Commentary - Judges 4:17-22

Bird's-eye view

The book of Judges, as we have noted before, is a book of cycles. Israel sins, God brings an oppressor, the people cry out, and God raises up a deliverer. It is a messy, bloody, and often grotesque history. But it is our history, and it is a history that sings of the gospel, provided you have ears to hear it. This particular account, the climax of the battle against Jabin and Sisera, is no exception. It is raw, it is violent, and it is glorious.

Here we have the final scene in a great deliverance. Barak, at the head of Israel's army, has routed the superior forces of Sisera, but the enemy general himself has escaped. The victory is not complete until the head of the serpent is crushed. And God, in His inscrutable and marvelous providence, has determined that this final blow will not be struck by Barak, the commander of the army, but by a woman, in her tent, with a hammer. This is not a story for the faint of heart, nor is it for those who like their religion neat and tidy. This is a story about how God uses the weak things of the world to shame the strong, and it is a story that points us directly to the cross of Christ.

Outline

Context In Judges

We are in the third cycle of oppression and deliverance in Judges. Israel has done evil in the sight of the Lord after the death of Ehud, and so God sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan. His commander was Sisera, a man who oppressed Israel mightily for twenty years with nine hundred chariots of iron. The people cried out to the Lord, and God raised up Deborah, a prophetess, who was judging Israel at that time. She calls for Barak to lead the army, he expresses a measure of weak faith, and she prophesies that the glory for this victory will ultimately go to a woman (Judges 4:9).

God throws Sisera's army into a panic, and they are utterly destroyed at the Kishon River. Sisera alone escapes. This brings us to our text. The stage has been set by God. The enemy is on the run, his power is broken, but he, the head of the snake, is still at large. The prophecy of Deborah hangs in the air. The Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. This is not an afterthought; it is the theological linchpin of the entire narrative.

Key Issues

Commentary

17 Now Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.

Sisera, the mighty general, is now a pathetic figure, fleeing on foot. His iron chariots are worthless, bogged down in the mud, and his army is a bloody ruin behind him. In his desperation, he runs not to a fortress, but to a tent. He is seeking refuge in what he believes is a neutral, or even friendly, territory. The Kenites were descendants of Moses' father-in-law, and they had a long history of dwelling alongside Israel. However, this particular clan, the house of Heber, had made some sort of treaty or arrangement with Jabin, the Canaanite king. Sisera sees this as his salvation. He is running to a place of "peace." But this is the false peace of the world. It is a peace built on compromise with God's enemies. Sisera thinks this political arrangement will save him, but he is running straight into the arms of God's appointed executioner. The folly of the wicked is always to trust in their own arrangements, their own treaties, their own strength. He is a picture of every sinner who thinks he can find a neutral corner in God's universe to hide from the consequences of his rebellion.

18 And Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my master, turn aside to me! Do not be afraid.” And he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug.

Jael comes out to meet him. She is not passive. She is an active agent in this drama. She calls him "my master," a term of respect, but it is a feigned respect. She tells him not to be afraid. This is deception, to be sure. But we must be clear. Deception is an act of war. Sisera is the sworn enemy of God's covenant people, a brutal oppressor who has now been routed in a battle ordained by God. Jael is not at peace with him, regardless of what her husband's political arrangements might be. She is siding with the God of Israel. To lie to God's enemies in a time of war is not a violation of the ninth commandment, any more than killing them is a violation of the sixth. Think of Rahab and the spies. Jael is disarming the enemy with her words so that she can destroy him with her hands. She invites him into the heart of the home, the tent, and covers him. She is lulling the serpent to sleep.

19 Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a bottle of milk and gave him a drink; then she covered him.

He asks for water, the bare minimum for a weary traveler. She gives him milk. This is not just an act of superior hospitality. Milk, particularly fermented milk or yogurt, was known to be a soporific. It makes one drowsy. She is not just quenching his thirst; she is preparing him for the slaughter. Every action she takes is calculated. She is a warrior, and her weapons are those of the home: a rug, a bottle of milk. She is using the implements of her domestic sphere to wage holy war. This is a beautiful picture of how all of life, every nook and cranny of it, is to be consecrated to God's purposes. Nothing is neutral. You can glorify God with a sword and shield, and you can glorify God with a bottle of milk.

