But Deborah had called to her people in the name of Jehovah.  And Jehovah seemed, indeed, to be on their side.  We may well believe that it was the spirit of God that put it into the hearts of Deborah and Barak to delay the battle until there should be a rainy day.  When the clash finally came there was a heavy downpour.  The flat plain became a swamp.  The war chariots sank into the mud and were helpless.  The Canaanites became panic-stricken and fled in terror.  Many of them were drowned in the attempt to cross the Kishon, which is usually a shallow creek, but on that day was a deep and swiftly flowing torrent.  Sisera, himself in flight, was killed by a woman in whose tent he tried to take refuge.  The battle was won for Jehovah’s people.  The Hebrews could still be free and independent, and they had learned a valuable lesson—­the necessity for cooperation.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Read chapters 4 and 5 of the book of Judges.

2.  With the help of a map showing the location of the various tribes in Canaan, find the ones which were most in danger from Sisera, whose kingdom was in the Plain of Esdraelon.

3.  With the help of the map, explain why it was not easy for Deborah to persuade the Reubenites and the Gileadites to enter this war.

4.  What arguments would you have used to persuade them?

5.  Could you use the same arguments in favor of the League of Nations and our membership in it, as a nation?

CHAPTER XII

EXPERIMENTS IN GOVERNMENT

After Sisera was conquered, the Hebrew tribes which had combined against him immediately fell apart, relapsing into the same state of disunion and disorganization as before.  And very soon other enemies took advantage of it to plunder and kill.

=The Midianites.=—­Among the most harassing of these enemies for a time were the Midianites, who lived as nomads, roaming over the deserts just as the Hebrews themselves had done except that they made their living chiefly by robbery.  Every spring just after the wheat and barley had begun to sprout, covering all the fields with a carpet of the brightest green, bands of these nomads would drive their flocks across the Jordan and turn them loose on the young grain while the men stood guard in armed bands.  In the summer and fall after what was left of the grain had been harvested and beaten out on the threshing floors they would come again and steal the threshed grain, taking it away in bags on the backs of camels.

Sometimes the Hebrews would keep the wheat and barley unthreshed with the sheaves piled up in grain ricks and would thresh it out, a little at a time, in the low, half-concealed wine presses, which were dug in the rock.  No one’s life was safe where these marauders were in the habit of coming, and no family could be sure of food to carry them over the winter months.