I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel: why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the LORD?
Thou seekest to destroy ... and a mother in Israel. The woman might mean herself by the use of this last expression, which is applied to another female governor, Deborah (Judges 5:7); but it is more probable that she intended it to refer to the city Abel, which, with the circumjacent villages, was "a mother in Israel." (See this use of the phrase, Numbers 21:25; Numbers 21:32; Numbers 32:42; Joshua 17:11; Judges 11:26.)