Judges 5:8

They chose new gods,.... That is, Israel, as most of the Jewish commentators interpret it; for the verb is singular, and Israel agrees well with it: this they did after the death of Joshua; it refers

They chose new gods; then was war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? They chose new gods. This clause has been variously rendered. But we shall notice only two.

They did not only submit to idolatry when they were forced to it by tyrants, but they freely chose new gods; new to them, and unknown to their fathers, and new in comparison of the true and everlasting God of Israel, being but upstarts, and of yesterday. In the gates, i.e. in their walled cities, which have gates and bars; gates are oft put for cities, as . Then their strongest holds fell into the hands of their enemies. Was there, i.e. there was not; the meaning is not that all the Israelites had no arms, for here is mention made only of shields or spears; so they might have swords, and bows, and arrows to offend their enemies; but either that they had but few arms among them, being many thousands of them disarmed by the Canaanites; or that they generally neglected the use of arms, as being utterly dispirited, and without all hope of recovering their lost liberty, and being necessitated to other employments for subsistence.

Judges 5:8 They chose new gods; then [was] war in the gates: was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?Ver. 8. They chose new gods.] τακαινακενα: Nihil mihi antiquius, id est potius: We should set a jealous eye upon novelties, and say, The old is better. Idolatry is ancient, but not in comparison of God’ s true worship. The serpent’ s grammar first taught men to decline God plurally, Eritis sicut Dii, ye shall be as gods, saith Damianus. Then was war in the gates.] Hannibal ad portas; the enemy came up to their very gates, disarming and disabling them for their own defence. Rome, since it became Antichristian, was never besieged, but it was taken. Idolatry is a land desolating sin.

(8) They chose new gods.—The Chaldee and the LXX. agree in this interpretation, which is strongly supported by Deuteronomy 32:16-17. The Syriac and Vulgate render it “God chose new things,” or “wars” (nova bella elegit Dominus, Vulg.); but this gives a poorer sense, and is open to the objection that Jehovah, not Elohim, is used throughout the rest of the song. It alludes to the idolatry (Jeremiah 2:11) which brought the retribution described in the next clause. Ewald and his pupil, Bertheau, render “gods” (Elohim) by “judges;” but this is very doubtful, though the word has that meaning in Exodus 21:6; Exodus 22:7-8. Then was war in the gates.—The Canaanites drove the Israelites from the city gates, where judgments were given, and expelled them from their towns; so the Targum explains it to mean, “the storming of gates,” and so too Rabbi Tanchum. One MS. of the LXX. and the Syriac and Arabic versions have the strange rendering, “they chose new gods like barley bread,” which Theodoret explains to mean, “as though after eating wheaten bread, men would voluntarily descend to coarse barley bread”; but this is only due to an inferior reading. Was there a shield or spear.—This is usually, and not unnaturally, explained to mean that there had been a general disarmament (comp. Judges 3:31; 1 Samuel 13:19); we must then assume that the Israelites had only bows, slings, and swords. But (1) there is no indication whatever (but rather the reverse, Judges 4:15) that Barak’s army—which, moreover, consisted of 10,000, not 40,000—was unarmed; and (2) the context seems to favour the meaning that, in spite of these degradations, there was not a warrior in all Israel who dared to put on his armour. Among forty thousand.—Even if the number is meant as a round or general number, it is remarkable. It is true that though Barak only had 10,000 men with him, the contingents of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh are not counted; but even then the number shows that Israel was weakened and disunited, for the Transjordanic tribes alone had sent 40,000 men to help Joshua in the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 4:13).

Verse 8. They chose new gods] This was the cause of all their calamities; they forsook Jehovah, and served other gods; and then was war in their gates-they were hemmed up in every place, and besieged in all their fortified cities; and they were defenseless, they had no means of resisting their adversaries; for even among forty thousand men, there was neither spear nor shield to be seen. The Vulgate gives a strange and curious turn to this verse: Nova bella elegit Dominus, et portas hostium ipse subvertit; "The Lord chose a new species of war, and himself subverted the gates of the enemy." Now, what was this new species of war? A woman signifies her orders to Barak; he takes 10,000 men, wholly unarmed, and retires to Mount Tabor, where they are immediately besieged by a powerful and well-appointed army. On a sudden Barak and his men rush upon them, terror and dismay are spread through the whole Cannanitish army, and the rout is instantaneous and complete. The Israelites immediately arm themselves with the arms of their enemies, and slay all before them; they run, and are pursued in all directions. Sisera, their general, is no longer safe in his chariot; either his horses fail, or the unevenness of the road obliges him to desert it, and fly away on foot; in the end, the whole army is destroyed, and the leader ingloriously slain. This was a new species of war, and was most evidently the Lord's doings. Whatever may be said of the version of the Vulgate, (and the Syriac and Arabic are something like it,) the above are all facts, and show the wondrous working of the Lord.

8. It is still the period of the oppression, though Judges 5:7 has for a moment anticipated matters by alluding to the ‘rise’ of Deborah. The first half of the verse yields no certain meaning. They chose new gods, lit. it (Israel) chooses etc., implies that Israel had been guilty of apostasy, and so was punished by an invasion; this is an idea quite foreign to the poem. Of the other renderings, God chose new things, nova bella elegit Dominus, Vulgate, is ungrammatical in Hebr. and open to the objection that Jehovah, not Elohim, is the Name in the poem; he chooses new judges (Ewald) is based upon an erroneous interpretation of Elohim in Exodus 21:6 etc. There was war in the gates seems to point to some occasion (then) in the unsettled times before Deborah; in Judges 5:11 the gates are those of the enemy; but the word for war is wholly anomalous. Disregarding the vowels, the consonants might be translated then there was barley bread, similarly LXX. A, Lucian; but no good sense can be extracted from this. The corruption is too deep-seated for emendation; probably an early attempt was made to correct the passage from Deuteronomy 32:17. Was there a shield or spear seen] When the war broke out the able-bodied men in Israel had no proper weapons with which to meet the well-armed Canaanites; they were compelled to use such rude implements as they could find. 40,000 is a round number, not to be pressed; contrast the 301,000 men above twenty assigned in Numbers 26 (P) to the six tribes who here take part in the war.

The “war in the gates” describes the hostile attacks of the Canaanites, which were the punishment of the idolatry of the Israelites (compare the marginal references), and the reduction of Israel to

8. He chose gods that were new — Israel chose new gods; that is, worshipped false gods, the idols of the heathen. See Judges 2:12-13. Then… war — War followed Israel’s idolatry, as a penal consequence.