Hazor and the Battle of Deborah—Is Judges 4 Wrong?

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The article on Hazor in the March 1975 issue of the BAR (“Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01) appears to endorse Yadin’s conclusion that the references to Hazor and its king Jabin in Judges 4 constitute “a late and inaccurate gloss.” Don’t reject the historicity of the Biblical text so easily.

Yadin seeks to base his arguments that the battle of Deborah and Barak could not have been fought against the army of Jabin king of Hazor—and that therefore the references to Jabin and Hazor must be a “late and inaccurate gloss”—on the thirteenth century destruction of Hazor, as established by the archaeological evidence.

As Yadin puts it in Hazor (the Schweich lectures, p. 108): “The thirteenth century date [for the destruction of Hazor], which cannot be doubted, poses a very serious challenge … to those who would like to fix Deborah’s battle before the destruction described in Joshua.”

This thirteenth century destruction of Hazor undoubtedly represents the Israelite conquest of the great Canaanite center of the north. If the battle of Deborah and Barak described in Judges 4 (in prose) and in Judges 5 (in poetry) occurred after this destruction of Hazor, obviously Sisera and his army could not have been fighting on behalf of Jabin, king of Hazor, for Hazor was ex hypothesi then in ruins.

But this merely states the question. It does not suggest an answer. To find the answer, we must carefully consider not only when Hazor was destroyed, but also when the battle of Deborah occurred, and whether the latter necessarily occurred after the former.

In his popular book on Hazor (reviewed in “Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01), Yadin states as my view that the battle of Deborah occurred at the “end of the twelfth century” (p. 251; emphasis in original). What Yadin does not say is that this represents my judgment of 20 years ago, a judgment which I have long since abandoned upon more up-to-date consideration. If I am to be hanged, at least it should be on the basis of my current views, not those I held 20 years ago.

Not so strangely, it is Yadin, not I, who currently espouses a late twelfth century date for the battle of Deborah. As Yadin puts it in his popular book on Hazor (p. 145): Deborah “most probably lived in the twelfth century, about 100 years after the destruction of the city [of Hazor by Joshua].”

Unfortunately, Yadin does not stop to defend this late twelfth century date for the battle of Deborah which he erroneously attributes to me.

Before examining the question of the date of the battle of Deborah, we should first pin down more precisely the date of the destruction of Hazor. Yadin is quite correct when he says that its thirteenth century date cannot be doubted. But that is a 100 year period. More specifically, Yadin himself, who would like to place this destruction as early as possible, gives us a date of “c. 1230;” that is about 1230. In my view, it could be as late as 1200. If the battle of Deborah occurred before 1200, it could have been fought against Jabin’s Hazor army—before its destruction—and there is no good reason to doubt the Biblical statement to this effect.

The late 12th century date for the battle of Deborah was most prominently championed by the great American archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright. He based his argument on the excavations at Megiddo in conjunction with his interpretation of the reference to Megiddo in the poetic version of the battle of Deborah in Judges 5. In Judges 5:19, the battle is 004described in soaring language:

Kings came, they fought;

then fought the kings of Canaan

at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo.

On the basis of this passage, Albright concluded that at the time of this battle Megiddo had at the very least lost its dominant position in that area, since the reference is to the “waters of Megiddo” rather than to the city itself. Taanach appears to be the then-important urban center; and the waters of Megiddo—perhaps all that is left of the once-great city of Megiddo—is in the territory of its neighbor Taanach. The excavations at Megiddo had indicated that the last important, well-fortified city of Megiddo (stratum VIIA) was destroyed about 1125 B.C. (We can be quite confident of this date because inscriptions of Ramses III and probably of Ramses VI were found in this stratum). Since Canaanite Megiddo was destroyed about 1125 and the Biblical text seemed to indicate that Megiddo was already destroyed at the time of the battle of Deborah, Albright concluded that the battle of Deborah took place after this destruction—at the very end of the twelfth century.

I was one of those who early accepted Albright’s reasoning, although other scholars regarded Albright’s interpretation of the Biblical text as a bit too forced and legalistic. They emphasized that the Biblical passage was a poem not a contract, and it was really not so clear that Megiddo had been destroyed at the time of the battle of Deborah.

