The Vain Hope of the Wicked Text: Judges 5:28-30
Introduction: The View from the Enemy's Window
The Song of Deborah is a song of victory. It is a triumphant, God-drenched celebration of a great deliverance. The enemies of God’s people have been routed, their general has been hammered to the floor of a tent with a peg through his skull, and the people of God are free. But the song is not just about the victory; it is about the two sides of that victory. There is the side of Jael, the side of Deborah, the side of the men of Naphtali and Zebulun. But there is another side. There is the side of the defeated, the side of the judged, the side of those who set themselves against the Lord and His anointed.
The Holy Spirit, in His divine wisdom, does not simply leave us on the battlefield with the cheering Israelites. He takes us, in the final movements of this song, to a very different scene. He pulls back the curtain and shows us a quiet, lavish room far from the fighting. He shows us a window, and behind that window, a mother. This is the mother of Sisera, the defeated general. And what we see in this brief, poignant vignette is a masterclass in the psychology of the ungodly. It is a portrait of arrogant expectation, self-deception, and the curdling of hope into damnation.
We need to pay close attention here, because the spirit of Sisera’s mother is very much alive and well. It is the spirit of our age. It is the spirit that looks out the lattice of its own self-assured worldview and cannot comprehend why God’s chariot has not yet arrived to vindicate its rebellion. It is the spirit that comforts itself with fantasies of plunder and sexual conquest, all while the God of heaven and earth is laughing at its plans. This scene is a warning. It shows us what it looks like when a worldview built on pride and godlessness collides with the hard reality of God’s sovereign justice.
This is not just an interesting historical detail. This is a picture of the antithesis, the great divide between the City of God and the City of Man. As the people of God sing of His righteousness, the mother of God's enemy sings a very different tune, a song of proud, lustful, and ultimately futile expectation.
The Text
“Out of the window she looked and lamented,
The mother of Sisera through the lattice,
‘Why does his chariot delay in coming?
Why do the hoofbeats of his chariots tarry?’
Her wise princesses would answer her,
Indeed she repeats her words to herself,
‘Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoil?
A maiden, two maidens for every mighty man;
To Sisera a spoil of dyed work,
A spoil of dyed work embroidered,
Dyed work of double embroidery on the neck of the spoil?’”
(Judges 5:28-30 LSB)
Anxious Arrogance (v. 28)
The scene opens with a mother at her window.
"Out of the window she looked and lamented, The mother of Sisera through the lattice, ‘Why does his chariot delay in coming? Why do the hoofbeats of his chariots tarry?’" (Judges 5:28)
Notice the posture. She is looking, expecting, waiting. She is the very picture of confident assumption. Her son is a great general, the commander of 900 iron chariots. In her mind, victory is not a possibility; it is a certainty. The only question is not if he will return, but why he is taking so long about it. This is the arrogance of the world. It assumes its own strength, its own technology, its own might. The world looks at its iron chariots, its military budgets, its cultural dominance, and it cannot conceive of defeat.
But her question is tinged with something else. The word is "lamented." It is a cry, a wail. There is an anxiety creeping in at the edges of her arrogance. The hoofbeats are silent. The road is empty. The silence from the battlefield is starting to become ominous. Her question, "Why does his chariot delay?" is not a simple inquiry. It is the first crack in the facade of her pride. It is the sound of a worldview beginning to tremble. She expects triumph, but reality is not cooperating.
This is the state of all who build their house on the sand of human strength. They look out their lattice, expecting the world to conform to their desires, and when it doesn't, their first response is a mixture of impatience and anxiety. They cannot imagine that their fundamental premises are wrong. It must be a delay, a traffic jam on the road to victory. It cannot be that the entire enterprise has been dashed to pieces by the God they ignore.
Echoes of Folly (v. 29)
In her anxiety, she is not alone. She is surrounded by counselors, but they are counselors of a particular sort.
"Her wise princesses would answer her, Indeed she repeats her words to herself," (Judges 5:29 LSB)
The text calls them her "wise princesses." This is divine irony, thick and sharp. They are wise in the wisdom of this world, which is foolishness with God. What is their counsel? It is not to consider the possibility of defeat. It is not to humble themselves and inquire of the God of the Hebrews. No, their wisdom consists of reinforcing the delusion. They are an echo chamber of pride. They hear the queen mother's anxious question, and their job is to soothe her with plausible, self-flattering scenarios.
