An ancient middle eastern message scrawled on a city’s announcement might read, “Kenite Woman Murders Canaanite Army Captain.” In the Bible story of Jael from Judges 4 and 5, Jael and Queen Deborah are the Thelma and Louise of Old Testament history.
Deborah rules as a judge over the Israelites. While lolling under palm trees in her court, she hears Israelis’ pleas to release them from King Jabin, a Canaanite ruler who has lorded it over the Israelites for 20 years. Deborah trusts God’s prophecy that the Israelites will be freed from Jabin under her reign. However, Jabin’s army commander, Sisera, is poised for battle with 900 iron chariots and men to drive them. And Barak, the Israeli army leader, is scared.
Barak is the official leader of Queen Deborah’s army, but he is weak-minded and afraid to fight Sisera’s considerable military forces. Barak does not fully trust Deborah’s prophecy that God will give the Israelites victory over Sisera. Barak tells Deborah, “If you go with me, I will go, but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go” (Judges 4:8), sounding like a preschooler on the first day of preschool.
Deborah responds, “I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman” (Judges 4:9).
The woman who gets the honor of doing away with the Canaanite army captain Sisera is Jael, a distant relative of Moses. Her husband’s Kenite tribe has switched loyalty from the Israelites to the Canaanites, and Jael and her husband live in northern Canaanite territory. It is clear from her actions, however, that Jael is loyal to God’s people, the Israelites. But we’ll get to that part of the story after describing the battle between the Israelis and Canaanites in the Valley of Jezreel.
“Arise, O Barak! Take captive your captives” (Judges 5:12b)
Deborah says to nervous Barak, “ ‘Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?’ So Barak goes down Mount Tabor, followed by ten thousand men” (Judges 4:14). Israeli soldiers descend onto the slopes of Mount Tabor, where Sisera’s troops are encamped.
Sisera thought he had a good, strategic plan for defeating the Israelis—fighting from the vantage point of a wide valley—but a terrific rainstorm plunges the Canaanites into trouble:
“From the heavens the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera. The river Kishon swept them away, the age-old river, the river Kishon. March on, my soul; be strong!” (Judges 5:20-21).
Stuck in the mud, Canaanites lose their chariots. The soldiers who survive the river meet the swords of Barak’s soldiers. The lone survivor of the battle in the Valley of Jezreel is Captain Sisera, who flees and finds refuge in Jael’s tent.
Sisera no doubt feels safe in Jael’s tent, knowing that her husband, Heber is loyal to King Jabin. The loyalty of Heber perhaps goes only as deep as loyalty to an employer. The Zondervan NIV Study Bible edited by Kenneth Baker observes that as one of the Kenite clan of metalworkers, Heber very likely built metal chariots for Jabin. Heber is not home, however, and I imagine Jael’s village is very quiet, with men away, serving in the Canaanite army. Jael offers Sisera comfort through nourishment and a warm place to sleep, which was customary for ancient middle easterners to welcome travelers.
Sisera made a grave mistake in trusting Jael. Her plan for Sisera does not involve good hospitality—quite the opposite. Jael either is outraged at the Canaanites for their treatment of Israelis, or she is protecting herself from being assaulted by Sisera.
When Jael gives battle-weary Sisera a warm blanket and milk, she appears to be the perfect hostess taking care of a fellow Canaanite. While tending Sisera, Jael has the same motherly air as her spiritual sister Deborah. (Deborah even refers to herself as the “mother of Israel” in Judges 5:7). While Deborah goes hand in hand with Barak into battle, Jael turns fierce and murders Sisera as he is napping peacefully in her tent. She drives a tent peg through his skull and kills him. God did indeed deliver Sisera to Jael, as Deborah prophesied.
There are several possibilities for why Jael disposes of Sisea.
One strong possibility is that Jael sees killing him as defending her nation, acting as a warrior woman in a similar role as Deborah.
Another possibility is Jael is defending herself against a strange man visiting her tent while her husband and other men in the village are away. Middle Eastern women in Bible times were often treated like livestock, so Jael had every reason to believe Sisera would hurt her eventually. The way women were treated in her time makes it possible that Jael had a history with men that had hurt her, motivating her to fight back first.
Jael’s main purpose was perhaps to seek revenge on Canaanites who had “cruelly oppressed” Israelites for twenty years (Judges 4:3). Jael is deliberate and cunning and is not found guilty for murdering Sisera; that is, there is no mention of a punishment for her actions recorded in the Old Testament history books of the Bible. The last of the narrative in Judges 5:31 says, “Then the land had peace forty years.” In contrast, law enforcement officers catch up with Thelma and Louise in the movie, and the women’s panicked state leads to their death. Jael is more fortunate than the movie characters and several women featured in Old Testament history who die at the hands of men’s actions.
1. Be brave and act on your convictions. Though her actions were violent, Jael was brave, asserting her belief in her leader, God’s nation, and herself.
2. Beware of false loyalty. Heber moved from a southern alliance with Israel (where his family had lived since the days of Moses) to being part of the northern alliance of the Canaanites. Heber’s wife Jael may have kept her political and spiritual alliance with Israel, though it is unclear whether Jael was an Israelite (Zondervan NIV Study Bible, footnote for Judges 4:1-5:31).
3. Do not trust anyone but God because only God is good to His word. In this case, he protected Israelites from the Canaanites through the river flood and Jael.
4. Got may put “heavenly rules” over our earthly, religious, and civic rules. God gave Jael the opportunity, tools, and mindset to disobey the “Thou shalt not murder” commandment while honoring God’s holy nation.
5. Charles Spurgeon preached that one way to interpret this story is to see it as a metaphor for conquering evil in our lives. Sturgeon compared Sisera to sin. He preached that people should not be content to send their sins running but that we should pursue them and nail them into the ground, as Jael did.
I pray to the God of peace and His son Jesus, who was not violent, that we find ways to resolve our battles in life without killing each other. This narrative is difficult to fit into a contemporary context, though military and political leaders are tortured and killed in places of unrest all over the world. Perhaps the court of Deborah could have negotiated a peace treaty between Israelis and Canaanites as was done many times in Bible history. The warrior spirit of the Old Testament prevails, however.
“So may all your enemies perish, O Lord! But may they who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.” (Judges 5:31)
Photo Credit: Jacopo Vignali via Wikimedia Commons
This article is part of our People of Christianity catalog that features the stories, meaning, and significance of well-known people from the Bible and history. Here are some of the most popular articles for knowing important figures in Christianity:
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