The fourth judge of Israel (Judges 4-5), active roughly 1200 BC. Name means "bee" in Hebrew. Her titles in the text are dense: ishah neviah ("a woman, a prophetess"), eshet lappidot (traditionally "wife of Lappidoth" but sometimes rendered "woman of fire"), and she "judged Israel" (Judges 4:4-5), holding court under a palm tree in the hill country of Ephraim. She was not a king and not a priest — she was a prophet who mediated God's word to Israel and adjudicated disputes among them.
Deborah's moment came when Jabin, king of Canaan, had oppressed Israel for twenty years with his 900 chariots of iron under the general Sisera. God spoke through Deborah to Barak of Naphtali, commanding him to muster 10,000 men at Mount Tabor for battle. Barak hesitated: "If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go" (Judges 4:8). Deborah went — and warned him that because of his hesitancy, "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" (4:9). The battle went as prophesied: Sisera's chariots were useless when the Kishon River flooded (Judges 5:20-21 — "the stars fought from heaven... the torrent Kishon swept them away"), and Sisera fled on foot to the tent of Jael, who drove a tent peg through his temple while he slept. The victory song in Judges 5 is one of the oldest poems in the Bible. Deborah's significance: (1) God raised up a woman to lead when the men of Israel had failed the call — her leadership is simultaneously a blessing and a rebuke; (2) Deborah does not set aside the structure of Israel — she summons Barak to lead militarily; she does not replace him; (3) her song gives God all the glory: "So may all your enemies perish, O LORD! But your friends be like the sun as he rises in his might" (5:31).