And indeed archaeological evidence has recently shown that Albright’s interpretation of the Biblical text was wrong. This in turn has led me to revisit the question of the date of the battle of Deborah. Excavations by Paul W. Lapp at Taanach have established that Canaanite Taanach was destroyed at almost the same time as Canaanite Megiddo. So there was no period when Megiddo had lost its dominant position in the area to its neighbor Taanach, as Albright argued the Biblical text implied.

Thus, the destruction of Megiddo about 1125, instead of fixing the earliest possible date for the battle of Deborah, fixes the latest possible date, for after that date both Megiddo and Taanach were in ruins. From the mention of Taanach and Megiddo in Judges 5, we can conclude only that they were two Canaanite strongholds in the region at the time of the battle. If both were destroyed about 1125 B.C., the battle of Deborah must have been fought before that date.

How much before?

One key to the answer to that question is the references to Issachar in Judges 5:

The officers of Issachar joined with Deborah;

Issachar stood by Barak.

Judges 5:15

Manasseh, on the other hand, is not even mentioned in connection with the battle of Deborah.

By the time of Gideon, Issachar had lost its place in the Israelite tribal confederation, and its territory had been occupied by Manasseh. Even though Gideon’s battle against the Midianites was fought in the area that had originally been alloted to Issachar, Issachar is not even mentioned in the Gideon story. This time the reference is to Manasseh. “Gideon sent me through all the hill-country of Ephraim with this message: Come down and cut off the Midianites” (Judges 7:24). Gideon “sent messengers all through Manasseh … He sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, and they too came up”. (Judges 6:35). But no mention of Issachar. So the battle of Deborah in which Issachar fought preceded the mid-twelfth century tribal configuration reflected in the Gideon episode. That the Gideon story stems from the mid-twelfth century seems clear from the following considerations.

The tribal configuration reflected in the Gideon episode is, in my opinion, the same as that reflected in the tribal list in Judges 1. There too Issachar goes unmentioned. In Judges 1, the territory of Issachar has already been allotted to Manasseh. Of special importance is the fact that in Judges 1, Taanach and Megiddo are mentioned as unconquered Canaanite enclaves in the territory of Manasseh. Since Taanach and Megiddo were conquered about 1125 B.C. the situation described in Judges 1 must have obtained earlier. But since in Judges 1 Manasseh has already replaced Issachar, the battle of Deborah must have occurred even earlier because 026Issachar was a mainstay of that battle.

The reference to Machir in the description of the battle of Deborah (Judges 5:14) also reflects an early tribal situation. Later Manasseh replaced Machir in the northern part of Mt. Ephraim.

Thus, sometime after the battle of Deborah, Manasseh gradually absorbed the positions of Issachar and Machir. Even after this occurred, Taanach and Megiddo continued to exist as Canaanite enclaves within the territory of Manasseh, as reflected in Judges 1. Finally, about 1125 B.C. Taanach and Megiddo were destroyed, as shown by the archaeological evidence. It must have taken generations for these changes to occur in the Israelite tribal composition of Samaria and the Jezreel Valley. And still more time elapsed before the Israelites could mount the campaigns which destroyed Taanach and Megiddo.

In my view this pushes the battle of Deborah back at least to the early twelfth century and more probably to the later part of the thirteenth century. I do not believe the development I have just described could have occurred in less than 100 years.

If that is true, the battle of Deborah might well have preceded a late thirteenth century destruction of Hazor. And in that case there is no reason why we cannot accept the fact, as the Bible tells us, that Deborah and Barak fought against the army of Jabin, king of Hazor.

The article on Hazor in the March 1975 issue of the BAR (“Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01) appears to endorse Yadin’s conclusion that the references to Hazor and its king Jabin in Judges 4 constitute “a late and inaccurate gloss.” Don’t reject the historicity of the Biblical text so easily. Yadin seeks to base his arguments that the battle of Deborah and Barak could not have been fought against the army of Jabin king of Hazor—and that therefore the references to Jabin and Hazor must be a “late and inaccurate gloss”—on the […]