And her right hand to the workmen’s hammer;
    And with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head,
    When she had pierced and stricken through his temples. 
    At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: 
    At her feet he bowed, he fell: 
    Where he bowed, there he fell down dead. 
      The mother of Sisera looked out at a window,
    And cried through the lattice,
    Why is his chariot so long in coming? 
    Why tarry the wheels of his chariots? 
    Her wise ladies answered her,
    Yea, she returned answer to herself,
    Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey;
    To every man a damsel or two;
    To Sisera a prey of divers colors,
    A prey of divers colors of needlework on both sides,
    Meet for the necks of them that take the spoil? 
    So let all thine enemies perish, O lord! 
    But let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his
      might.

One such strain preserved from any other ancient nation would establish their claims to the highest order of poetic genius, and lead to the most industrious and painful research for all that could throw light upon their literature.  It comes over the soul now like the full burst of martial music.  It stirs the blood and quickens the pulses with its strain of triumph, while it melts us to pity, as it brings before us so graphically, with such exquisite power—­yet such slight allusion—­the distress and desolation of Israel.  It is a finished picture of the age.  We see the judges, those that ride on white asses (still reserved for royal stables) that walk by the way; while it gives us a full character of Sisera and the mother who trained him.  We see the mother—­haughty, proud, avaricious, surrounded by “her wise ladies,” who are flatterers rather than counsellors—­ready to exult in the rapine and plunder of the army of her son; her natural fears awakened by his delayed return, yet hushed and soothed by the enumeration of the spoil.  No feeling of pity softening the love of vengeance,—­the desire for the plunder of a conquered people engrossing all.

And in Sisera we see the proud, cruel, licentious spoiler—­all the powers of his evil nature called into exercise by success and the long indulgence of every evil passion and gross appetite—­arrogant, oppressive and cruel in success; abject, cowardly and overreaching in adversity.  We can well imagine the state of an oppressed people ruled by such a man at the head of a licentious soldiery.  And harsh as may seem some of the expressions of Deborah, in her joyous outbursts of praise and thanksgiving, they arise from the ineffable miseries, the deep degradation, the oppressive cruelties, to which all the daughters of Israel would have been exposed had he been triumphant; and a mother in Israel might well exult in a deliverance from one whose desolating track was marked by lust and carnage.