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Deborah and Jael at Mount Tabor
Judges 4 (see also 5)
Two unusual women lead the Israelites to military victory
See page 323 for visitor information.
Where Are We?
Mount Tabor can be beautifully observed from the mountain spur known locally as the Hill of the Precipice. The Gospel of Luke tells how Jesus was rejected by the residents of his hometown, Nazareth, after reading from the book of Isaiah in the synagogue and stating that he was the fulfillment of its messianic prophecy. The angry throng chased him out of town to the brow of a hill, threatening to push him over the edge. Ultimately, Jesus walked back through the crowd unharmed. Tradition identifies this hill as the site, although scholars believe the actual location was probably closer to the center of modern Nazareth. (For the complete story, see Luke 4:14–30.)
Setting the Scene
To the west (right) lies Nazareth, the cultural and political capital of Israel’s northern Arab communities. While the Nazareth of Jesus’s time was probably a tiny hamlet with just a few dozen families, modern Nazareth is Israel’s largest Arab metropolis, with about eighty thousand Christian and Muslim inhabitants. The city was chosen to host an outdoor mass by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, and the large amphitheater built into the side of the Hill of the Precipice was constructed specially for the occasion.
Fig. 3. The view of Mount Tabor from the Hill of the Precipice
To the south (straight ahead) lies the magnificent expanse of the Jezreel Valley. Shaped like an isosceles triangle at 24 x 24 x 32 kilometers (15 x 15 x 20 miles), its verdant patchwork is a veritable breadbasket, one of the most fertile areas in Israel, with a pastoral tranquility. However, the Song of Deborah alludes to torrential downpours and dangerous rushing rivers in the valley, whose low basin makes it particularly susceptible to flash flooding during heavy rains. The creek beds that traverse it must be constantly maintained to ensure that they are not obstructed. For centuries following the biblical period, the valley was neglected and degenerated into a malarial swamp. The land was purchased by the American Zionist Commonwealth in the early twentieth century, and the swamp was drained by the legendary pioneers of the Labor Zionist movement, who went on to found many of the veteran Jezreel Valley communities such as the town of Afula, Moshav Tel Adashim, and Kibbutz Mizra, which you can see here below. To the east (left) at the foot of the Nazareth hills lies the Muslim Arab village of Iksal.
In the distance the rounded summit of Mount Tabor rises from the valley. Soft and wooded, it marked the meeting point of the tribal lands of Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar. At 575 meters high (1,886 feet), this hill controlled an extremely strategic juncture of the ancient trade routes that passed through the Jezreel Valley. Tabor’s altitude provided a protected gathering place where the Israelite forces could prepare for battle beyond reach of the Canaanite chariots. Although technologically sophisticated, the chariots were incapable of negotiating hilly terrain, and as they moved toward the Israelite camp on Mount Tabor, the Canaanite forces had to wait for the Israelites to come down the hill and engage them.
The Context
The book of Judges takes place during a difficult transition period for the Israelites. After the tumultuous exodus from Egypt, receiving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, and forty years of wandering in the desert, they had finally arrived in the promised land. The tribes were allotted regions in which to settle down permanently, and they dispersed in all directions. The end of the long journey in the wilderness and the fulfillment of God’s promise by conquering the land would seem to have propelled the Israelites forward into a glorious new age. As it turns out, forty years in the desert were a picnic compared to the challenges they faced once they had settled down in the land.
To begin with, they suffered from an acute lack of strong centralized leadership. Moses and Joshua, the powerful, charismatic personalities who had led the Israelites faithfully through all their tribulations, had passed. No man of their stature rose up to fill their shoes. Instead, each tribe was ruled by a council of its elders and fought its own wars. The twelve tribes had no guiding hand, no inspirational role model, and no authority figure at the helm. Whereas under Moses and Joshua they had functioned as a cohesive collective, now they devolved into a loose confederation of tribes preoccupied with their own interests.
At this time a new model of leader was emerging. Judges, or chieftains, were unlikely heroes imbued with God-given charisma who rose from anonymity to authority in times of trouble. And troubles were aplenty. The Israelites found themselves constantly fending off aggressions and invasions by a myriad of hostile neighbors, often outnumbered or at a technological disadvantage. The Israelite tribes were on the receiving end of wave after wave of devastating attacks.
