In the days of Shamgar. — In this and the two next verses is described the misery and dejection of Israel; and the names of Shamgar and Jael are mentioned to enhance the glory of Deborah, by showing that even the presence among the Israelites of two such heroic souls as Shamgar and Jael was unavailing to deliver them until Deborah arose. That Shamgar is thus (apparently) alluded to as a contemporary of Jael has an important bearing on the chronology; for it at least shows that simultaneous struggles may have been going on against the Philistines in the south and the Canaanites in the north.
In the days of Jael. — It has been thought so strange that Deborah should mention the name of the Bedouin chieftainess as marking the epoch, that some have supposed “Jael” to be the name of some unknown judge; and some have even proposed to read Jair. Others render it “the helper,” and suppose that Ehud, or Shamgar, is referred to. But (1) Jael is essentially a woman’s name (see Judges 4:17; Proverbs 5:19); (2) she is mentioned prominently in this very song as having put the finishing stroke to the victory of Israel; and (3) she may have been — and various incidents in the history lead us to suppose that she was — a woman of great importance and influence, even independently of her murder of Sisera.
The highways were unoccupied. — Literally, kept holiday. This had been foretold in Leviticus 26:22. The grass grew on them; there was no one to occupy them. “The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth” (Isaiah 33:8). “The land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned” (Zechariah 7:14). (Comp. 2 Chronicles 15:5; Lamentations 1:4; Lamentations 4:18.)
Travellers. — Literally, as in the margin, walkers of paths. Those of the unhappy conquered race whose necessities obliged them to journey from one place to another could only slink along, unobserved, by twisted — i.e., tortuous, devious — bye-lanes. A traveller in America was reminded of this verse when he saw the neutral ground in 1780, with “houses plundered and dismantled, enclosures broken down, cattle carried away, fields lying waste, the roads grass-grown, the country mournful, solitary, silent.” — (Washington Irving’s “Life of Washington,” ch. 137)