“Louder than the sound of archers
at the watering-holes
will they sound as they retell
the righteous acts of Adonai,
the righteous acts of his rulers in Israel.
“Then Adonai’s people marched down to the gates.”
-Judges 5:11
The meaning of the opening of verse 11 is considered controversial.
The Complete Jewish Bible says “Louder than the sound of archers at the watering-holes”.
The King James version says “They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water” which I think is a ridiculously poor translation.
To make matters worse, the Hebrew word for archers being used here is CHATSATS and apparently it has multiple meanings.
A look at a reliable concordance will give us the following definitions:
a) bands (as in musicians)
b) archers
Or…
c) cut off in the midst
In this context, most Bible translators will assert CHATSATS means archers (those who fought in battle) rather than musicians.
The difficulty we have is in the original Hebrew, there isn’t a verb present in the first half of the sentence.
So we’re forced to make our best educated guess based on the context.
To that point, I think the Complete Jewish Bible paints a pretty accurate picture of what’s really going on here.
After the battle, the archers went to gather around the watering-holes to kick back, share their scars and regale each other with their battle stories…kind of like World War II veterans do when they go to their favorite bar to swap their war stories.
What I find particularly inspiring is the part where it says “they retell the righteous acts of Adonai”.
The archers are giving credit where credit belongs: to the Lord.
And they are also giving credit to those “men who grew their hair” who led the charge into battle.
If you don’t know who “men who grew their hair” refers to, you need to go back and review my previous post on this topic.
You can do that by clicking right HERE.
Finally, this stanza ends with the phrase: “Then Adonai’s people marched down to the gates”.
Gates here is referring to the city gates.
What’s being said is the people left the protection and safety of their villages to go and fight the enemy.
This is a key point because until Devorah arose to rally the people to fight their oppressors, and until she got Barak on board to fight for her cause, the people of Israel were content in not doing anything.
They were satisfied in just cowering behind the protection of the city gates and just going through the motions of living as long as they had food to eat and a roof over their head.
Which leads me to the takeaway for today.
There’s too many believers who are literally zombie-walking through life.
As long as they have food on their plates and a place to sleep at night, they’re perfectly content to keep things just as they are.
They don’t wanna ruffle any feathers or do anything that would make them stand out or be uncomfortable.
However, I don’t think God has called you to a life of complacency.
Because right now, on this side of heaven, whether you want to accept it or not, we are at war with certain forces of evil that just like Israel’s oppressors in ancient times are seeking to crush our God-given rights.
And they will do anything to prevent the Lord’s Kingdom from being established here on earth as it is in heaven.
They’ll be plenty of time for rest and fun when you pass from this plane of existence to the next one.
But until then, understand that we’re at war man!
And the Scriptures are the manual that gives us SPECIFIC instructions on how to fight this war.
Leave a Reply