This is what the world does. It surrounds itself with "wise" counselors, with experts, with pundits, with courtiers who will tell it what it wants to hear. When a godless society begins to feel the first tremors of judgment, when the chariots of its economy or its military or its cultural projects are delayed, the "wise princesses" of the media and the academy rush in to explain it all away. They offer sophisticated-sounding reassurances that everything is fine, that the delay is temporary, that the fundamental assumptions of the secular project are sound.
But notice the end of the verse: "Indeed she repeats her words to herself." The comfort of her ladies-in-waiting is so thin, so flimsy, that she has to take up their lines and repeat them to herself. She is trying to convince herself. This is not the quiet confidence of faith; this is the frantic self-talk of denial. She is whistling past the graveyard. The echo chamber is not working, and in the deep recesses of her heart, she knows it. She is arguing with the silence from the battlefield, and the silence is winning.
The Spoils of Wickedness (v. 30)
And what is the content of this self-deception? What is the fantasy they construct to explain the delay? It is a vision of plunder, and it is grotesque.
"‘Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoil? A maiden, two maidens for every mighty man; To Sisera a spoil of dyed work, A spoil of dyed work embroidered, Dyed work of double embroidery on the neck of the spoil?’" (Judges 5:30 LSB)
Here is the heart of the Canaanite worldview, laid bare. What do they imagine is happening? They are "dividing the spoil." Victory, to them, means plunder. And what is the nature of this plunder? It is twofold: women and wealth. Human beings and material goods.
First, and most chillingly, "A maiden, two maidens for every mighty man." This is what they think of women. They are not image-bearers of God. They are not daughters, sisters, or wives to be honored. They are "spoil." They are objects to be collected, distributed like cattle, and used for the gratification of conquering soldiers. This is the world that feminism pretends to fight against, while promoting the very sexual libertinism that reduces women to the same status. This is the pagan mind. It sees people as things. The delay is explained by imagining the systematic rape of the daughters of Israel. This is their comforting thought.
Second, the wealth. "To Sisera a spoil of dyed work... double embroidery on the neck of the spoil." Sisera, the great general, will get the finest luxuries. Notice the repetition, the loving detail. This is where their hearts are. They are dreaming of fine fabrics, of status symbols, of the material rewards of conquest. Their god is their belly, their glory is in their shame, and they mind earthly things.
And look at that last phrase: "on the neck of the spoil." The Hebrew is ambiguous. It could mean the neck of the plunderer, Sisera. Or it could refer to the neck of the captive maiden who is herself the spoil. The finery is draped on the neck of the one who has just been captured and sexually violated. This is the beauty of wickedness. It is the aesthetic of hell. It is adorning brutality with luxury. While they are imagining this, Jael has just adorned Sisera's head with a tent peg, and the God of Israel has stripped him of all his glory.
Conclusion: The Two Windows
This passage presents us with a stark contrast. In the heavens, the people of God are singing a song of righteous victory to the Lord. On earth, in the house of the enemy, a mother and her princesses are crooning a lullaby of rape and plunder to soothe their anxious pride.
The mother of Sisera looked through her lattice and saw nothing. Her world was defined by what she could see, by the chariots she could count, by the wealth she could imagine. And because her worldview had no room for the God who fights for His people from the heavens, the silence from the battlefield was unintelligible. It could only be filled with foolish, wicked fantasies.
We also look through a window. We look through the lattice of Scripture. And what we see is the reality that Sisera's mother could not. We see that God judges the wicked. We see that He brings the proud down to the dust. We see that the iron chariots of this world are nothing before the hosts of heaven. And we see that the vain hopes of the ungodly are always, always dashed to pieces.
The world around us is the mother of Sisera. It looks out its window, wondering why its utopian projects are delayed. It comforts itself with lies about progress and plunder. It fantasizes about a future where it has finally vanquished the people of God and can enjoy its spoils in peace.
But while they are looking for the chariots of Sisera, we are looking for the chariot of fire that will bring the Lord Jesus back in glory. Their hope is in a delay; our hope is in a final, glorious arrival. Their hope ends in the silence of a bloody tent floor. Our hope ends in the song of the redeemed before the throne of God and of the Lamb. Their story ends with a question mark hanging in the air. Our story ends with the great Amen.