Deborah

2 definitions found

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Deborah
     a bee. (1.) Rebekah's nurse. She accompanied her mistress when
     she left her father's house in Padan-aram to become the wife of
     Isaac (Gen. 24:59). Many years afterwards she died at Bethel,
     and was buried under the "oak of weeping", Allon-bachuth (35:8).
     


       (2.) A prophetess, "wife" (woman?) of Lapidoth. Jabin, the
     king of Hazor, had for twenty years held Israel in degrading
     subjection. The spirit of patriotism seemed crushed out of the
     nation. In this emergency Deborah roused the people from their
     lethargy. Her fame spread far and wide. She became a "mother in
     Israel" (Judg. 4:6, 14; 5:7), and "the children of Israel came
     up to her for judgment" as she sat in her tent under the palm
     tree "between Ramah and Bethel." Preparations were everywhere
     made by her direction for the great effort to throw off the yoke
     of bondage. She summoned Barak from Kadesh to take the command
     of 10,000 men of Zebulun and Naphtali, and lead them to Mount
     Tabor on the plain of Esdraelon at its north-east end. With his
     aid she organized this army. She gave the signal for attack, and
     the Hebrew host rushed down impetuously upon the army of Jabin,
     which was commanded by Sisera, and gained a great and decisive
     victory. The Canaanitish army almost wholly perished. That was a
     great and ever-memorable day in Israel. In Judg. 5 is given the
     grand triumphal ode, the "song of Deborah," which she wrote in
     grateful commemoration of that great deliverance. (See LAPIDOTH
     ŻT0002240, {JABIN} [2].)
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Deborah, word; thing; a bee