Chapter 4. Barak and Deborah.
This chapter demonstrates how Israel again sinned and were delivered into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, by whom they were oppressed for twenty years. Excavations at Hazor have resulted in evidence of a Jabin who was king there, although not necessarily this one. Jabin appears to have been a throne name. The chapter goes on to show that Deborah and Barak consulted together about their deliverance, and that Barak, encouraged by Deborah, gathered some forces from the tribal confederacy and fought Sisera the captain of Jabin's army, whom he met, and over whom he obtained victory. Sisera, while fleeing on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, was received into it, and slain by her while asleep in it, which issued in a complete deliverance of the children of Israel.
God's Third Lesson : The Canaanite Invasion; Barak and Deborah (Judges 4:1-24).
‘ And the children of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, when Ehud was dead.'
Ehud ruled wisely and well. He encouraged the people in their worship of Yahweh, maintained the tribal links with the central sanctuary, and ensured obedience to the covenant and all involved with it, the offering of the necessary sacrifices to Yahweh, the keeping of His commandments and the justice that went along with them. All this is implicit in the fact that the people did not do grave evil in Yahweh's sight while he lived. They sinned, as all men will, but they offered the appropriate sacrifices and offerings and generally did what was right. But when he died they slipped back into their old ways.