Pamela Tamarkin Reis, "Uncovering Jael and Sisera. A New Reading"

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Uncovering Jael and Sisera. A New Reading
Pamela Tamarkin Reis
To cite this article: Pamela Tamarkin Reis (2005) Uncovering Jael and Sisera. A New Reading,
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UNCOVERING JAEL AND SISERA
A NEW READING
Pamela Tamarkin Reis,

8 Rockland Park, Branford, CT 06405, U.S.A.
Jael’s assassination of Sisera, narrated in Judg 4,7-22 and sung in

Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 2005.19:24-47.
Judg 5,24-31, smolders with sex. Previous scholars smell the smoke
but deny the fire. Victor Matthews says these verses are not about
sex; they are about hospitality.1 Mieke Bal says they are not about
sex; they are about maternity.2 Yair Zakovitch says they used to be
about sex, but the sex has been censored out.3 The purpose of my
article is to offer a new translation of a crucial word as well as a new
reading of these verses revealing that the Jael-Sisera episode is about
sexabout a woman’s use of sexuality to overmaster a man. This
understanding highlights the bawdy ridicule of Israel’s enemy, Sisera,
resolves the difficulties that adhere to previous analyses, and argues
in defense of the literary unity of chapters 4 and 5.
The Fraught Background
In Judges 4, we are told the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord
and were therefore sold into the hand of Jabin, king of the Canaanites
who reigned in Hazor. The Israelites suffer severe oppression for
twenty years until the prophetess, Deborah, encourages her general,
Barak, to battle against Sisera, the captain of Jabin’s forces. Barak,
fearful or faithless, refuses to fight unless Deborah accompanies him.
She acquiesces but predicts that the opposing captain, Sisera, will
now fall by the hand of a woman. The Lord routs Sisera’s charioteers,
1 Victor Matthews, “Hospitality and Hostility in Judges 4,” BTB 21 (1991),

13.
2 Mieke Bal, Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on
Sisera’s Death, M. Gumpert, trans. (Bloomington 1988), 130-131.
3 Yair Zakovitch, “Sisseras Tod,” ZAW 93 (1981), 374.
Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament vol. 19 no. 1 (2005)

© Taylor & Francis 10.1080/09018320510032420
Uncovering Jael and Sisera 25
and Barak pursues them until not one is left. Sisera, however, alights
from his chariot and escapes.
“Now Sisera fled away on foot toward the tent of Jael the wife of
Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Ha-
zor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet
Sisera and said, ‘Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not’” (vv 17-
18a). Unlike other translators, I have rendered “to” as “toward” in v
17, for we learn in v 18 that Sisera was not seeking Jael’s tent.4 Jael
would not have had to urge Sisera into her tent if it had been his des-
tination.5 Sisera must have been seeking refuge with Heber, Jael’s
husband, a Kenite ally to the Canaanite king.6 Though most Kenites,
descendants of Moses’ father-in-law, lived in amity with the Israel-

ites, we are informed in v 11, in a seeming non sequitur, that Heber
had split off from other Kenites. His parting, we now learn in v 17,
was political as well as geographical. Despite Jael’s eagerness to turn
Sisera from his course, all English translators use “to the tent of Jael,”
and most analysts believe Sisera specifically sought Jael’s tent.7 Mat-
thews says, “If he [Sisera] were seeking sanctuary or shelter, he
should have approached the tent of the head of the household, not that
of his wife.”8 Zakovitch says, “Sisera flees with forethought to Jael’s
tent”; Jael’s pressing invitation “serves only to strengthen his trust in
the correctness of his decision” [my translation].9 J. Alberto Soggin
completely suppresses Jael’s invitation by saying that Sisera forced
his presence upon her: “The woman, incapable because of her own
weakness of preventing the fugitive general from entering her tent,
pretended to accede to his request, only at a later stage to act in ac-
4 BDB, 39 recognizes the “toward” usage.

5 With John Stek, who says “Sisera is passing by on his way (no doubt to
Heber’s tent), and she intercepts him with her ‘turn aside … turn aside to
me,’” “The Bee and the Mountain Goat: A Literary Reading of Judges 4,” in
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. and Ronald F. Youngblood (eds.), A Tribute to Glea-
son Archer (Chicago 1986), 71.
6 The Bible manifests many times that married men and women occupied
separate tents. See especially Gen 31,33 in which Laban searches in turn the
separate tents of Jacob and his wives.
7 KJV, NIV, NAU, NRS, NJPS, AB, and others have “to.”
8 Matthews, “Hospitality,” 15.
9 “Sissera enflieht mit Vorbedacht in das Zelt Jaels” and “verstärkt nur sein
Vertrauen in die Richtigkeit seines Entschlusses,” Zakovitch, “Sisseras
Tod,” 366.
26 Pamela Tamarkin Reis
cordance with what she considered to be her real duty.”10 Sisera,

however, makes no request of Jael; he enters the tent at her request.
Scripture places women firmly in the home.11 The specific informa-
tion in v 18 that Jael has “gone out” insinuates that her excursion may
have a sexual denouement like that of Leah in Gen 30,16, Dinah in
34,1, the daughters of Shiloh in Judg 21,11. Leah went out to further
conjugal relations, but the expression “going out,” when applied to
women, is often associated with sexual license. In Exod 21,7, owners
of maidservants are enjoined to marry off the girls and not let them
“go out” as male servants do. In Ruth 2,22, Naomi cautions Ruth to
“go out” with only the women gleaners, not with the men whom Ruth
mentioned in the preceding verse. Jael’s “going out” in Judg 4,18

may be neutral, but since it is combined with her urgent invitation to
a strange man, it is more likely to herald sexual contretemps.
Heber’s shelter would have been both a safer haven and a more
seemly refuge for Sisera than a lone woman’s quarters, for with
Heber the strength of a man’s protection could be gained and the sus-
picion of scandal avoided. Since Jael deflects the escapee from the
more advantageous asylum of her husband’s tent, Sisera (and the
reader) may infer that she is not simply offering sanctuary. Her ad-
monition, “Fear not” (v 18), therefore, provokes scrutiny. Is Jael rec-
ommending that Sisera not fear his pursuers? This could hardly be the
purport of her words, since both he and she know that he is less se-
cure under a woman’s guardianship than he would be under a man’s.
Is she referring to herself? What could a presumably armed, battle-
trained military chief apprehend from a woman? She could hardly
overpower him or betray his presence to the Israelites, for he would
be with her, watching. Because she was “out” and because she was a
lone woman coaxing a lone man into her tent, I believe she was as-
suring him that he need not fear the inopportune arrival of her hus-
band, Heber. Dana Fewell and David Gunn say that “In biblical lit-
erature, a man seldom enters a woman’s tent for purposes other than
sexual intercourse.”12 I will go further and state that, in the Hebrew
Bible, whenever a man and a woman, not married to one another, are
10 J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary (Philadelphia 1981), 78.