Moreover, after forty years in the desert, a period described by the prophet Jeremiah as a honeymoon (Jer. 2:1), the Israelites had to make the difficult shift from nomadic shepherds to farmers. They now had to grow their own food, a tricky undertaking in a land with such complex weather conditions. Crops often failed, and in their desperation the Israelites sometimes turned to their Canaanite neighbors, who were experts in local farming techniques and probably amenable to offering some good advice. The amicable Canaanites’ well-developed agricultural and urban culture enabled them to wield considerable influence over the Israelites, and they soon introduced them to Baal and Asherah, the Canaanite gods who provided rain and fertility. Many Israelites incorporated the local deities into their worship system. The first and second commandments about one God and no idols, which had seemed so nonnegotiable during the halcyon days of the wilderness, somehow got swept under the rug. The Israelites mixed freely with their gentile neighbors, intermarried with them, and worshipped their gods. In short, it seems that for many, the covenant went out the window.
The crisis created by all of these conditions resulted in an absence of traditional male dynastic leadership in Israel. This vacuum was filled by two unusual women.
The Battle
Deborah, who was a prophetess, informed Barak ben Avinoam that he had been chosen by God to lead the people of Israel into battle, but the man who was supposed to save the day refused to accept the job unless she went along with him. Was she surprised? Incensed? Frustrated? We will never know what Deborah uttered under her breath, but objectively it would not have been hard to sympathize with Barak. Sisera had nine hundred chariots with sophisticated iron fittings, while the Israelite army was disorganized and poorly equipped. Would anyone in Israel take Barak seriously when he announced he was preparing to fight the far-superior enemy? The only chance he had to muster an army of dedicated, faithful soldiers was with Deborah at his side, vouching for him and the mission.
Barak still seemed somewhat reluctant as Deborah practically shoved him down Mount Tabor into battle, saying “Up! . . . the LORD is marching before you” But just as she had promised, victory was swift, and almost no Canaanite soldiers survived the Israelite onslaught, no doubt leaving the motley army that Barak had managed to patch together in awe.
How did it happen? The Song of Deborah in Judges 5, another version of the same event, provides clues to what actually transpired:
Divine intervention in the form of a freak rainstorm turned the Jezreel Valley into a mucky, miry mud bath, rendering the fancy Canaanite chariots useless and forcing the enemy soldiers to jump out of them and flee. Many were vanquished by the sword, and many, no doubt, were swept away by sudden flash floods, whose fury even in modern times can claim lives.
Jael, Most Blessed of Women
The only survivor was Sisera, who fled on foot to the tent camp of the Kenites. The word qeni in Aramaic means “smith,” which may mean that Heber the Kenite was a metalworker, and that he had moved his tent closer to the battlefield in order to service the Canaanite weapons. If he was employed by Jabin, then the fugitive general Sisera would have had good reason to take refuge with Jael, Heber’s wife. She had to be trustworthy—her husband was on the payroll. In fact, the text specifies that Sisera went to Jael’s tent.
Hmm. Straight to her tent? That sounds suspicious. Could Jael and Sisera have been carrying on behind our backs during the earlier verses of Judges 4, and if so, could their illicit dalliance have been part of the divine plan? The sages have a very sexual reading of the whole encounter. The midrash tells us:
When Jael saw Sisera approach, she went to meet him arrayed in rich garments and jewels. She was unusually beautiful, and her voice was the most seductive a woman ever possessed. (Pseudo-Philo, 34:31.3)
Wait. It gets better:
When Sisera, on stepping into her tent saw the bed strewn with roses which Jael had prepared for him, he resolved to take her home to his mother as his wife, as soon as his safety should be assured. (Pseudo-Philo, 34–35; 31:3–7)
The Babylonian Talmud purports that Jael played the romantic game with Sisera because it was the only means she had of ensnaring him (Yevamot 103a–103b). In an eyebrow-raising interpretive passage, one text asserts that Yael gave Sisera to drink “the milk of her breast” (Tosefta Shabbat 8:24).
Whoa! Jael, “most blessed of woman,” actually a kinky, conniving femme fatale? What were those old Jewish sages thinking? Well, it depends on what you’re reading. According to the story, Jael extends the warmest hospitality to Sisera by slaking his thirst and covering him with a cozy blanket, reassuring him that he is safe in her tent. Sisera is convinced enough to fall deeply asleep, and as soon as he starts to snore Jael hammers a tent peg through his head, thus fulfilling Deborah’s prophecy that the Lord would hand Sisera over to a woman.
