Vayishlach - The Death of Deborah

A teacher of mine, Dr. Ruth Fagin, embodied the spirit of this midrash when she once said to me that Devorah is a psychological stand-in for Rivkah – Rivkah is such a powerful character that her death cannot even be mentioned lest it derail Yaakov’s life. So the Torah represses Rivkah’s death and mentions Devorah instead, as a kind of mother-substitute – a veiled allusion to the real mother-loss.
I want to extend this thinking a little farther, by examining Devorah’s burial place, the Oak of Weeping. The oak is often a sacred tree in ancient Israel. Consider Avraham’s camp at Elonei Mamrei – the Speaking Oaks – as another example (Genesis 13:18). Yet Devorah’s burial place is not only “under” an oak. It is also “under Beit El”—under the very shrine that Yaakov builds to commemorate his successful return (Genesis 35:7). Devorah’s grave lies beneath the altar of Yaakov’s new tribe. This seems to me immeasurably powerful. This place of new beginnings and fulfilled blessings is also a place of remembered mother-loss. (We might even say that repression of the mother, human and/or divine, is being placed at the core of tribal memory.)...
We should consider that Devorah the wet-nurse has a very potent name. Devorah’s name, like the name of Devorah the prophetess, means “bee” and comes from the root “to speak” (davar) and also the root for “shrine” (devir; e.g., 1 Kings 6:5). She is the one who speaks at the foot of the shrine. I want to offer that Devorah’s presence speaks the unacknowledged grief of the parashah – for there is so much unacknowledged grief. Think of it: the mysterious opponent wounds Yaakov at Peniel and he never walks well again, but Yaakov doesn’t appear to grieve his injuries. Jacob and Esau reconcile and then split again, but no one talks about it. Shechem rapes Dinah, and then is himself murdered along with his family, but no one mourns these terrible events either. In fact, we never hear about Dinah’s life after this incident. Then Yaakov makes his family abandon their tribal gods as they enter Canaan and adopt only YHWH – their spiritual past, presumably once beloved, is buried under a terebinth in Shechem, and no one grieves. Rachel dies, and after setting up a pillar, Yaakov/Yisrael immediately journeys on. No mourning ensues. And, as if some kind of awful Freudian slip has occurred, the Torah does not even mention Rivkah’s death. Even when Yaakov and Esau bury Yitzhak, the word “mourning” or “weeping” does not appear. Vayishlah is the parashah of repressed mourning.
The Oak of Weeping perhaps holds all of the grief that the patriarchs and matriarchs cannot express. This subterranean tree, the tree of the One who Speaks, is a wet-nurse for the people, offering them the nourishment of sorrow. It is a place to render loss visible and sacred. This shrine, this place of pilgrimage, this river of tears stands directly beneath the altar at Beit El. We cannot have our identity, our sacred places, our spiritual awakenings without the Oak of Weeping.
-Rabbi Jill Hammer, https://ajr.edu/2018/11/parashat-vayishlah-5779/

It is also likely, in my view, that her anonymity in 24:59 shows her status in the eyes of her mistress and the family at that time - another faceless servant. In time, she became a powerful member of Israel's household whose identity could no longer be ignored…
The respect accorded to this extraordinary wet nurse at her funeral shows that, to the mourners, Deborah was not an insignificant person; neither does the text portray her as a nobody. In death, she was accorded the kind of mourning reserved for heroes and great women or men. That the text recognized Deborah in this manner shows that, in God's script, there are no little people. The tendency to gloss over Genesis 35:8, to pretend that Deborah is not there or that she is someone else (for instance, Rebekah) is uncalled for, as the verse fits into the context. It seems highly unlikely that commentators would have perceived Genesis 35:8 as puzzling, if the death of Rebekah or Sarah were reported in that verse. However, because Deborah is regarded as an ordinary maid who could not have earned that much praise in death, they wonder how the verse got to its present location.
-Dr. Funlola Olojede, Stellenbosch University, The "First Deborah", Acta Theologica June 2016