11 “Women are typically of the inside, the domestic sphere, while men are of
the outside, the common sphere,” Michael O’Connor, “The Women in the
Book of Judges,” HAR 10 (1986), 279.
12 Dana N. Fewell and David M. Gunn, “Controlling Perspectives: Women,
Men, and the Authority of Violence in Judges 4 and 5,” JAAR 58 (1990),
392.
alone in private there is sex. There are no occasions of innocent ren-

dezvous. Lot’s daughters have intercourse with their father when they
are alone with him (Gen 19,30-36). Dinah is raped when she is alone
with a man out of doors (34,1-2). Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Jo-
seph when they are alone (39,7). Tamar and Amnon, half-siblings,
have intercourse when they are alone (2 Sam 13,14).13 Whether or not
actual intercourse takes place when Ruth is virtually alone with Boaz
is arguable (Ruth 3,3-9), but there is no dispute that the incident has a
high sexual charge. Perfumed and dressed in her best, Ruth crawls
into Boaz’s bed after he has been drinking and asks him to spread his
skirt over her. Ruth’s request is a figure of marital relations as shown
in Ezek 16,8: “Now when I passed by you, and looked upon you, be-
hold, your time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over you,
and covered your nakedness: yea, I swore unto you, and entered into
a covenant with you, said the Lord God, and you became mine.”
Prov 7,7-27 is the parade example of a man, alone, lured into a
strange woman’s dwelling. A young man, lacking understanding,
passes the home of a woman dressed like a prostitute who has come
out of her house: “She is loud and rebellious; her feet do not stay at
home” (v 11). She says to him: “Come, let us take our fill of love
until morning; let us enjoy ourselves with love. My husband is not at
home; he has gone on a long journey” (vv 17-18). They have sex, the
man dies, and the reader is cautioned: “Her house is the way to Sheol,
going down to the chambers of death” (v 27). The young man in
Proverbs is not running for his life as is Sisera, and we do not know
how Jael is dressed. Both chapters, however, recount the impropriety
of a woman “going out,” inviting a strange man into her tent, and
allaying his fear. Nowadays fornication is not the only reason for a
woman and a man to be together alone, but the first readers or listen-
ers understood that Jael is loose and brazen to come out and meet
Sisera and that when she entices him into her tent, dismissing his
fear, she is offering a sexual liaison.14 Sisera also understood.
13 The story of Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam 13,1-22) attests to the rigid bound-
ary propriety maintained between the sexes in the ancient Near East; Am-
non, on his sickbed, must ask his father for permission to be visited by a
half-sister.
14 Freema Gottlieb says that in Jael’s “Fear not” admonition “chords of wel-
come and of trust are struck,” “Three Mothers,” Judaism 30 (1981), 200. On
the contrary, these words introduce an ominous note, as when a parent tells a
child not to be afraid of the dentist. Johanna Bos agrees that “The word
‘fear’ strikes a discordant note on what should be an occasion that carries no
Consonant with their denial of sexual congress between Jael and

Sisera, some commentators maintain that, while entering a woman’s
tent is suggestive, Sisera was too tired from his flight to have sex.
Fewell and Gunn say, “Sisera, like a man penetrating his lover, has
entered, upon invitation, a woman’s sphere” (p 393). Their erotic im-
agery notwithstanding, they further claim: “Having just lost a battle
and having had to run for his life, Sisera might well be regarded as
being neither physically nor emotionally capable of sexual inter-
course.”15 Matthews says, “Sisera may have been aroused to sexual
desire as he entered the otherwise forbidden area of Jael’s tent, and
Jael may have encouraged this to draw him into her trap. However, it
is unlikely he would have been able to perform any further exertion,

including intercourse.”16 It would be unusual, however, for a partisan
author to portray an enemy soldier as being too war-worn to engage
in sex. Throughout history, men of opposing armies are typically
derogated as being uncommonly sexually rapacious. As we see in the
next chapter, when Sisera’s mother is portrayed rejoicing in the no-
tion that her son and his army have captured two “wombs” per man
(Judg 5,30), the biblical author also underscores the enemy’s sexual
appetite.
A New Translation and the Narrative of the First Sexual Act
As soon as Sisera enters her tent, Jael covers him with, or by, ‫שמיכה‬
(4,18). Bible scholars concur, from the context, that this word means
a blanket, rug, mantle, or (because he is presumably already warm
from his run) fly-netting.17 The noun ‫שמיכה‬, however, is a hapax le-
gomenon, and no one knows what it means. Joanna Bos say, “What
precisely she covers him with is left to the imagination.”18 Their re-
fusal to see the fire leads previous analysts to agree that, in the prim
threat,” “Out of the Shadows: Genesis 38; Judges 4,17-22; Ruth 3,” Semeia
42 (1988), 53.
15 Fewell and Gunn, “Controlling Perspectives,” 393, n 10.
16 Matthews, “Hospitality,” 21.
17 Lillian Klein, The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges (Sheffield 1988)
chooses “fly net” (p 42) and says “other possible translations are ‘mantle,’
‘rug’” (p 218, n 13), thus disregarding all other possible translations such as
Elizabeth Wilkinson’s. Wilkinson divides the word ‫ בשמיכה‬into two separate
words such that she is able to translate: “overwhelmed him with perfume,”
“The Hapax Legomenon of Judges IV 18,” VT 33 (1983), 512. Robert
Boling, however, does not hazard a conjecture and uses an ellipsis for
‫שמיכה‬, Judges (AB 6A; Garden City, N.Y. 1975), 93.
18 Bos, “Out of the Shadows,” 51.
context they imagine, Jael covers Sisera with fabric. In my exegesis,

she covers him with her body; that is, she has sex with him in the fe-
male-superior position. In biblical Hebrew, the ‫ שׂ‬is often exchanged
with a ‫ ס‬that carries the same sound. Joshua Blau says that “there are
in Biblical Hebrew about the same number of spellings, more or less
certain, of: çîn instead of samekh as of samekh instead of çîn (p 114),
and he lists the hapax ‫ שמיכה‬as one of the irregular spellings employ-
ing a ‫ שׂ‬instead of a ‫( ס‬p 120).19 HALOT says that the root of ‫ שמיכה‬is
probably ‫ סמך‬and that two manuscripts of Judges have the spelling
‫סמיכה‬.20 If one accepts the possibility of this common exchange, then
‫ שמיכה‬is a noun that is derived from the verb ‫סמך‬, which means to
lean, lay, rest one’s weight upon.21 “And he turned to her into the
tent, and she covered him with [or by] laying-on” (v 18b); that is, she
rested her weight upon him. The understanding that Jael assumes the
masculine sexual position with Sisera both obviates interpretive
problems and clarifies the narrative, as we shall see.
After Jael and Sisera copulate, he says to her: “‘Give me, please, a
little water to drink; for I am thirsty.’ And she opened a skin-bottle of
milk, and gave him drink, and covered him” (v 19). He asks for wa-
ter; she gives him milk. Bal says, “What Jael offers him are the basic
attributes of maternity: protection, rest, and milk.”22 Robert Alter also
19 Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages (Jerusalem

