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Enough! Barak is a Bible name, as Biblical as John, Sarah, and Joseph.
JUDGES 4:4-10 Now Deborah, a pprophetess, the wife of Lappidoth,was judgig Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the people of Israel came up to her for judgement. She sent and summoned BARAK, the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, ¨The Lord the God of Israel, commands you, ´Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabinś army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.´¨ BARAK said to her, ¨If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.¨ And she said, ¨I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.¨ Then Deborah arose, and went with BARAK to Kedesh. And BARAK summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and ten thousand men wentup at his heels; and Deborah went up with him.
Verses 12-16 When Sisera was told that BARAK the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera called out all his chariots, nine hundred chariots or iron, and all the men who were with him, from Haroshethhagoiim to the river Kishon. And Deborah said unto BARAK, Üp! For this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the Lord go out before you?¨ So BARAK went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before BARAK at the edge of the sword; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot. And BARAK pursued the chariots and the army to Haroshethhagoiim, aand all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.
Verses 22-24 And behold as BARAK pursued Sisera, Jael went out to meet him, ¨Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.¨ So he went in to her tent; and there lay Sisera dead, with the tent peg in his temple. So on that day God subdued Jabin the king of Canaan before the people of Israel. And the hand of the people of Israel bore harder and harder on Jabin, the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin kingof Canaan.
Judges Chapter 5 is a nice psalm of triumph about this event. The secret was that the river Kishon was in flood, and Sisera wound up with 900 chariots of iron (including iron wheels) stuck in the mud, an easy prey to light armed infantry. This is one of the least favorite stories of deliverance in the Bible, since many scholars are decidedly uncomfortable about Jael, the wife of Sisera´s ally, inviting him into her tent and nailing him to the ground with a tent peg while he slept.
Still, this is a canonical story of bravery by a man named BARAK (in Hebrew that means ¨lightning¨). It has nothing to do with the current campaign, but neither has anything Sarah Palin has said in the last week.
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