Saint Deborah the Prophetess, also known as Deborah the Judge, Deborah the Matriarch, Debbora, was a Old Testament prophetess and judge, the only female judge mentioned in sacred scripture. She was married to a man called Lappidoth (lightning/torch).
She rendered her judgments beneath a date palm tree between Ramah in Benjamin and Bethel in the land of Ephraim.
The people of Israel had been oppressed by Jabin, the king of Canaan, whose capital was Hazor, for twenty years. Stirred by the wretched condition of Israel she sends a message to Barak, the son of Abinoam, at Kedesh in Naphtali, and tells him that the Lord God had commanded him to muster ten thousand troops of Naphtali and Zebulun and concentrate them upon Mount Tabor, the mountain at the northern angle of the great plain of Esdraelon. At the same time she states that the Lord God of Israel will draw Sisera, commander of Jabin’s army, to the Kishon River. Barak declines to go without the prophet. Deborah consents, but declares that the glory of the victory will therefore belong to a woman.
As Deborah prophesied, a battle is fought (led by Barak), and Sisera is completely defeated, thereafter there was peace for 40 years.