1970).
20 Walter Baumgartner and Johann Stamm (eds.), M. E. J. Richardson (rev and
trans.), HALOT (Leiden 1996), III, 1337.
21 BDB, 701.
22 Bal, Murder and Difference, 121. Elsewhere, noting the surprise substitution
of milk for water, Bal says, “The overdetermination of the milk motif pro-
vides further support to the isotopy of avenging mothers,” Death and Dis-
symmetry, 213. Jan Fokkelman agrees with Bal both about the overdetermi-
nation of milk and about maternity: “Jael was implicitly a mother when she
surpassed Sisera’s wish by offering him milk,” “The Song of Deborah and
Barak: Its Prosodic Levels and Structure” in David P. Wright, David Noel
Freedman, and Avi Hurvitz (eds), Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies
in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor
of Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake, Ind. 1995), 622. Athalya Brenner says the
women in our story stand for milk; Barak, God, and Sisera stand for water:
“The substitution of milk for water by Jael signifies her assumption of the
male role of the warrior” (p 105). Although Brenner finds that in Judges 4,
“The element of hospitality is dominant,” the death scene in chapter 5 con-
tains “unmistakably sexual connotations” which, nevertheless, “are reminis-
cent of a natural birth scene. Thus Jael embodies aspects of both Deborah
and Sisera’s mother” (“A Triangle and a Rhombus in Narrative Structure: A
foregrounds maternity and says, “Jael’s initial words to Sisera might

almost be construed as a sexual invitation, but she at once assumes a
maternal role toward her battle-weary guest, tucking him in like a
child, giving him milk rather than the water he requested.”23 John
Stek says that milk is both a “better, more nourishing drink” and a
play on the meaning of Jael’s name, mountain goat, for goats give
milk.24 My explanation is that giving Sisera milk, instead of the water
he requests, evinces Jael’s continuing control over him. Jael com-
mands the action from the start; she steers Sisera into her tent, initi-
ates sex taking the dominant position, and gives the drink she wants
to give, not the drink he wants to get. The introduction of milk also
prepares the way for a ribald play on dairy products that I shall con-
sider when discussing the song celebrating the assassination in chap-
ter 5.
The Second Coitus
Having given her guest a drink, Jael covers him again (v 19). She is
not “tucking him in like a child”; she is having sex with him a second
time in the female-superior position.25 The Bible, ever economical,
does not repeat the noun that evidences what Jael covered Sisera
with. It was necessary to mention it in v 18 to dispel possible ambi-
guity, for without the ‫שמיכה‬, we might suppose that Jael covered her
guest with any number of things. But in v 18 we learn that Jael covers
her guest with her body, and this information suffices for the second
covering as well.
The Bible’s sequencing of covering/drink/covering accommodates
neither the maternity nor the hospitality model. Surely a hot and
thirsty runner would be better served by being given a drink before he
Proposed Integrative Reading of Judges 4 and 5,” in Athalya. Brenner [ed],

A Feminist Companion to Judges [Sheffield 1993], 103). Susan Niditch is
also sensitive to the sexual heat of the Jael story but labels Sisera a “would-
be lover,” “Eroticism and Death in the Tale of Jael,” in Peggy Day (ed),
Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis 1989), 50.
23 Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York 1985), 48.
24 Stek, Tribute, 72. Meir Sternberg says that Jael disarms Sisera with “soft
words and strong drink,” The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington
1987), 282. Milk is not usually classified as a strong drink, but Sternberg
may be referring to milk’s reputation as a soporific.
25 Wilkinson, who proposes that she “overwhelmed him with perfume” (see
my n 17), construes this second covering as Jael covering the milk bottle
(“Hapax Legomenon,” p 513). The narrator, however, never transmits in-
consequential minutiae.
is tucked in. And why the need for two tuckings-in? Whether it is a
maternal or a hospitable gesture, one covering would suffice. The
seemingly disordered and reiterative sequencing, however, harmo-
nizes optimally with a sexual reading. Jael must reason that repeated
sexual encounters are certain to deplete her guest, leaving him sleepy
and vulnerable. The interlude of refreshment, moreover, provides
Sisera with a restorative period of unknown duration between sex
acts.
After the second covering, Sisera is understandably drained and
tells Jael to stand guard. He cannot look out himself, for he wants to
sleep: “Stand in the doorway of the tent, and it shall be if a man
comes and inquires of you and says, ‘Is a man here?’ you will say,
‘No’” (v 20). Sisera makes a grammatical slip and expresses “Stand”
in the masculine imperative rather than in the feminine he should
have used when addressing a woman. This gender fault is frequently
remarked upon; most exegetes explain that Sisera is so tired or so
relaxed that he, confusedly or comfortably, speaks as he usually
speaks when addressing his troops.26 Bal says it is an attempt on Sis-
era’s part to regain his former role as commander.27 To the first read-
ers, I believe, Sisera’s addressing Jael as though she were a man is
funny and appropriate, considering that she has twice usurped the
male position in their coupling. It is as though Sisera himself admits
Jael has become the man, and he, by contrast, has become effeminate.
To add to the coarse humor, Sisera again acknowledges his lost
manhood in the second half of the verse: the author has Sisera both
frame a specific question Jael might be asked and also instruct her on
the answer to that question. There are many questions pursuers might
ask of a woman standing in a tent door. She might be asked, for ex-
ample, how long she had stood there, if she had seen a fleeing Ca-
naanite, if she knew which way he ran. But Sisera fleshes out only
one question, “Is a man here?” And he tells Jael to answer, “No.”
According to Sisera’s own words, there is no man indeed—no real
man. The author, to the Israelites’ earthy entertainment, has now
painted the hated enemy both ways: he is so sexually insatiable that
he is easily tempted from his desperate escape route and also has in-
tercourse twice within an unspecified but possibly brief interval. And
26 E. g., Tammi Schneider, Judges (Collegeville, Minn. 2000), 80; Donald F.

Murray, “Narrative Structure and Technique in the Deborah-Barak Story
(Judges 4. 4-22),” in John Emerton (ed), Studies in the Historical Books of
the Old Testament (Leiden 1979), 183.
27 Bal, Murder and Difference, 121.
yet, by his own admission, he is no man; he is a sissy.28 Some com-

mentators say that Sisera here ironically foreshadows his own
death.29 Fewell and Gunn acknowledge the humor and irony: “The
mighty man has become a vulnerable child; the virile man lies impo-
tent” (p 393), but they disclaim the sex: “His lying down in Jael’s tent
and asking for water is suggestive of sexual encounter, though, liter-
ally, none takes place.”30 I agree that Sisera may be foreshadowing
his impending death and that it is amusing if the mighty man has be-
come a child, but to a people crushed by Canaanite potency for
twenty years, the cream of the jest is that the “virile man” has become
a woman.
The Murder
The KJV translates v 21: “Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the
tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and
smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he
was fast asleep and weary. So he died.” All other English translations
I have seen are similar.31 This translation presents difficulties. One
problem is forming a mental image of where Sisera is sleeping. He
must be lying on the ground, or he falls to the ground with the force
of the blow, for we are told that the tent peg goes into the ground.32 If
he were on Jael’s bed (be it rug or mat), the tent peg could hardly go
through both Sisera and the layer below.33 And even if he lay directly
28 Gale Yee says, “The irony here dramatizes the extent to which Sisera has
become ‘un-manned,’” “By the Hand of a Woman: The Metaphor of the
Woman Warrior in Judges 4,” Semeia 61 (1993), 116.
29 Murray, “Narrative Structure,” 183; Stek, Tribute, 59; Bal, Murder and
Difference, 121-122; Bos, “Out of the Shadows,” 54; Schneider, Judges, 80;
others.
30 Fewell and Gunn, “Controlling Perspectives,” 392.
31 Baruch Halpern, in arguing the dependence of chapter 4 on chapter 5, says
“Probably the author of Chapter 4 did not recognize the fact that one could
strike an effective blow with a yated, here ‘(tent) peg,’” The First Histori-
ans: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco 1988), 81. A woman
could possibly use a tent peg as a blunt instrument and dispense with the
hammer, but the peg or spike, so employed, would hardly penetrate the vic-
tim. Since both chapters 4 and 5 speak of some sort of hammer, the direction
of authorial dependence cannot be presumed from Jael’s weapon.
32 The ASV has “it pierced through into the ground,” the NIV has “She drove
the peg through his temple into the ground”; the AB has “the peg went on
into the ground,” and the NAU has “it went through into the ground.”
33 Alter says that the stake was driven through Sisera’s head, and “he convul-
sively heaved from the bed” (Art, 45). Brenner also places Sisera on a bed
on the ground, where on Sisera’s body could Jael could strike the tent
peg with such force that it would penetrate all the way through him
and continue into the earth? Most commentators agree that she strikes
him in the temple, but some offer that she might have struck him in
the neck, for the Hebrew ‫ רקה‬means “thin.”34 Several scholars point
out that the “it/she” that “goes in the ground” is feminine and, since
Jael is still the subject, perhaps it is not the tent peg, also feminine,
but Jael that collapses on the ground.35 Another difficulty is the
placement of the word “weary” after we are told that Sisera is in a
deep sleep. Were the word order reversed, it would seem a more
natural progression; we would be told first that Sisera was weary and
then that he slept.36

