Assassins are never heroes in the history of Americans, for
they are always those who seek to kill our presidents whom we
admire. This is not always the case in other nations. The Jews,
for example, have some assassins who are heroes in their
history. Two of them are Hakim and Bet Zuri. They were sent
to Egypt to kill Lord Moyne, who was the British Minister of
State and the man who shrugged off a German offer to free a
million Jews: "But what would I do with a million Jews"
Their was justifiable hatred toward a man who would refuse
to save the lives of a million people, and they targeted him for
death. They succeeded in their mission, and though they were
captured and hung, they became heroes of the Jews.
There are many heroic assassins in history. It does not
sound like a noble profession, but it can be the very tool of
God to bring judgment on those who are ripe for judgment.
This is the case with Jael who assassinated Sisera while he
was sleeping in her tent. It may not sound as noble as most
assassin stories, but it was just as effective. Sisera has been
the oppressor of Israel for twenty years, and finally God gave
Israel a female leader who motivated the army to go to battle
with this powerful commander of 900 iron chariots. He was
watching his army being wiped out and so he leaped off his
iron horse and high tailed it to a safer place, he thought.
He headed for the tent of an old friend, but Heber the
Kenite was not home. His wife, however was completely
hospitable. Jael invited him in and treated him like royalty.
She assured him that he had nothing to fear. "Come on in."
she said with a cheerful voice. It was just what he needed-a
place of refuge. He did not hear the message behind the voice
that was, "Come in said the spider to the fly." He was totally
taken in by her friendly manner, and was confident she would
protect him and even lie about him being there to lead any
pursuers astray. She even gave him milk instead of the water
for which he asked, for she knew this would help put him to
sleep. Then when he was all comfy in bed and fast asleep, she
took a hammer and tent peg and drove it through his temple
and nailed him to the ground.
By that act of assassination she became a heroine of Jewish
history. Deborah and Barek sing of her heroic deed in their
great song in Judges 5. In 5:24 she is called the most blessed
of women. But this act which made her so famous and praised
also made her one of the most controversial persons in the
Bible. The debate is over whether she can be considered honorable
or horrible because of the way she carried out her
plot. She did not face her foe and strike him when he could
defend himself. She lied to him and deceived him. She broke
all the codes of hospitality, and so many consider her a
terrible person and not a heroine at all. Before we defend this
woman as a biblical heroine we want to look at the negative
perspective first.
I. THE NEGATIVE PERSPECTIVE.
We all know it is not fair to shoot an unarmed man, and
it is not fair to shoot him in the back. There are rules for a
fair fight, and it appears that Jael never read the manual for
fair fighting. She broke all the rules in the book, and this
means she is not to be admired. She is better off forgotten,
and many have done just that so that millions of people have
heard the Bible expounded all their lives and never once
heard of Jael the female assassin. She killed a man in cold
blood while he was sleeping, and this is never justifiable.
Many feel her image is blotted with the foul taste of treachery,
and is no model to be put forth for praise.
Rev Dr Susan Durber had done some great research on
this issue and she quotes this sermon preached in 1876, which
gives a typical Victorian view of Jael.
"How are we to regard this deed of Jael? There seems to me
to be no doubt as to the answer. Her act was one of vilest
treachery with scarcely a single extenuating circumstance. . . .
We are in no way bound to find excuses for the act, because it
is recorded in God's Word. . . . Nor need we feel any
compunction at speaking thus strongly, because Jael appears
to have been a special instrument in the hands of God for
bringing to pass a deliverance for Israel. . . . We must confess
that Deborah actually praised this horrible act of Jael's. But
the words of Deborah are not the words of God. . . . The song
of Deborah is the utterance of human passion and human
weakness, not of divine unswerving justice and strength."
Dr. Durber goes on to point out that this was the teaching in
the textbooks of the time. William Smith's Concise Dictionary
of the Bible from 1865 made it clear that there could be no
justification for her act. I was reading the famous
commentary by Keil and Delitzsch when I came across their
perspective: "Such conduct as that was not the operation of
the Spirit of God, but the fruit of a heroism inspired by flesh
and blood; and even in Deborah's song it is not lauded as a
divine act." There are some strong feelings against admiring
and praising this female assassin.
