With respect to the prose account in Jdc 4 and the verse account in Jdc 5, scholars have longed debated which text deserves the priority. This article presents an approach that has surprisingly never been argued in the abundant research on these chapters. According to the thesis defended at length here, these two texts originally shared nothing in common other than a reference to a battle in the Jezreel Valley, which has always been a very popular battlefield in the southern Levant. Before undergoing expansion on the basis of the prose account, Jdc 5 consisted of a standard victory hymn. After probing the relationship between the Song and the prose version, the article turns to examine how the Song, along with Ps 68, attests to the ways in which political communities in ancient Israel/Judah negotiated belonging and status via war commemoration.
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