My interpretation is that Jael takes the tent peg and the hammer and
straddles the sleeping Sisera a third time. Stek suggested that Jael is
named mountain goat because she gives Sisera milk, and goats give
milk.37 Not only do all mammals give milk, but mountain goats,
unlike domesticated goats, are not a source of milk for humans. The
distinguishing characteristic of mountain goats is that they can climb,
and Jael climbs on top of Sisera three times. If she wakes him this
time, she can pretend that she is initiating sex again and hope that, in
his fog, he will not notice the hammer and peg she carries. But he
does not wake; he stays asleep, completely spent, all vigor sapped.
Jael strikes a killing blow and dismounts onto the ground. I do not
(“Triangle,” 103). Zakovitch mentions Jael’s bed nine times in his analysis
(“Sisseras Tod,” 365-374). Ps.-Philo (Bib. Ant. 31.3) goes so far as to say
that Jael’s bed was strewn with flowers—romantic preparations made before
she went out to meet Sisera. Bos says that it was Sisera’s head that came
down to the ground, not the tent peg (“Out of the Shadows,” 51).
34 Ellen van Wolde says Jael struck Sisera in the throat, “Ya’el in Judges 4,”
ZAW 107 (1995), 245. Fewell and Gunn say that Jael thrust the peg into Sis-
era’s open mouth, “Controlling Perspectives,” 393. Halpern has “gullet,”
First Historians, 82.
35 Klein, Triumph of Irony, 42; Fewell and Gunn, “Controlling Perspectives,”
394; Soggin, Judges, 67. The preposition  can mean “on” or “onto” as well
as “in” or “into,” BDB, 89.
36 Bos is troubled that we are told Sisera is asleep and weary after we are told
that he was struck. She translates: “Sisera is stunned, collapses, and dies”
citing Ps 76,7 for “stunned” (the NRSV translates thus) and understanding
the ‫“ יעף‬to be weary” as “to pass out” (“Out of the Shadows,” 52). Fewell
and Gunn say that Sisera slept and he shuddered (following NEB) and he
died, “Controlling Perspectives,” 343 and see p 343, n 15.
37 Stek, Tribute, 72.
believe it is the tent peg that goes into the ground. The verb, ‫צנח‬,
translated variably with the tent peg as subject (see n 32), is used only
two other times in the Bible (Josh 15,18 and Judg 1,14), and both
times it refers to a woman dismounting an ass. How delicious for the
Israelite readers or auditors to take the point that Jael, from her posi-
tion astraddle the enemy commander, also dismounts from an animal.
With the interpretation above we need no longer worry about how
and where Jael could strike Sisera with such force that the tent peg
would penetrate his body and go into the ground, for in my exegesis,
Jael strikes Sisera with only sufficient intensity to kill him, and it is
she who dismounts from her straddling position onto the ground.38 If
Sisera sleeps on ground, rug, or mat, Jael does not have far to climb
nor a great height from which to dismount. The vertical extension of
her superior position is not at issue; it is the fact that she is paramount
that is accented. Further, the chronologically backward description,
“for he was in a deep sleep and weary” need no longer puzzle trans-
lators. Sisera is in a deep sleep and sexually spent— an accurate de-
scription.
Jael’s Third Sexual Encounter
The next verse says, “And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came
out to meet him and said to him, ‘Come, and I will show you the man
whom you are seeking.’ And he went in to her, and behold, Sisera
fallen dead with the tent peg in his temple” (4,22). When Jael “goes
out” in this verse, as she did in v 18, she is further compromised as a
profligate in the eyes of the first readers. While “going out” does not
invariably lead to sexual assignation, Jael’s double going out in both
v 18 and v 22 intimates that she is a habitual gadabout: “her feet do
not stay at home” (Prov 7,11). We see her adultery after her going out
in Judg 4,18, and we learn the sexual consequences of her second
excursion when we are told that Barak “went in to her.” The formu-
laic, ‫ויבא אליה‬, “and he went in to her,” signifies sexual intercourse.
This phrase is never used in a non-sexual context; it always refers to
sexual intercourse.39 The Bible does not relate the intimacy between
38 Fewell and Gunn also picture Jael as dismounting from astride Sisera, “Con-
trolling Perspectives,” 394, nn 14, 15.
39 The only times this phrase is used in the Bible, other than in our chapter, are
in Gen 29,23; 30,4; 38,2.18; Judg 16,1; Ruth 4,13, and 2 Sam 12,24. Every
one of these seven uses refers to sexual intercourse. Other than these occur-
rences, the reader is told frequently that men “went in to” particular women
Jael and Barak, for the details of her trysts with men other than Sisera
are not germane, but accompanying a second man into her tent indi-
cates Jael’s promiscuity.
It is possible that Jael’s second “going out” is blameless. And one
could postulate that the “and he went in to her” in v 22 is the one
biblical exception to the sexual meaning of this phrase. Jael and Ba-
rak’s interval in the tent may be the one exceptional occasion in
which an unmarried man and woman in the Bible are chastely alone.
But is a reading that requires two exceptions credible? Certainly, Ba-
rak’s initial desire was to capture the fugitive, but going in to a
woman and being secluded with her, with only a dead man for chap-
erone, confers a sexual imputation. Had the author not wished to con-
vey this impression, he could have omitted the carnally-loaded signi-
fier, “and he went in to her,” and have had only Barak enter the
woman’s tent.40
Jael’s Motivation
Why does Jael do it? Why does she lure Sisera into her tent, kill him,
and sleep with Barak into the bargain? Jael knows the Canaanites
have been routed when she “goes out” in v 18 because she goes out to
meet Sisera specifically. In v 22, after the assassination, she goes out
to meet “him”—any Israelite soldier will do to view Sisera’s corpse.
Women may pick over battlefields, and if they had in this case they
would have stripped only Canaanite dead and learned of the Israelite
victory. Or Jael may have heard through the grapevine that the leader
of Jabin’s army was on the run and surmised that he would run to her
husband, Heber, Jabin’s ally. As Kenite sympathizers of the king who
had oppressed Israel for twenty years, Jael and her husband must
have benefited from their collaboration. Now they were liable to
harsh treatment, perhaps execution, by the victorious and resentful
Israelites. But if Jael could use her sexuality, a woman’s weapon, to
bind or kill Sisera for the benefit of Israel, then she and her husband
would be safe—or, at the very least, she would be safe, and not only
safe but lauded.
One could suppose that Jael sleeps with Barak to win his favor, but
the sight of Sisera, dead, would accomplish that goal. I suggest the
(for example, Abraham went in to Hagar, Absalom went in to his father’s