Jael’s victory over Sisera as recounted in Judges 4 is for the family hour. The R-rated version is in the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, a second version of the story in poetry form (which probably predates the prose version). It offers hints to a much racier denouement, privy to those who read the Bible in the original Hebrew. Verse 27 describes Sisera’s position at the moment Jael lanced him with the tent peg. Your translation probably says, “At her feet he sank,” whereas the Hebrew reads, bein ragleyha—“between her legs.” If you didn’t understand the subtlety, the Talmudic commentary on this verse leaves no room for doubt. Freely translated, it reads:
That profligate (i.e., the shameless, immoral Sisera) had seven sexual connections on that day (i.e., he had intercourse with Jael seven times), for it is said, Between her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay; at her feet he sunk, he fell; where he sunk there he fell down dead. (b. Yevamot 103a)
Let your imagination run wild. Then go argue that one with your religious schoolteacher. Can you blame the sages for getting a little carried away?
For a man in Bible times, there was no more humiliating way to die than at the hand of a woman. The disgrace of Sisera reverberates several chapters forward, all the way to the end of Judges 9. An astute woman drops a millstone from a tower on one Abimelech, scoring a direct hit and fracturing his skull. In verse 54 we read, “He immediately cried out to his attendant, his arms bearer, “Draw your dagger and finish me off, so that they may not say of me, ‘A woman killed him.’” Ah, men.
How disappointing too then, must it have been for the reluctant hero Barak. Appointed by a woman, his victory in battle credited to the handiwork of the Lord, now his last chance to shine was to cut down Sisera with a final flourish. He raced up to the tent camp fresh from the fight, swashbuckling, buoyed by the great victory over the Canaanite soldiers and found his arch enemy already slain and attached to the floor by . . . a woman? Ouch.
All in a Name
Deborah is described in Judges as a prophetess and a judge. However, she is also referred to as eshet lapidot, and how we choose to translate this title can provide the key to understanding Deborah’s role in this story. Eshet can mean “the wife of.” Lapidot can mean “flames” but here may be understood to be a man’s name. In most English versions of the Hebrew Bible, eshet lapidot is translated as “the wife of Lappidoth,” clearly defining Deborah by her husband, which is how she would have been identified in her day. The sages seem to concur; in the midrash, they tell us that Deborah made candles and her husband carried them to the sanctuary, thus earning himself the nickname “Flames” (b. Megillah 14a). However, although she was clearly recognized as a judge, she had to receive her petitioners under a palm tree in the open air so as not to be behind closed doors alone with the men folk (Exodus Rabbah 10:48–49). To ensure her lesser status we’re told by the sages that “pride is unbecoming to women; the prophetesses Deborah (Bee) and Hulda (Rat) were proud women and both bore ugly names” (b. Megillah 14b).
They leave no room for doubt about their opinion when they write, “Woe unto the generation whose leader (judge) is a woman” (Zohar III, 19:2). The rabbinic commentators clearly felt that the Israelites had hit rock bottom if a member of the female persuasion was running the show.
Would it be fair to say that the great Jewish sages were a bunch of prejudiced, narrow-minded chauvinists? Yer darn tootin’. In their wildest dreams they probably could not have imagined that one day learned Jewish women would provide brilliant new insights about our sacred texts from their unique and previously unvoiced perspective. In the men-only world of ancient Jewish scholarship, you could bash women forward and backward, and no one would complain. It was the ultimate good old boys club.
But modern egalitarians, take heart. While the sages viewed Deborah through their social filters as an embarrassing episode in gender role reversal, the laws of nature ensured that there were plenty of smart, courageous women like Deborah and Jael around in ancient times. Regardless of their talents, the social conventions of the day forbade them to venture beyond the hearth. Nonetheless, Jael proved herself a true heroine by neatly disposing of Sisera from the limited confines of her woman’s tent. Marvel Comics couldn’t have done it better.
This brings us to the alternative translation of Deborah’s title, eshet lapidot. Eshet also means “woman of,” and lapidot, “torches.” A twenty-first century sensibility enables us to read this description of Deborah as the Torch Lady, an exemplary individual who bore the light of faith, leadership, and justice higher than any Israelite of her time, man or woman. She overcame the prejudices of her own people to lead Israel unwaveringly through difficult times. What a woman.