made an alliance with one of the Canaanite kings. \u00a0When Sisera, the Canaanite general, began to lose he ran for friendly territory. \u00a0He thought he was safe in the tent of Heber’s wife. \u00a0Although she was not an Israelite, Jael, acted in faith and in opposition to her husband’s treaty and killed Sisera. Her actions were actions of faith in God. \u00a0She was a real contrast in the song to the unfaithful people of Meroz. \u00a0In contrast to the people of Meroz who were “utterly cursed” \u00a0Jael is called “most blessed” of women.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t matter what family you are from, what town you live in, what your family’s political alliances have been, or what gender you are. \u00a0What matters is seeing God for who He is and joining His team by faith. \u00a0In this story two women are the heroes one an Israelite who was not afraid to speak out for God and the other a non-Israelite who was not afraid to act for God. \u00a0What united them was faith.<\/p>\n
God help me have faith and act on it. \u00a0Thank you for making me a member of your team. \u00a0Help me act like it every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judges 5:19-31. \u00a0Remember that Israel had no king at this time so verses 18-19 must be referring to the Canaanite armies and they took no plunder. \u00a0That is to say they were not winning. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Verses 20 and 21 tell us why. \u00a0Most references to stars in the Old Testament refer to stars. \u00a0And this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}