concubines). Each of these occasions also refers to sexual intercourse.
40 Leila L. Bronner says, “The biblical depiction of Jael seems to be an entirely
positive one,” “Valorized or Vilified?: The Women of Judges in Midrashic
Sources,” in Feminist Companion, 87.
author depicts Jael as a loose woman because that is the xenophobic

nature of the Bible; non-Israelite women are, ipso facto, immoral.41
The passage also gains additional humor for the Israelite reader when
Heber, friend of the despised Canaanites, is seen to be cuckolded, and
cuckolded not once—when it might be considered an extreme life-
saving measure—but a second time, when it can only be considered
wanton.42
Matthews, who thinks it unlikely that Sisera is capable of the exer-
tion of intercourse (see above), says that Jael kills Sisera because of
his violation of the Near Eastern hospitality code. According to Mat-
thews, Sisera dishonors both Heber and Jael by approaching Jael’s
tent. Since it is up to the host to offer refreshment, Sisera compounds

his transgression by requesting a drink of water. Asking Jael to stand
guard also violates protocol, as Sisera should have respected the
host’s honored prerogative of protection; therefore, “Jael operates
within her rights against a violator of the customs of hospitality” (p
41 Throughout the Bible, Israelites are cautioned against the dangers of non-
Israelite women. A vivid expression of this counsel is the story of Phinehas
in Num 25,6-8. He averts a plague by killing an Israelite man and Midianite
woman who are alone together in a tent (and thus, presumably, fornicating).
This lesson illustrates both the moral and the theological threat of the ex-
ogamous woman. The word, ‫יתד‬, for the peg that kills Sisera is the same
word used for “pin” in Judg 16,14 where Delilah, another treacherous and
seductive non-Israelite woman, fastens Samson’s hair to a loom in order to
bind him for the Philistines. I am grateful to Ruth Fagen for pointing out this
identity.
42 The usual way to identify a married woman is to call her “wife of (hus-
band’s name).” The initial “wife of Heber” in Judg 4,17 conforms to this
convention. Specifically because Jael’s name is used and suffices, the un-
necessary and redundant repetition of “wife of Heber” in 4,21 and 5,24 re-
minds one of the excessively reiterated “wife of Uriah” that designates and
censures the adulterous Bathsheba. Bathsheba is first suitably identified by
her relation to her husband in 2 Sam 11,3 and then pointedly labeled “wife
of Uriah” again in v 26 and 12,10.15. Other commentators, because they
deny the sex in Judg 4, do not recognize the stress on Jael’s sexual betrayal
of Heber. Several, however, do comment on, what they see as, her political
betrayal of him. Baruch Margalit says, “He [Heber] ‘sold out’ to the enemy,
the sedentary population of Canaan. By acting as she did, Jael sought to re-
store the family honor sullied by her husband’s defection when he ‘sepa-
rated from the Kenites’. … Thus the blow struck by Jael against Sisera, psy-
chologically viewed, was a blow struck at the husband Heber,” “Observa-
tions on the Jael-Sisera Story (Judges 4-5),” in Pomegranates, 640. Klein
says, “She [Jael] acts against the interests of her husband, who is friendly
with Sisera” (Triumph, 43).
17). Matthews, however, is rather more doctrinaire about the strin-

gencies of the hospitality code than is the Bible. For instance, in dis-
cussing the scene between Jael and Sisera, he says, “Every other ex-
ample of hospitality in the Hebrew Bible contains the offer or the act
of foot-washing” (p 17). And he lists four occurrences of this practice
(Gen 18,4; 19,2; 24,32, and Judg 19,21).43 He does not list, however,
the hospitality scenes in which foot-washing does not occur (Judg
19,3-10; 1 Sam 28,8-25; 1 Kgs 13,19, and 2 Kgs 4,8-11). Lapses in
hospitality may have stirred the Israelites, but they were surely more
shocked (and delighted) by Jael’s forward invitation and lewd sur-
mounting of Sisera.
The Dating of Chapter 5

Well over a century ago, Julius Wellhausen offered that earlier source
material in the Book of Judges could be distinguished from later ma-
terial by analyzing the book’s language.44 He believed that the earthy
profane humor he found in Judges sprang from sources other than the
minds of sober Deuteronomistic redactors. Scholars have continued
to sift through the evidence of the text, each using differing criteria
for dating chapter and verse and evaluating historicity. Deborah’s
song describes the victory over the Canaanites, sings of Jael and Sis-
era, and occupies the entire chapter of Judges 5. In 1895 George
Moore dated the composition of this song circa 1100 B. C. E., several
centuries before that of the prose account in Judges 4.45 Among his
considerations was his perception of the clarity and freshness of im-
mediate experience in this “triumphal ode.” Because of its vibrancy,
he asserted that its composition was contemporaneous with the battle
it glorifies.46 William F. Albright and his students, Frank Moore
Cross, Jr. and David Noel Freedman, agree with Moore’s dating of
the song and with his promulgation of an authorial eyewitness.47
43 Matthews, “Hospitality,” 13-20.

44 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Edinburgh 1885).
45 George F. Moore, Judges, (ICC; Edinburgh 1895).
46 Moore, Judges, 107.
47 William Albright, “The Song of Deborah in the Light of Archaeology,”
BASOR 62 (1936), 26. In a new edition of Frank M. Cross and David N.
Freedman’s earlier (1975) Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry (Grand Rap-
ids, Mich. 1997), they speak of dating all Yahwistic poetry and say: “The
proper starting point is the Song of Deborah, a victory hymn, the occasion of
which is known, and the approximate date quite certain, i. e., ca. 1100 B.C.”
(p 3).
Most contemporary Bible scholars, though for reasons other than

Moore’s, also concur with this dating.48
Despite the general agreement traced above, the concord is under
attack. Gösta Ahlström says that Deborah’s song is not a credible
channel of historic detail: “A poet’s celebrations are usually not reli-
able historical sources.”49 Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas Thomp-
son lead the vigorous charge of the so-called Copenhagen minimalist
school. They argue that, since outside the Book of Judges there is no
written or archeological corroboration of the history it recites, the
book is entirely self-referential and cannot be used for the purposes of
dating.50 Marc Brettler says that “Unfortunately, most guesses as to
the origin and function of Judges 5 are just that— guesses.”51
My guess is that Judges 5 should be read as though it follows