A Doctor Lord de Tabley wrote a long poem titled Jael
back in 1893, and in it he implies that Jael had ambitions to
get notoriety, and that was the motive for her treachery. He
wrote,
"And in his sidelong temple, where bright curls
Made crisp and glorious margin to his brows-
So that a queen might lay her mouth at them
Nor rise again less royal for their kiss-
There, in the interspace of beard and brow,
The nail had gone tearing the silken skin;
And, driven home to the jagged head of it,
Bit down into the tent-boards underneath;
And riveted that face of deadly sleep."
This was a poetic description of what the text says, but then
he decides to make a judgment of the motive behind Jael's
act. He wrote,
"This woman was a mother, think of that;
A name which carries mercy in its sound,
A pitiful meek title one can trust;
She gave her babe the breast like other wives,
In cradle laid it, had her mother heed
To give it suck and sleep. You would suppose
She might learn pity in its helpless face;
A man asleep is weaker than a child,
And towards the weak God turns a woman's heart;
Hers being none. She is ambitious, hard,
Vain, would become heroic; to nurse babes
And sit at home, why any common girl
Is good enough for that. She must have fame;
She shall be made a song of in the camp,
And have her name upon the soldier's lip
Familiar as an oath."
Now we need to look at her defense and focus on-
II. THE POSITIVE PERSPECTIVE.
The first line of defense is that those things that are not
acceptable in daily life are a normal part of life in warfare.
You do not lie and deceive people as a way of life or you are a
villain of the worst kind. But if you are a commander in time
of war you do all you can to deceive the enemy. You set up an
ambush if possible and kill them before they have a chance to
fire back. We say all is fair in love and war, and though that
is not an absolute, it has much truth to it. In war it is kill or
be killed, and so the primary rule is get them before they get
you, and this may call for all kinds of deceit and trickery. This
is what we see Jael doing to Sisera. She has a plan to kill him,
and the best and safest way to do that is to lure him into a
sense of security where he will take a nap. Who would expect
this housewife to try and take down an experienced man of
war, who has killed many a man in hand to hand combat?
It is folly to criticize a woman for doing what a woman
does best in such a situation. She is not alone in using her
feminine charms to lure a man of war to his death. Another of
the great female heroes of Jewish history is Judith, and she
did the same thing as Jael. She deceived a warrior leader into
thinking she was a friend, and that she would be willing to
share some sexual favors. She was exceedingly beautiful, and
he was captivated by her beauty. He gladly allowed her to
have a time in private with him where she got him drunk and
cut off his head. She thereby saved her people and became a
heroine. Assassins are not held to the same code of ethics as
are the non-assassin. Any woman doing what Jael or Judith
did in time of peace would be arrested as murderers in the
first degree. But in time of war they did what no man could
do, and that is why they are heroines. Someone has beautifully
summarized the famous story of Judith that is told in the
Apocrypha. I believe it was the Rev Dr Susan Durber
"Book of Judith opens with Assyrian emperor
Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of the Near East. As his forces
mount the invasion of Israel, the town of Bethulia is besieged
by his foremost general, Holofernes. The pass defended by the
town is strategically vital: if Bethulia yields, the whole
country will fall into his hands. Ground down by famine, the
populace begs the city's elders to surrender, and they agree to
do so within days should the Lord fail to rescue his people.
When Judith, a respected widow, hears of this, she summons
the elders to a meeting and upbraids them for their lack of
faith. Who are they to set time-limits on God? She herself
undertakes to save the city within five days, although she will
not reveal her plan. However desperate the situation may
seem, she avers, God shall overcome.
Divinely inspired and fortified by prayer, she departs for
the Assyrian camps. There, claiming to have foreseen
Bethulia's doom and offering to reveal a stratagem for taking
the city, she is welcomed. Holofernes himself, much smitten
with her remarkable beauty, invites her to a banquet after
which he intends to seduce her or failing that, rape her. When
he retires to his bed in an alcoholic stupor, they are left alone
in his tent. Judith takes up his sword and decapitates him.
With his severed head she steals back to Bethulia. When its
general's corpse is discovered, the Assyrian camp is thrown
into confusion. Meanwhile, displaying the head to the
Israelites, Judith encourages them to seize their advantage by
a rapid surprise attack. They are victorious. From start to
finish, Judith is a self-reliant heroine."
"Judith led the community with a feminist anthem written
specially for the occasion.
