Jael

Jael (Hebrew Ya'el, "ibex" or "mountain goat") was the wife of Heber the Kenite, a tent-dwelling woman who killed Sisera, commander of the army of Jabin, king of Canaan, by driving a tent peg through his temple while he slept (Judges 4:17-22). Her deed closed the campaign in which Deborah and Barak broke twenty years of Canaanite oppression, and the Song of Deborah pronounces her "most blessed of women" (Judges 5:24). She lived in the Period of the Judges, about 1230 BC. She is not attested outside the Bible.

Biblical Account

Judges introduces her husband before her. Heber the Kenite had separated from the rest of the Kenites, the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, who had settled in the wilderness of Judah near Arad (Judges 1:16), and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zaanannim near Kedesh in Naphtali (Judges 4:6, 4:11). There was peace between Jabin of Hazor and the house of Heber (Judges 4:17). So when Sisera's nine hundred iron chariots were routed at the Kishon River and Barak's men pursued the army back toward Harosheth Haggoyim, Sisera left his chariot and fled on foot to Heber's tent (Judges 4:15-17).

Jael went out to meet him: "Turn aside, my lord; turn aside to me; do not be afraid" (Judges 4:18). She covered him with a rug, and when he asked for a little water she opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink and covered him again (Judges 4:19). Sisera told her to stand at the opening of the tent and to answer "No" if anyone asked whether a man was there (Judges 4:20). When he was fast asleep from weariness, Jael took a tent peg and a hammer, went softly to him and drove the peg through his temple until it went into the ground (Judges 4:21). Barak arrived in pursuit, and Jael came out a second time with the words, "Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking" (Judges 4:22). The narrator closes the scene: "So on that day God subdued Jabin the king of Canaan before the people of Israel" (Judges 4:23).

Deborah had told Barak that "the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman" (Judges 4:9). The woman proves to be a Kenite, not an Israelite, whose husband had a treaty with Sisera's king.

The Song of Deborah

The victory poem of Judges 5 names Jael twice, on the usual reading of 5:6. "In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned, and travelers kept to the byways" (Judges 5:6), placing her beside Shamgar as a marker of the years before Deborah arose as a mother in Israel (Judges 5:7). The blessing of Judges 5:24-27 then retells the killing in verse: he asked for water and she gave him milk, she brought curds in a noble's bowl, she sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen's mallet, she struck Sisera and crushed his head, and "between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still." The poem then turns at once to Sisera's mother peering through the lattice for a chariot that will not return (Judges 5:28-30).

Historical Context

The Kenites were a seminomadic people of the southern wilderness bound to Israel by Moses' marriage (Judges 1:16), and their name is commonly connected with a root meaning "smith," which fits the metalworking associated with them. Heber's move north to the hills of Naphtali, and his separate peace with Hazor, explain why a fleeing Canaanite commander would run to a Kenite tent. The peg and the mallet were tools Bedouin women were accustomed to use. The name Jael appears in Hebrew only here for a woman; Ya'el is otherwise the word for the wild goat of the cliffs (1 Samuel 24:2; Psalm 104:18).

Theological Significance

Jael's story is the fulfillment of a prophetic word: Barak's insistence that Deborah go with him cost him the glory of the kill, which passed to a foreign woman in a tent (Judges 4:9, 4:22). Deliverance came through an outsider whose household had a treaty with the enemy, and the narrator credits the outcome to God (Judges 4:23). The land then had rest for forty years (Judges 5:31).