Judges 4, just as it appears in the received text. My unitary point of
view conforms to that of P. Deryn Guest, who discusses the possibil-
ity of later redaction and states: “I simply argue that there is a simpler
option—the narratives in Judges cohere so well, because they derive
solely from the hand of one writer who produced a well-crafted
48 E. g., “It is commonly accepted among Bible scholars that the poetry of ch.
5 is some of the earliest literature we have in the Bible. It is thought to date
from around the twelfth century B. C. E. The final redaction of the prose and
the poetry has been proposed to have occurred in the seventh to sixth centu-
ries,” Rachel C. Rasmussen, “Deborah the Woman Warrior,” in Mieke Bal
(ed.), Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible
(Sheffield 1989), 83. Niditch says, “It is agreed among scholars that Judges
5 is an example of early Hebrew poetry dating to the twelfth or eleventh
centuries B. C. E.,” “Eroticism and Death,” 57, n 42. Halpern agrees with
Albright’s chronological reordering of chapters 4 and 5 in Judges. Accord-
ing to Halpern, the prose version is a later misreading of the earlier, more
historically accurate poem, “The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song
of Deborah and Israelite Historiography,” HTR 76 (1983), 379-401. Walter
Houston agrees with Halpern that chapter 4 is a later reading of chapter 5,
but he contends that the Israelites were more interested in affirming theol-
ogy than in securing history, “Misunderstanding or Midrash? The Prose Ap-
propriation of Poetic Material in the Hebrew Bible” ZAW 109, 342-355.
49 Gösta Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Paleolithic Pe-
riod to Alexander’s Conquest (JSOTS 146; Sheffield 1993), 379.
50 Niels Peter Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies
on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy (VTS 37; Leiden 1985); Tho-
mas Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archeology and the Myth of Is-
rael (New York 1999).
51 Marc Brettler, The Book of Judges (New York 2002), 69.
work.”52 Like Guest, I read the chapters as we have received them—

as synchronous and sequential. I agree that the author knew what he
was doing and that any differences between the two chapters were
intentional. From my perspective, the prose of chapter 4 and the po-
etry of chapter 5 are not the record of two different traditions about
Jael and Sisera, nor are they two different versions of one tradition.
They are the product of one “overarching mind”53 who tells the same
story in two different genres.
The Song’s Corroboration
In Deborah’s song, vv 24-30 bear on Jael and Sisera. In the first of
these verses, Jael is lauded, and in the second, we are told what Alter
calls “the single ‘factual’ discrepancy between the two accounts”54:

“Most blessed of women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most
blessed of women in the tent. Water he asked; milk she gave. In a
bowl of glories, she brought forth butter” (vv 24-25). We are told
that, though Sisera asked for water and Jael gave him milk, she brings
forth butter in a bowl of glories. There was mention of neither bowl
nor butter in chapter 4. Alter explains the surprising reference to but-
ter in the unusual bowl as a hyperbolic, “generic tendency toward
heightening.”55 I agree it is hyperbolic heightening and recognize that
it is expressed in the parallel construction characteristic of biblical
poetry, but I think it is also a salacious bit of biblical bawdy.
The Bible records perhaps a dozen kind of bowls: small bowls, sil-
ver bowls, golden bowls, bowls for incense, bowls for libation, bowls
for kneading, but the particular kind of bowl specified here, ‫ספל‬, is
mentioned only twice—once in our verse, and once in 6,38. In this
chapter, Gideon is doubtful of God’s veracity and might. He tests
God:
Behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew
on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that
you will deliver Israel through me, as you have spoken. And it was so,
and he rose early on the morrow, and he squeezed the fleece, and he
wrung dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water (vv 37-38).
To amply exhibit God’s power, the author needs to indicate a deep
bowl rather than a shallow one, and so we are justified in supposing
52 P. Deryn Guest, “Can Judges Survive Without Sources?: Challenging the

Consensus,” JSOT 78 (1998), 60.
53 Guest, “Can Judges Survive,” 61.
54 Alter, Art, 47.
55 Alter, Art, 48.
that, whatever kind of receptacle it is that Gideon and Jael use, it is

deep.
A churn is deep, and in it one makes butter. Below is an excerpt
from a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century glossary of British slang:
Butter, to make it with one’s tail (of a woman). To copulate. The
woman’s vagina is the churn that holds the “cream” to be churned into
“butter,” the male’s penis is the churn-handle or stick that churns the
cream with an up and down agitation.
The glossary goes on to say that the “butter” may be either semen or
vaginal lubricant.56 Another example of a dairy product used as a
slang term for vaginal lubricant appears centuries later in the Ameri-
can musical theater production Grease in the lyrics to the song,

“Greased Lightnin’”:
With new pistons, plugs, and shocks, I can get off my rocks,
You know that I ain’t bragging; she’s a real pussy wagon,
Greased Lightnin’, you are supreme;
The chicks’ll cream for Greased Lightnin’.57
Closer to the ancient Israelites in chronology (ca. 2100-1800 B.C.E.)
and geography (Mesopotamia) is this excerpt from a Sumerian hymn:
Ianna, may you call to the churn!
To the churn may your husband call . . .
Ianna, let me be the one who gets the churning of the churn for you.58
I am mindful that one cannot extrapolate from Sumerian hymns and
English and American slang to biblical Hebrew, and I shall not offer
56 James T. Henke, Gutter Life and Language in the Early “Street” Literature
of England: A Glossary of Terms and Topics Chiefly of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (West Cornwall, Conn. 1988), 45.
57 Grease was written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey and first produced in
Chicago, February 5, 1971.
58 William W. Hallo (trans), “New Hymns to the King of Isin,” Bibliotheca
Orientalis 23 (1966), 245. Professor Hallo, Professor Emeritus of Assyriol-
ogy at Yale, confirms in conversation that the sexual image of the churn is
the principal metaphor of the poem. Thorkild Jacobsen translates the same
song but fails to recognize the sexual implication. He does state, however,
that “Churning seems to have been considered joyful work rather than a
chore,” “Lad in the Desert,” JOAS 103 (1983), 198. We do not know how
butter was made in biblical times; a dairyman informs me that, besides a
churn, butter may also be made by shaking cream in a vessel and by rocking
it in a sort of wooden cradle. Since the sexual plea of the Sumerian hymn
demands the type of churn and churn-stick with which we are familiar and
since it was written prior to the Book of Judges, I see no reason to suppose
the Israelites were less advanced in dairying than the Sumerians.
more examples. If one accepts, however, my translation of chapter 4

recognizing the sexual acts of Jael and Sisera, and if one also sup-
poses that the author had a point and a purpose for substituting milk
for water in chapter 4 and for mentioning water, milk, and butter in
chapter 5, then the hypothesis that “butter” is also used in biblical
Hebrew as slang for a sexual secretion becomes viable.59 The “bowl
of glories” would then make sense as Jael’s own body. What could be
a more glorious vessel than the body of a woman created in the image
of God?60 Freud says that humor is veiled sex or aggression. The hu-
mor here is both sexual and aggressive, just as it was in chapter 4
when Sisera abnegates his own manhood and again when Jael dis-
mounts him (enabling the reader to understand “animal” from the

