Our Nonstandard Work: Nailing It Like Jael

As part of our celebration of Poetry Month, it is my pleasure to remind us of that wonderful poem in the Hebrew Bible known as the “Song of Deborah” contained in Chapter 5 of Judges. It is fabulous not just for its poetic qualities, but also for its focus on fierce female characters. In fact, other than the Canaanite villain, Sisera, and Barak, Deborah’s non-descript general, there are no men in this story! Too often we read the narrative version of this episode in Judges Chapter 4 and then pass over this poetic version of the story in Judges Chapter 5 because we think it covers the same dramatic territory, as if it were merely a fancier rerun, with the result that we neglect this beautiful work of art.

Deborah, a pre-monarchic judge (i.e., leader) and a prophetess of Ancient Israel, recites this song in the first person. Hers is perhaps the most ancient voice preserved in the Bible, Biblical scholars noting the peculiar linguistic twists and turns of the text that make it clear that it is not a part of the Classical Hebrew used to write the rest of the book of Judges (along with the Torah and other early books) in the latter days of the Israelite monarchy, just as we today can at a glance tell the difference between Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Some even suggest that this poem was composed shortly after the events it celebrates, a contemporaneous monument to Ancient Israel’s victory not written in perishable stone, but composed in immortal words and thereafter sung by generations of Hebrews in remembrance. Quoted text below comes from Judges 4 (NIV), unless otherwise noted.

⁶ “In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,
in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned;
travelers took to winding paths.
⁷ Villagers in Israel would not fight;
they held back until I, Deborah, arose,
until I arose, a mother in Israel.

Even the casual LDS observer will note the parallelisms here characteristic of all Hebrew poetry, one of the fringe benefits of chiasmus-obsessed Mormon intellectual culture. You’ll note the two main characters are introduced promptly. First, a woman known as “Jael,” someone so famous the author of Judges could just say “in the days of Jael” and everyone would know who you were talking about. Second comes our first-person narrator, Deborah, the leader of numerous Hebrew tribes in the battle of the Wadi Kishon against Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army of King Jabin of Hazor.  

¹⁹ “Kings came, they fought,
the kings of Canaan fought.
At Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo,
they took no plunder of silver.
²⁰ From the heavens the stars fought,
from their courses they fought against Sisera.
²¹ The river Kishon swept them away,
the age-old river, the river Kishon.
March on, my soul; be strong!
²² Then thundered the horses’ hooves-
galloping, galloping go his mighty steeds.

During the period of the Judges this Sisera guy oppressed Israel for many years with his 900+ chariots. Deborah, finally mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore, persuades her general Barak to face Sisera in head-to-head combat. Sisera is defeated, not so much by Israel’s fighting forces, but by the divinity behind the very “stars in their courses.” After losing, the Canaanite commander fled to what he thought was a friendly sanctuary, to this Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. Jael received Sisera into her tent with typical Ancient Near Eastern hospitality, giving him “milk … in a lordly dish,” caring for him as if he were one of her children coming home for the holidays. Jael promised to hide Sisera from Barak’s men, and, covering him with a rug, Jael then revealed her true loyalties and pegged his head to the tent floor, reminiscent of the antics of the brothers Doug and Dinsdale Piranha who employed similar combinations of “violence and sarcasm” to intimidate London in their Monty Python sketch, where they too, nailed someone’s head to the floor . . . “at first.”

²⁴ “Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
²⁵ [Sisera] asked for water, and she gave him milk;
in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
²⁶ Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman’s hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.

Next, our attention is turned to Sisera’s own mother who wonders what caused the delay in her son’s return, yet another female angle to the story.

²⁸ “Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;
behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’

Her female attendants suggested, with some nervous repetition, that he was late because he was no doubt having a good-old-boy time dividing up the typical spoils of war, each man assumed to be taking a couple of the Israelite women-folk for himself, standard operating procedure, that she shouldn’t worry because Sisera, not forgetting about his own mother, would also be bringing her home some of that colorful Israelite designer-clothing.

²⁹ The wisest of her ladies answer her;
indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
³⁰ ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:
a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,
colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck-
all this as plunder?’

³¹ “So may all your enemies perish, Lord!
But may all who love you be like the sun
when it rises in its strength.”

This story was so beloved by ancient Israelites that, like many a beloved Hollywood movie, its remake was inevitable, with the book of Judith in the OT Apocrypha stealing its main themes, except that Judith, its heroine, beheads Israel’s enemy Holofernes, instead of hammering his head to the ground.

So, what is my take-away here? It’s easy. In most ancient Israel, women were poets, prophets and military leaders, Proto-Lake Wobegon women who were strong and unafraid to take matters into their own hands. And, get them dirty, if necessary.    

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