Deborah, Barak, And Jael Series

Again, so she says alright I will go with you but because of the weird way you went about it, you are not going to have the benefits. You are not going to be able to take Sisera out. I am going to give that to another woman. As the story goes, Barak leaves and grabs his ten thousand men from two tribes and he takes Deborah. They head up a hill called Mount Tabor. Mount Tabor was a very strategic point in the valley. Here is a modern day picture of Mount Tabor. You see the benefit. If you get to that high hill, you can see all around the valley. This is part of God’s strategy. He says go up to Mount Tabor and take ten thousand men. While they are up there, apparently Sisera gets word that they are up there so just as the Lord had said he would do Sisera and his 900 chariots and all the men begin to make their way up towards Mount Tabor by way of the Kishon river. That normally would be a very strategic thing to do because the Kishon river was next to this wide plain and it would be good for taking all these people and chariots through there. What they didn’t take into account was the fact that it was in the middle of the rainy season. In the middle of the rainy season what happens is the Kishon river tends to overflow. Apparently, by the time they got back down into the valley, they began to hit the mud and muck and before they knew it, they had really entered into a death trap. Things had gotten really bad for Sisera and his army. At that point, not Barak, but Deborah who was so connected with God, she knew this was the time to act. This was a time of decision. So she says to Barak again “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into his hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” Again, she is in-tune to the spirit of God. Barak, at some point here, musters up some strength. We have no idea where the strength comes from, but the passage goes on to say that he advanced upon the entire army. He slaughtered all the men. The only one that escaped was the commander, Sisera. We go on to read “Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite.”

This is where I have to stop and explain something. We don’t know a lot about Jael but we can figure out a couple things that are very interesting facts. For one, she came from the tribe of the Kenites, which were really a nomad, gypsy-type tribe that traveled around and apparently were good at metal working. They just traveled around the countryside. Apparently, they had good relations with wicked king Jabin. We don’t know why. Maybe they sharpened his swords or whatever. We don’t know what the extent of it was. Maybe they were just merchants for them. It is clear that she and her family had a good relationship with Jabin. There is a lesser known fact that if we had time we would go back and look at where it talks about the idea that the Kenites had a distant connection to one of Moses’ relatives like his brother-in-law or father-in-law who was actually a Kenite. Here we have Jael who has a connection with wicked king Jabin, but she also kind of has a loose affiliation with the Jewish people. She is not Jewish but she has a relationship with them. We get the sense that, by the time we get to this point, there are some mixed loyalties going on. This person, Jael, is maybe torn. She doesn’t know what to do. What she really doesn’t know is Sisera is about to show up at her tent. As the reader reads this, they begin to think what is going to happen when he gets to her tent. What is she going to do? She does something very odd. Not totally odd because this is expected during that time. People are expected to show hospitality and that is what she does. She actually goes out to meet Sisera and says “‘Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.’ So he entered her tent, and she put a covering on him.” The passage goes on to say that he got thirsty. He was tired and thirsty and asked for some water. For whatever reason, she gave him milk instead. Then he got kind of demanding on her. He says if anybody shows up at the tent and they ask if there is anybody in here besides you, you better say no. This is where it gets a little bit gory. It gets really gory. What happens is “Jael, Heber’s wife, picks up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him (meaning Sisera) while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drives the peg through the temple into the ground and he died.” I have never heard of that happening. You watch the news and you see some bizarre stuff. I have seen some tough Pittsburgh women but I have never seen anybody that can hold a candle to Jael. She is a tough one.