verb used). We shall see this risqué wit reprised in v 30 of Deborah’s
song.
“Her hand reached for the tent peg, and her right [hand] for the
workman's hammer. She hammered Sisera, she crushed his head, she
struck. Between her legs he copulated, he fell, he laid: between her
legs, he copulated, he fell: that where he copulated, there he fell, de-
stroyed” (vv 26-27). Many translate “between her feet” rather than
‘between her legs.” “Feet” and “between her feet” are often used as
euphemisms for genitals (Deut 28,57: “And the after-birth that comes
out from between her feet”).61 Both verbs ‫( כרע‬usually translated,
“bowed”) and ‫“( שכב‬laid”) refer to sexual intercourse.62 The rabbis of
the Talmud say that, in chapter 5, Jael and Sisera had intercourse
seven times. They reach this figure by counting each verb, even the
59 Halpern terms the author of chapter 4, “the historian” and explains that in
borrowing from chapter 5: “The historian construes some couplets [of Deb-
orah’s song] figuratively as synonymous statements in parallelism: ‘Milk
she provided; in a lordly crater she proffered ghee’ [v 25] has as a reflex the
offering of only one beverage in the prose. … Conversely, the couplet in
5,26 is taken literally as a description of successive actions,” First Histori-
ans, 81. Unfortunately, Halpern does not impart the criteria by which he
distinguishes the historian’s figurative interpretation from his literal render-
ing.
60 “And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them” (KJV Gen 1,27). In Jer 18,4-6 a vessel is
used metaphorically for all the children of Israel.
61 With Niditch, “Eroticism and Death,” 48; Alter, Art, 43; Fokkelman, Song,
621; Brenner, “Triangle,” 103; and Fewell and Gunn, “Controlling Perspec-
tives,” 404—all of whom also translate, “between her legs.”
62 BDB, 502 and 1012 respectively.
verb ‫( נפל‬to fall), as references to intercourse.63 Haman falls, ‫נפל‬,

upon Esther’s bed in Esth 7,8, and the king accuses him of trying to
force the queen, but I do not think this verse supports the use of ‫ נפל‬as
a reference to intercourse.
The verb ‫נפל‬, fall, is not used to denote a sexual act; nor is it used in
its most literal sense to indicate that Sisera fell to the ground from a
standing or sitting position.64 It is used to show that Sisera is a fallen
enemy. Every soldier in his army has fallen by a man’s sword (Judg
4,16), but Sisera falls dead by the hand of a woman. The repetition
and alternation of the verbs of copulation with the verb ‫ נפל‬emphasize
that Sisera is felled both by a tent peg and by his own lust. Jael’s bold
eroticism overcomes Sisera’s fear of discovery and military disci-

pline. He twice has sex between Jael’s legs; he sleeps between her
legs; he is struck a mortal blow between her legs, and he dies be-
tween her legs; chapters 4 and 5 agree on the nature and sequence of
events.
The poem’s viewpoint now shifts to Sisera’s mother. We see her in
vv 28-29 anxiously awaiting her son’s return from battle. She com-
plains to her ladies-in-waiting that her son tarries. The wisest of her
princesses answers, and Sisera’s mother answers herself as well:
Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoil? A womb, two
wombs, for the head of each stalwart. A spoil of dyed stuff for Sisera, a
spoil of dyed stuff of diverse colors, dyed, diverse colored, for the necks
of the spoilers (v 30).
The scenario Deborah’s song projects may strike modern ears as un-
feelingly gloating; Sisera’s mother is a mother, after all, and we know
what she does not; we know that she is bereft of her son. All these
millennia later, we do not feel the burden of two decades of Canaan-
ite oppression, and we may not be offended by the vulgar term the
63 Yev. 103a and Naz. 23b.

64 Bos oddly states, “The verb is always used of someone who is fallen from a
once upright position.” She thus excludes such usages as a fallen counte-
nance, to fall by lot, and, most apropos, to fall in battle, to fall into the hands
of an enemy, or to fall by the sword. She therefore concludes that Sisera is
struck while sitting down (but sitting upright), and that Jael strikes him a
lucky blow from behind (“Out of the Shadows,” 52). Halpern views Sisera’s
fall similarly, for he also construes the verb only in the sense of falling from
a standing position (First Historians, 78, 82-83). I understand the verb in the
sense of a fallen (i.e., stricken dead) enemy; Sisera has fallen by the hand of
a woman. The verb is used in exactly this sense in 4,21 when Barak enters
Jael’s tent, beholds “Sisera fallen dead,” and learns that he has been de-
spoiled of his quarry by a woman, just as Deborah prophesied (v 9).
woman uses to describe the Israelite women she thinks her Canaanite
spoilers are capturing for their carnal pleasure—two for every man.
But to the first readers, I believe, this view of Sisera’s mother and her
court is just the sexual and aggressive humor Freud described. For
them, it must have been ironic and maliciously satisfying for Sisera’s
mother to be portrayed bragging about her son having two women,
when the readers know that, on the contrary, one woman has had her
son twice. The diverse colored stuffs for the necks of the spoilers may
be an allusion to the red blood that was streaming down Sisera’s neck
at that moment.
Conclusion
I have described two chapters, both feverish with sex. Bal sees, not
sex, but an avenging, inverted maternity in these chapters. She con-
siders chapter 4 “tame, almost innocent” (p 84) with “motherly cov-
ering.”65 She does characterize the hammering of the tent peg in
chapter 5 as a sexual image; nevertheless, she says:
But the murder is also more directly motherly. The victim falls between
her feet, as an infant being born, but a dead infant, a stillborn baby. The
expression “between her feet,” repeated twice explicitly, and once more
recalled in the indication of place, “there where he fell,” connotes birth
and submission: submission to the mother.66
Zakovitch says the sex in chapters 4 and 5 has been censored out
by later redactors to protect the honor of God, who aids the Israelites,
and the reputation of Jael, who is the organ of God’s will.67 In chapter
4, for example, Zakovitch believes the twice-mentioned covering of
Sisera is the censor’s attempt to prevent the reader from knowing that
sexual contact took place (p 366). According to Zakovitch, the re-
dactor glosses over Sisera lying down in Jael’s bed and immediately
shows her covering him— to Zakovitch, an act of compassion that
obscures any indication of a sexual relationship (p 371). That this
covering is repeated a second time is further proof of censorship to
Zakovitch, for he says the redactor uses repetition in order to be more
convincing (p 373). Jael gives Sisera milk to drink in the censored
versions of chapter 4 and 5 rather than the wine Zakovitch assumes
was offered in the original story, the wine that would explain the
deepness of Sisera’s sleep (p 369). In the censored version of chapter
4, therefore, Sisera’s deep sleep is understood to be caused by ex-
65 Bal, Murder and Difference, 121.

