Deborah Commission

Deborah
March 13th 2017
Watercolor and Ink
11 x 14 inches
7.5 hours

“Awake, awake, Deborah!
Awake, awake, sing a song!
Arise, Barak, and lead your captives away,
O son of Abinoam!...
O my soul, march on in strength!
Then the horses’ hooves pounded,
The galloping, galloping of his steeds."
~ from the Song of Deborah, Judges 5:12, 21-22

This was a commission I did for a client who wanted to make a gift for his mother, whose name is Deborah. The idea was to make a tribute to his mother as a strong woman who has faithfully guided and inspired their family, recalling the strength of her namesake, the prophetess Deborah from the Scriptures (Judges 4 and 5). Essentially he wanted a family portrait with his mother as Deborah and himself as Barak (he's the one riding the horse with the axe). I made his dad the chariot driver, with his sister and the family dog running alongside the chariot. I'm not altogether too familiar with the weaponry and armor of the Biblical 12th and 11th century B.C., so I based the armor and weapon and chariots off of the contemporaneous Assyrian weapons and chariots found on wall reliefs.