The so-called Song of Deborah celebrates a decisive victory during the era of the Judges, and praises Jael and the Israelites for their defeat of a Canaanite coalition led by Sisera. Despite generations of scholarship, virtually every aspect of the poem remains disputed, because it has been misunderstood in previous research. This study explains both the enigmatic role of Yahweh of the poem and its heroic ethos through a comparative study of heroic poetry.

Part I addresses preliminary critical issues, the most important being the poem's unity. Although the case for the poem's unity...