ellauri061.html on line 801: Judges chapter 5 then records the song of Deborah and Barak, written to rejoice in God’s victory over the Canaanites. The lyrics encourage the actions of Deborah and Barak, saying, “Wake up, wake up, Deborah! / Wake up, wake up, break out in song! / Arise, Barak! / Take captive your captives, son of Abinoam” (Judges 5:12). Jael’s role is also heralded: “Most blessed of women be Jael, / the wife of Heber the Kenite, / most blessed of tent-dwelling women” (verse 24).
ellauri156.html on line 493: You may remember that when David first fled from Saul he went to Ahimelech the priest and asked for some provisions and a sword. The priest had nothing but the sacred bread, which he would allow David and his men to eat, if they had only “kept themselves from women” (verse 4). The priest assumes they may have conducted themselves otherwise. David's answer, and especially the tone of it, is very pertinent to our text. He confidently assured the priest that he and his men had kept themselves from women, almost incensed that the priest would think otherwise. And the reason David gives is that he and his men are on a mission for the king. The inference is that this is a military (or at least official) mission.
ellauri197.html on line 176: Clifton's three books of poetry were published by Duckworth. The first was Dielma and Other Poems in 1932 and then followed Flight in 1934. One commentator has said that “Clifton was particularly adroit at poems honouring – and marvelling at – women” and the Times Literary Supplement stated that “His lyrics are a gracious tribute to the beauty of women”. These were fairly conventional poems unlike his final work Gleams Britain's Day published in 1942. The Spectator described it as “expressing in a sort of prophetic certitude opinions upon religion, patriotism, love, art, war and peace, which he puts in unconventional verse”. The reviewer stated that the book was “the product of a curious, whimsical mind, full of energy, squandering it on half-digested ideas”. W B Yates dedicated his poem, Lapis Lazuli, to Clifton who had given him a valuable Chinese lapis lazuli carving.
3