With a woman’s insight and enthusiasm, Deborah perceived that the time had come when the highways should no longer be deserted, and when the northern tribes of Israel should be freed from their bondage to the Canaanite, and she also perceived who it was that was destined to lead the Israelitish troops to victory. This was Barak of Kadesh in Naphtali, the near neighbour of Jabin and Sisera. Like the Carthaginian Barcas, he bore a name—‘the Lightning’—which fitly symbolised the vengeance he was born to take on the enemies of Israel.[314] But Barak shrank from the undertaking at first, and it was not until the prophetess had consented to go with him to Kadesh that he summoned his countrymen together, and occupied the summit of Mount Tabor. Here, protected by the forests which clothed its slopes, he trained and multiplied his forces until he felt strong enough to attack the foe. Then he descended into the plain of Megiddo, where the Canaanitish host was marching from Harosheth to meet him. It was the old battlefield of Canaan; it was there that in the days of the Egyptian conquerors the fate of the country had been decided and the Canaanitish princes under Hittite commanders from Kadesh on the Orontes had been utterly overthrown. In the camp on the lofty summit of Tabor, Barak had done more than train his men. Time had been given them in which to provide themselves with arms. Deborah declares that in the days of the oppression a shield or spear had not been seen ‘among forty thousand in Israel.’[315] The statement receives explanation from what we are told of the policy of the Philistines at a later date. When they had laid the Israelites under tribute in the time of Samuel, they banished all the smiths from the land of Israel, to prevent ‘the Hebrews’ from making themselves ‘swords and spears’ (1 Sam. xiii. 19). Agricultural implements alone were allowed (ver. 20). It would seem that a similar policy had been pursued by the Philistines and Canaanites in the earlier age of Deborah, though probably with less success. At all events Heber the Kenite, or itinerant ‘smith,’ still pitched his tent in Israelitish territory, and his wife Jael sympathised with the Israelites rather than with their Canaanitish lords.