And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun?
She sent and called Barak - i:e., lightning, as Hamilcar, a famous Carthaginian general, was called Barca. Deborah summoned him, i:e., Barak, by virtue of her official authority as judge.
Kedesh-naphtali - situated on an eminence, not far from Hazor, a little north of the sea of Galilee, and so called to distinguish it from another Kedesh in Issachar. It is now Kades. It was 20 Roman miles from Tyre, and not far from Paneas (Robinson, 'Biblical Researches,' 3:, p. 354; Stanley, 'Sinai and Palestine,' p. 331; also 'Lectures on the Jewish Church,' p. 319).
Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded - a Hebrew form of making an emphatic communication.
Go and draw toward mount Tabor - now Jebel et-Tur, an isolated mountain of Galilee, at the northeast grainer of the plain of Esdraelon. It was a convenient, because a central place of rendezvous for the northern tribes; and the contingent of troops which Barak mustered is not to be considered as limited strictly to 10,000. There were some additional volunteers from Benjamin and Ephraim. But still they formed a force quite inadequate to encounter the army of Sisera on the plain; and therefore they encamped on the mount. Barak's army, consisting of 10,000 foot soldiers "of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun," could not have been living in Galilee at this time; because this would imply an actual possession of the land assigned to them in the northern provinces, which is contradicted by this part of the history in every page of it. Only a few scattered members of the tribes had settled themselves here and there on their estates, and the object of the battle, which, as appears from Judges 4:7, was plainly aggressive, was to put the whole of them into actual possession (see the note at Judges 5:16-17; Judges 5:23) (Drew's 'Scripture Lands,' p. 107).