Judges 4 and 5 tell the story of Jael. She is in the Bible for a reason.
And that reason is not to give male theologians an opportunity for “mansplaining.”
“Mansplaining” is typically a pejorative word used to cow men into silence. As such, it is a manipulative and cowardly expression. But sometimes men communicate in such a bad way and/or with such bad content that the insult seems justified.
So Tim Keller:
Jael’s method is a clear violation of two of the Ten Commandments (she lies and she kills). Some would say that since she was not a believer, she was not responsible to obey God’s law. But Jael also broke all the very strong policies and rules of Middle Eastern hospitality. It was treachery by the standards of any culture. We have to remember that God often uses people to do what he wants to happen without violating their personal responsibility or condoning their methods. (p. 62)
I am lost in an ocean of mistakes in this paragraph. But here’s God’s evaluation of Jael’s actions in detail in Scripture:
Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked for water and she gave him milk;
she brought him 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;
she crushed his head;
she shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet
he sank, he fell, he lay still;
between her feet
he sank, he fell;
where he sank,
there he fell—dead (Judges 5:24–27 ESV).Notice that this covers everything: the deception & the hospitality, and the killing.
God expressed this evaluation of Jael’s courageous act of loyalty through the prophetess Deborah. How would Keller explain to Deborah that she was wrong about Jael? I assume he would think better than what he wrote.
The Reformed Theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) is at least as bad as Keller and might be the proximate influence of Keller’s horrible take on Jael. I won’t quote the two painful pages in full but simply say that Kuyper demands that Jael become a kind of femme Samson, a biblical Xena the Warrior Princess. “She did not, as David did, defiantly hurl at him the charge that he had blasphemed the living God.”
Again, Deborah was God’s judge over Israel and a prophetess; her prophetic song is part of the Word of God. Agreeing with Kuyper over Judges 5 is a foolish mistake at best.
The Centrality of Jael
I will leave a defense and application of Jael’s faith for another day. One of the ways the Church is robbed of Jael, with the unjust condemnations of her actions of loyalty of Yahweh, is to imply that she is some kind of anomaly, a marginal and forgettable figure.
That won’t work in Judges or the Bible.
First, Deborah compares Jael to a judge. “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). This was not literally true. Deborah herself was a judge; but Jael, by acting courageously and carrying out her will (and God’s will!) was attributed that status. Shamgar was a Judge listed briefly in Judges 3:31.
Indeed, Jael acts like Shamgar and the previous judge, Ehud (3:1-30) also mentioned in the story of Deborah (4:1). Like Ehud, she lies to get the Enemy to trust her alone in a room and then thusts her weapon into his body. With Ehud, we are told the short sword goes completely into the body of King Elon (3:22). With Jael, the tent peg goes all the way through his head into the ground (4:21). Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad, a herder’s tool instead of a weapon of war. As a “tent-dwelling” woman (5:24), Jael used a household tool, dubbed by Deborah “the workmen’s mallet” (5:26). Jael basically combines the strategies of Ehud and Shamgar.
In her song, Deborah sets us two opposing trios. The righteous trio is herself as “a mother in Israel” (5:7), Barak her General, and Jael. The wicked trio is Jabin the Canaanite king, Sisera his General, and Sisera’s mother (5:28-30). Sisera’s mother with “her wisest princesses” (5:29) are not essential to the story. Her appearance in Deborah’s song shows an intentional juxtaposition of two antithetical kinds of femininity. That means that Jael, far from being marginal, is a feminine ideal. (We will get back to that).
Taking a wider look at the book of Judges, Jael is one of two women who kill the enemy (Judges 9:53). Jael and this “certain woman” are thematic brackets in a series that structures the entire book of Judges. So, again, Jael’s story is not marginal to the narrative. Like Jael (and Shamgar) the woman uses a tool of the household rather than a weapon of war. Also like Jael, she kill the enemy by a head wound.
Which brings us to wider Biblical theme. God promised the serpent a war between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed, but also between the serpent and the woman herself:
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15 ESV).
So it is on point that the women in Judges slay the dragon by means of a head wound. Emphasizing this theme is the fact that the wording of Deborah’s blessing of Jael is used one other time in the Bible.
Judges 5:24
Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed.Luke 1:41–42
And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
Jael, though childless as far as her story is told, destroys the enemy through hospitality and housework. Mary also crushes the serpent through faithful domestic labor (pun intended).
All this culminates in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2ff), the Church (Ephesians 5:25-32), our mother (Galatians 4:26).
But there is one major focal point in the Bible that we have not mentioned yet.
Deborah, Jael, and Sisera’s Mother in Proverbs
Book One of Proverbs consists in Chapters 1-9. It begins with Solomon talking to a son and then shifts into Wisdom speaking to her sons in Chapter 8, perhaps all the way through 9. Paralleling Book One, the last book of Proverbs (Chapter 31 in our Bibles) isn’t written by Solomon or any other king but it is written to King Lemuel from his mother (31:1). She may have received the oracle she taught him (which seems to be the acrostic in vv. 10-31) from Solomon or someone else, but we are never told so.
Proverbs 8-9 describe Wisdom and a great queen or lady and contrast her with the femme fatale Folly. Proverbs 31 pleads Lemuel not to be seduced by women who rob strength from men (.v. 3) but to choose a strong godly wife (vv. 17, 25).
Deborah and Jael, far from being anomalies, are instances of the ideal presented in Wisdom and the Godly wife. Consider:
Judges 5:7b
I, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel.Proverbs 8:32
And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways….
And
Judges 5:26a
She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet…Proverbs 31:17
She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.
Jael’s example obviously requires some translation to be followed in a godly way in the new Creation (just like the example of all the Judges and many others in the Hebrew Scriptures). But marginalizing her damages our understanding of what the Bible teaches about femininity, the Church, and wisdom.