66 Bal, Death and Dissymmetry, 228.
67 Zakovitch, “Sisseras Tod,” 365-374.
haustion from his run. Zakovitch acknowledges that the verbs for
bowed, ‫כרע‬, and lay, ‫שכב‬, have erotic meanings as well as benign
definitions, but he states that the impression the redactor aims for in
5,27 is to show the death of Sisera in a plastic manner, that is, to
show continuous movement and modification. Zakovitch goes on to
say that “whoever sees behind them [the verbs] a different, perhaps
erotic meaning, is in error.”68
I disagree. An erotic reading of the Jael/Sisera episode has advan-
tages over any previous exegesis in that it provides a richer, less
problematic understanding of the text. With a sexual analysis, we
learn how and with what Jael covers Sisera, why the Bible sequences
covering/drink/covering, why she serves milk instead of water in

chapter 4, and why butter and a glorious bowl are sung about in
chapter 5. We understand where Sisera falls asleep and where he is
when Jael murders him. We see, with the third and last biblical use of
the verb for “dismount,” that it is Jael dismounting onto the ground,
not the tent peg somehow penetrating Sisera and going into the
ground. We can, for the first time, appreciate the Israelites’ justified
amusement at the double cuckolding of Heber. Heber is not an actor
in either chapter, but he is thrice mentioned, and the reader knows
that he deserved his humiliation—as a resident alien, he returned Is-
raelite hospitality with loyalty to Israel’s enemy.69 The full irony of
Sisera’s mother’s speech is also now exposed and clarified.
A holistic approach, treating chapters 4 and 5 as an integrated, uni-
fied exposition provides rewards beyond those above. Not only does
understanding chapter 4 shape our understanding of chapter 5, but
concentrating on the coherence of the chapters enables us to recog-
nize the brilliant linguistic artistry that links the two. In chapters 4
and 5, the word “man” in the singular, ‫איש‬, is mentioned three times.
“Men” in the plural, the ten thousand men of Barak’s army, are men-
tioned, but “man” in the singular is used only in 4,20.22. Sisera or-
ders Jael: “If a man comes and inquires of you and says, ‘Is a man
here?’ you will say, ‘No’” (v 20). In v 22, Jael says to Barak: “Come,
and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” It has not hith-
erto been noted that the use of “man” in the singular only in these two
verses causes us to focus first on the humor of Sisera’s self-denigra-
68 “Wer hinter ihnen einen anderen, etwa einen erotischen Sinn seiht, ist im
Errtum,” Zakovitch, “Sisseras Tod,” 368.
69 Brenner draws two geometric figures to show the interrelationship of every
“cast member” in chapters 4 and 5. Sisera’s mother is included; God is in-
cluded; only Heber is ignored (“Triangle,” 99-109).
tion and second on the dramatic denouement of Sisera’s death by the

hand of a woman. Once one apprehends this subtle effect, one can
trace, in a text that embraces repetition, the author’s avoidance of
“man” elsewhere in the chapters. In v 16, we read that Barak slew
Sisera’s troops until not one was left. The author does not say “until
not a man was left.” In 5,30, Sisera’s mother does not say that there
will be two wombs for every man, she says there will be two wombs
for the head of a stalwart, ‫לראש גבר‬. The word,‫גבר‬, means man, strong
man, or mighty man, but its use again avoids the use of ‫איש‬.
With ingenious virtuosity, the author creates another lexical effect,
also previously unnoticed, that takes Sisera’s death out of the hand of
Jael and shows it to be the result of God’s hidden hand in the affairs
of men. It is the seven repetitions of the word “hand” in these two
chapters.70 Seven is an ethereal number in the Bible; its supernatural
power and influence is evoked over and over again.71 The seven fat
cows and seven lean cows in Pharaoh’s dream (Gen 41,18-19) and
the seven priests with seven horns circling Jericho seven times on the
seventh day (Josh 6,4) are but two examples among hundreds. In
Judges 4 and 5 the use of “hand,” exactly seven times, teaches the
careful reader that it is God’s hand, not a man’s nor a woman’s either,
that defeats Sisera and his army. Again we see the author use or avoid
the use of this word so that his seven count will not be disturbed. In
Judg 4,17, Jael does not just take the hammer; she takes it in her
hand. In 5,26, however, when only one more “hand” is needed to
complete the seven count, Jael takes the peg in her hand but takes the
hammer in her “right.”72 In Hebrew this word signifies the right hand,
but it avoids the use of the actual word “hand.”
The ineffable message imparted by the sevenfold “hand” accords
with another verbal alteration noted by Meir Sternberg. He points out
that in 3,30, Moab was subdued under the hand of Israel. In 4,23,
“God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites.”73 The
70 Judg 4,2.7.9.14.21.24; 5,26.

71 For more examples and discussion of the power and significance of the
mystical number seven, see Pamela Tamarkin Reis, Reading the Lines: A
Fresh Look at the Hebrew Bible (Peabody, Mass. 2002), 73, 82, 157-158,
185.
72 Gottlieb, “Three Mothers,” 201, says that Jael holds the hammer in her left
hand [though Judg 5.27 clearly says “right”] and attributes this observation
to the rabbis of the Talmud. The use of “right hand” following “hand”
maintains the author’s seven count while conforming to the convention of
parallel biblical poetry that establishes this order.
73 Sternberg, Poetics, 283.
change from passive voice in chapter 3 to active voice in chapter 4

asserts God’s activity on Israel’s behalf and gives him credit for the
victory, not Barak or Deborah or Jael. In human terms, Sisera did
indeed fall by the hand of a woman, but the author’s intimation of the
divine accounting manifests God’s hand in history.74
We have taken the gamble. We have played the wild card— the ha-
pax legomenon, ‫שמיכה‬, as though it were derived from the verb ‫סמך‬
(to lay-on)—and we have garnered winnings. Every word that refers
to Jael and Sisera in the two chapters uncovers the sexual fire. Jael is
neither the paragon valorized by other feminist exegetes (see n 40)
nor is she maternal (see n 66). She demonstrates a robust, self-reliant
femininity that, in conquering, casts aside both morality and the tra-
ditional role of woman as nurturer. Would an adulteress like Jael be
blessed, however, and chosen to be God’s instrument? The answer is
yes, for the Bible favors the unlikely. In Judges alone, God chooses
the left-handed (Ehud, 3,15), the doubter (Gideon, 6,36-37.39), the
whore’s son (Jephthah, 11,1), and the buffoon (Samson, 16,1-20).
The choice of Jael is ideally suited to the author’s depiction of the
world of Judges as a topsy-turvy social order; instead of men as lead-
ers in Judges 4 and 5, we see women ascendant and men fools of
varying degree. Heber and Sisera are undone; Barak is outdone. Deb-
orah and Jael become woman warriors, and the prophetess blesses the
slattern in song. This new reading unties the knots in earlier studies
and undermines the popular theory that chapters 4 and 5 are two dis-
parate chapters written centuries apart by two different authors, for it
reveals the correspondence and agreement of the two chapters and
recognizes the precise linguistic craftsmanship that unites both.
I am grateful to Matthew Dennis, William Hallo, Elizabeth Reis,
Gary A. Rendsburg, and Maurry Tamarkin for their valuable contri-
butions to an earlier draft of this essay.
Abstract
Bible scholars feel the sexual heat of Jael’s assassination of Sisera but
deny the fire. Victor Matthews says these verses are about hospitality,
not sex. Mieke Bal says they are about maternity, not sex. Yair
Zakovitch says they used to be about sex, but the sex has been censored
out. My close reading evidences that the Jael-Sisera episode is indeed
74 Yairah Amit says, “[T]he obvious conclusion is that the purpose of the story
is to stress that God, and God alone, is the savior of Israel, a savior who
makes use of human characters as instruments in a game he has established
the rules of,” “Judges 4: Its Content and Form,” JSOT 39 (1987), 102.
about sex—about a woman’s sexual dominance over a man. Using more

of the text than other explications, this understanding reveals the bawdy
ridicule of Sisera and resolves the difficulties that adhere to previous
analyses. Arguing the synchronicity of Judges 4 and 5, it illuminates
these chapters’ correspondence and agreement, their identical style of
ironic humor, and their unifying linguistic craftsmanship.

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Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

ISSN: 0901-8328 (Print) 1502-7244 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/sold20

Uncovering Jael and Sisera. A New Reading