'The Lord Almighty has thwarted them by a woman's hand
It was no young man that brought their champion low;
no Titan struck him down,
no tall giant set upon him;
but Judith, Merari's daughter,
disarmed him by her beauty.'
This female assassin has suffered the same criticism as
Jael. The history of art has portrayed her as a femme fatale
who used sex to allure poor Holophernes to a violent death by
her betrayal. She is pictured as a cold hearted man killer. She
is seen as no more than a cut-throat prostitute. The critics
cannot bear to face the truth that a woman can, just because
is a woman, be used of God to do what a man cannot do. It is
true that their sexuality and beauty can lure men to do evil,
but they can also lure the enemy into a state of carelessness so
they can be defeated. God has used women for this very
purpose. God delights in using the weak to defeat the strong.
When women are his best tool that is what he uses.
The men these women killed were cold blooded killers who
had no compassion on people. They violated all the rules of
humanity, and anyone who could rid them of the planet
would be honored with songs of praise. You notice that both
of these women went for the head. They were not taking any
chances that their victim would recover. The Encyclopedia Judica
tries to make Jael more justified in her deception by
claiming Sisera had sex with her 7 times, and so she was an
abused woman getting revenge and justice. There is nothing
in the text to support this, but it does illustrate my point.
When you are dealing with an evil person who kills and
abuses others, there comes a point where justifiable homicide
is in order. Korean and Filipino women who kill for the
purpose of freedom are seen in a positive light, and any of us
would see them that way if it was our necks being saved by
their courageous acts of assassination. These stories of heroic
female assassins are well known in the Philippines and in
Asia, but are hardly ever preached on in the Western nations.
We have not needed women to be deliverers and so we look
down on the very concept.
In the Eastern world Jael gets more honor than Deborah,
and Deborah gives her more credit than she gives herself in
her song. The song of Deborah is probably the primary reason
that we must take a positive view of Jael. It was gruesome, as
was the cutting off of the head by Judith, but they were
agents of God's judgment and they are praised in Israel and
celebrated. It is going against the revelation of God to say
these words of praise are not God's word. If we can pick and
choose what parts of the Bible are truly God's Word and
which ones we say are just the flesh speaking, then we have
returned to the day of Judges where every man did what was
right in his own eyes. We must accept the song of Deborah as
God's authentic Word. She was God's spokesperson of the
day. She predicted that a woman would kill Sisera, and when
it happened she praised God and the woman he used to fulfill
the prophecy. It takes a great deal of audacity to claim that
these two women who dominate this chapter are not pleasing
to God in all that is recorded here. Reading in our own
opinion is not expounding the Word. To expound it is to
explain what it says and not to explain it away and reject
what it says.
Read it again in 5:24. "Most blessed of women be Jael, the
wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling
women." I do not read it saying cursed be Jael for not
conforming to my ideas of what is fair for women to do in
times of warfare. I do not read it saying how terrible that such
an act of treachery should be honored. I do not read it
implying that Jael should be sent to jail for her brutal
assassination. I read it clearly saying "Most blessed of women
be Jael." I have written my own poem to honor this woman so
honored by the Word of God.
Seldom does one hear a tale
Like that of the women whose name was Jael.
It was by faith she did prevail
Over Sisera, a powerful male.
All hail to Jael,
Who with hammer and nail,
Did this wicked male impale.
She was female and frail,
But she did not quail, nor sit and wail,
And let the opportunity go stale.
Her true intent she did wisely veil,
And showed no fear with face gone pale.
It was a victory of grandest scale
When this evil man she did derail
And did his oppression forever curtail.
She won the day and did not fail
When she worked out every detail,
And conquered the foe with hammer and nail.
She had Sisera pegged from the start. He was a man who
abused women and used them as things. We know this from
his own mother's testimony. She wonders why he does not
return from the battle and she speculates that he is delayed
because of the great spoils and the women they are taking, as
stated in 5:30. He was a man who took women as spoils of war
and made them sexual slaves. Jael knew the ways of such a
pagan leader and she was not about to let the chance slip
through her hands to let him live and abuse more women. She
may have known some of his captives from previous battles,
and she saw herself as a liberator of woman by this
assassination. There is no way to know all that motivated her
to do this deed, for that is as hidden as was her hatred for him
when she treated him as a favored guest. Such secrecy and
deceit are valid weapons of warfare.
