Barak

There are names in Israel's story that shine not because the men who bore them were flawless, but because God chose to work deliverance through them anyway. Barak, son of Abinoam, is one of those names. His story is brief in the telling, complicated in the character, and larger than it first appears — because it reaches forward into the New Testament, where the writer of Hebrews places him among the great company of those whose faith moved the hand of God.

The setting into which Barak was called was one of prolonged and grinding misery. The book of Judges tells us that after Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, God sold them into the hand of Jabin, a king of Canaan who reigned in Hazor. The instrument of Jabin's cruelty was his military commander, Sisera, who possessed nine hundred iron chariots — a force that, to an Israelite militia on foot, must have seemed utterly insurmountable. For twenty years this oppression continued. Twenty years of a people bowed down, crying out, with no apparent relief in sight.

It was into this silence that Deborah spoke. She was a prophetess, and she judged Israel in that day, sitting under a palm tree in the hill country of Ephraim as the people came to her for judgment. What she brought to Barak was not a suggestion or an invitation but a direct commission from the LORD: rise, draw ten thousand men from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun, march to Mount Tabor, and there God would deliver Sisera into his hand.

⁶And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh–naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? ⁷And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand.

Judges 4:6–7·KJV