Saturday Storytime: Deborah & Jael

Welcome to a fun new feature here at All Rose Knows I’m going to call Saturday Storytime, featuring powerful women of the Bible who get the job done!

Long, long ago the people of Israel were deeply engaged in idolatry. This was a bit displeasing to God, their Creator, who much preferred them to worship him of course. God let the Israelites struggle quite a bit at the hands of an army from the land of Canaan, under a king named Jabin. Side note, the Canaanites themselves didn’t follow God at all, but still got to be part of what God was doing and they were a formidable enemy with 900 chariots compared to Israel’s zero.

The Canaanite army was led by a fierce commander named Sisera (every time I see his name I start humming Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago… Cicero was the name of the hotel where our girl Velma Kelly may or may not have murdered her adulterous husband and sister).

At the time of this story, Israel had judges instead of kings, and a lady judge named Deborah was in charge. The Israelites had been getting beat up by Sisera and the Canaanites for twenty years, and evidently that was their limit. They finally cried out to God for a little help. Deborah was doing double duty as both a judge AND a prophetess, and she had a word with God, who agreed to help and laid out a plan.

Deborah called up a man named Barak (no relation to Obama) and told him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’”

That seems kind of awesome, right? Except Barak wavered and hesitated and told Deborah that she was gonna need to come with him. He’d had twenty years of being cruelly punished by the Canaanites and Sisera with his 900 chariots. What did this lady judge (and prophetess!) know anyway?

Evidently, a LOT. Because she told Barak that she would go ahead and accompany him, BUT because he hesitated he wasn’t gonna get any of the glory for this massive win that would happen. Instead of Barak getting any accolades, Sisera was going to fall by the hands of a woman. Awkward, right?

So off they go to Mount Tabor to face the much bigger and more powerful army from Canaan, and guess what? A flash flood comes and wipes out those 900 chariots and any advantage those Canaanites had over the Israelites. Sisera knew he had it coming (back to Cell Block Tango again, sorry), so he fled on foot, looking for a place to hide.

He came upon the tent of a woman named Jael. Jael’s husband had a bit of a connection to the king of Canaan so who knows what she was thinking when she coyly invited him into her tent. Of course he made himself at home and demanded a snack and a beverage, and she brought him some milk which made him feel sleepy. She gave him a cozy blanket to snuggle up with and she agreed to stand at the tent entrance to keep an eye out for anyone who might come looking for him.

What Sisera didn’t know was Jael had a big ol’ tent stake, a hammer, and evidently some decent upper body strength because she went and hammered the tent stake straight through his skull into the dirt, and then had a seat, waiting for someone to come along looking for Sisera. Soon enough, Barak comes by and Jael summons him to have a look at her handiwork, thus proving Deborah’s prophecy to be absolutely spot on.

Shortly after this, there is a song that Deborah and Barak sing which is mostly about how awesome Deborah is and how happy everyone is that God helped Israel defeat their brutal enemies, but part of it is so weird I just have to include it here (sadly, it doesn’t really go to the tune that you already know is stuck in my head right now):

“The most fortunate of women is Jael,
The wife of Heber the Kenite—
The most fortunate of women who live in tents.
Sisera asked for water, but she gave him milk;
She brought him cream in a beautiful bowl.

She took a tent peg in one hand,
A worker’s hammer in the other;
She struck Sisera and crushed his skull;
She pierced him through the head.
He sank to his knees,
Fell down and lay still at her feet.
At her feet he sank to his knees and fell;
He fell to the ground, dead.”

And then it continues with:

“So may all your enemies die like that, O Lord, but may your friends shine like the rising sun! And there was peace in the land for forty years.”

So what do we learn from this? I suppose something along the lines of the meek might inherit the earth, but sometimes a girl just has to take matters into her own hands when peace is at stake. (Pun not intended, but dang that’s clever).

Jael and Sisera have been a popular subject for art thought the years. The photo I’m sharing is a painting by Jacopo Amigoni from 1739. Most of the time Jael is depicted in art with a breast or two hanging out of her gown because evidently powerful woman being forced to show some skin isn’t just something we see in modern day comic books.

And there you have it, my truncated retelling of the book of Judges, chapters four and five. Stay tuned for a future Saturday when I bring you the story of how a wise woman saved her rude, drunk husband from being slaughtered after he’d insulted someone who’d done him a huge favor…