Judges 5 · a question people ask
Why does the song end with Sisera's mother (5:28-30)?
The song doesn't say. It gives her own words: at the window she asks, "Why is his chariot so long in coming?" (5:28), and she tells herself they are dividing the plunder, "to Sisera a plunder of dyed garments" (5:30). The hearer already knows where Sisera lies (5:27), and the song goes straight from her words to its last prayer (5:31). Christians hear her scene in two main ways. Both agree that the song says only what she said and what her ladies answered (5:28-30), and that it tells nothing of what became of her.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The enemy's hopes, turned back
Those who hold this view note that she pictures plunder being divided (5:30), while the song has already said the kings of Canaan "took no plunder of silver" (5:19). They set it beside the song at the sea, which also gives the enemy a voice, "I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the plunder" (Exodus 15:9), before "The sea covered them" (Exodus 15:10). They hear her lines as the end of the enemy's boasting, and the song's next words as its answer: "So let all your enemies perish, LORD" (5:31).
Judges 5:19 · Judges 5:30-31 · Exodus 15:9-10
The other side of the victory
Those who hold this view note that the song gives Sisera's mother lines of her own, that she "looked out, and cried" (5:28), and that her question is about her son's chariot (5:28). They hear in her scene the other side of Israel's victory, a mother waiting at a window, and they read it beside God's word in Ezekiel, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11).
Judges 5:28 · Ezekiel 33:11