Those who criticize her make their sexism apparent, for
they do not criticize men who used these same weapons to be
successful assassins. One of the other judges did the same
thing and you will find that he is honored for his cleverness.
His story is in chapter 5:12-30. He lied and deceived the king
of Moab who was Eglon. Then when he had him alone under
the pretense of wanting to tell him a secret he plunged a
hidden knife into his stomach until it came out the other side.
This enemy was brought to his death by clever deception, and
he is a hero in Israel. Jael does the same thing and men want
to say she was not a hero for doing it under the conditions of
such deceit. Such critics know nothing of the rules of war.
They expect her to have found a more pleasant way to have
dispatched this bloody tyrant. The fact is she had only this
one chance to kill him and rid the world of a most cruel man.
She took it and God's people considered her a heroine. And so
do all who accept the Word of God, which gives her honor.
There have been women of other cultures that did what
was similar to Jael, and they are honored for their courage.
For example,
Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae
(sixth century B.C.E.)
Ruler of the Massagetae, a tribal people who lived east of the
lands of Persia, Tomyris is most famous for her defeat of
Cyrus the Great, the powerful king of Persia. When Tomyris's
son was captured by Cyrus and committed suicide, the queen
promised Cyrus "more blood than he could drink." After her
troops had destroyed the Persians in battle, she cut off her
enemy's head and put it into a bag filled with blood, thus
fulfilling her vow.
The role of women in warfare has been varied and so not
all of their role is in the killing of the enemy, but much has
been in the role of spy and deceiver in order to help men
defeat the enemy. Some have been very clever in saving their
loved ones who otherwise would have been killed. God's
providence worked through Michal, the first wife of David to
save his life. We need to keep in mind that he was a major
player in God's plan, and that it was essential for him to live
and reign and be the bloodline to the Messiah. He was spared
to be this by the clever acts of a woman who loved him. The
whole story is found in I Sam. 19:11-17.
In Exodus 1:17-21, Hebrew midwives were able to outsmart
the Pharaoh and save the lives of the Jewish baby boys.
Joshua 2:1-16 describes how Rahab, a prostitute, hid two
Israelite spies and saved their lives by misdirecting the
soldiers.
Some non-biblical examples of women of warfare show us
that there have been many women in history who have been
honored because of their ability to defeat an enemy.
Amanirenas, Queen of Kush
(late first century, B.C.E.)
Like Zenobia, this queen of Kush took advantage of unrest
that distracted Roman troops from her realm, the kingdom of
Meroe. The Emperor Augustus had recently attempted to tax
the Kushites and Amanirenas, one in a long line of ruling
Kushite women, took offense. With her son Akinidad, she
attacked a Roman fort at Aswan, left the few survivors a
warning message about unwarranted taxes, and returned to
Meroe with the bronze head of a statue of Augustus. This they
buried under the threshold of Amanirenas' palace. When
Augustus mounted the expected retaliation, under the general
Petronius, the Romans were at first successful, but
Amanirenas herself took the field against them and forced
them to the bargaining table. She sent her ambassadors to the
island of Samos, where they negotiated return of all
conquered lands and the remission of the controversial tax.
Amanirenas' title, Kandake, is thought to be the origin of the
common woman's name Candace.
Matilda, Countess of Tuscany
(c. 1046-1115)
After all her brothers died or were killed in battle, Matilda
succeeded her father, Bonifacio II, as ruler of a territory
much larger than the modern Italian province of Tuscany.
Supposedly, she was an athletic girl, who studied weapons
and strategy with a soldier named Arduino della Paluda,
learning to handle lance, pike, and battle-axe. She was also a
linguist, and literate in an age when many nobles were not.
This was a period of virtually unbroken conflicts between the
Holy Roman Empire and the Pope. In these, she sided
undeviatingly with the Papacy, even leading her own armies
into battle to protect the various popes (most notably Gregory
the Great) from division and deposition. Her steadfastness
and her tactical skill left a lasting impression on the
chroniclers.
These and many more examples make it clear that woman
can be anything that men can be in terms of heroic actions of
courage in warfare. Jael was one of the women God honored
by giving her assassination account in His Word. It could
have been left out and who would be the worse? But he had it
recorded so that we might see that women can be his chosen
agents for terrible and well as wonderful tasks. They can even
be godly assassins.