20 And he said to her, “Stand in the doorway of the tent, and it shall be if anyone comes and asks of you and says, ‘Is there a man here?’ that you shall say, ‘No.’ ”

Here is the height of Sisera's arrogance and folly. He, the defeated general, commands the woman whose hospitality he has just accepted to stand guard for him and to lie on his behalf. He wants her to be his shield. He is using her as a means to his own pathetic end. He is a user, an oppressor, to the very last. He has no idea that he is speaking to the very instrument of God's wrath. He thinks he is commanding a collaborator, when in fact he is sealing his own doom in the presence of his judge. He is so blinded by his pride that he cannot see the hammer in her heart, soon to be in her hand.

21 Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and placed a hammer in her hand and went secretly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went through into the ground; for he was sound asleep and exhausted. So he died.

This is the central verse. Jael takes the tools of her trade, the tools used to secure the tent, the home, and turns them into weapons of war. A tent peg and a mallet. She goes to him "secretly," or softly. The mighty warrior is fast asleep, utterly vulnerable. And she drives the peg through his temple. The word for temple here is significant. It is the side of the head, the weakest point of the skull. This is a graphic, brutal, and decisive act. She pins the head of the serpent to the earth. This is the fulfillment of Deborah's prophecy. But it is also a picture of something far greater. This is Genesis 3:15 in living color. The seed of the woman is crushing the head of the serpent. Sisera is a type of Satan, a type of all the proud enemies of God who set themselves against His people. And Jael is a type of the church, a type of Christ Himself, who uses ignoble things, foolish things, weak things, to bring about the great victory. He was exhausted, the text says. So he died. The wages of sin is death, and the sentence is executed here with a hammer and a nail.

22 Now behold, Barak was pursuing Sisera, and Jael came out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” And he entered with her, and behold, Sisera was lying dead with the tent peg in his temple.

Barak arrives, still on the hunt. He represents the formal military power of Israel. But the work is already done. Jael once again goes out to meet the man. She is in control of this situation from beginning to end. "Come," she says, "and I will show you the man whom you are seeking." There is a triumphant finality to her words. She leads him in, and there is the trophy. Behold. Look. See what the Lord has done. The great enemy of Israel is laid low, not by an army on the battlefield, but by a woman in a tent. The glory goes to her, as Deborah said it would, but through her, all the glory goes to God. Barak had wanted the presence of a woman to go into battle with him, and God gave him his request in a way he never could have anticipated. The victory is secured by a woman, and all he can do is stand and behold the finished work.

Key Words

Kenite

The Kenites were a semi-nomadic clan descended from or associated with Jethro (also called Reuel), Moses' father-in-law (Judges 1:16). They were generally friendly to Israel. Heber's decision to separate from his clan and make peace with Jabin, the Canaanite oppressor, was a treacherous compromise. Jael's action, therefore, is not just the killing of an enemy, but a repudiation of her husband's covenant-breaking and a declaration of her own loyalty to Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Temple

The Hebrew word is raqqah. It refers to the side of the head, the thinnest part of the skull. The choice of this location for the blow is significant. It is a place of great vulnerability. The serpent's head, the seat of his proud and rebellious intellect, is pierced and pinned to the ground. This is not just a random act of violence; it is a targeted execution. It is a picture of the gospel, where Christ, on the cross, crushed the head of that ancient serpent, Satan, striking him a mortal blow at the very source of his power.

Application

This is a hard story for our soft age. We are tempted to sympathize with Sisera and to be repulsed by Jael. But this is to read the story with the world's eyes, not with God's. Sisera was a wicked man, the instrument of a brutal, twenty-year oppression of God's people. Jael was a righteous woman who, by faith, sided with God and executed His justice.

First, we learn that God is not bound by our expectations or cultural conventions. He will use whomever He pleases to accomplish His will. He delights in using the weak to shame the strong, so that no flesh may glory in His presence. A woman with a tent peg is more than a match for a general with nine hundred iron chariots when God is on her side.

Second, we see that there is no neutrality in the war between God and His enemies. Heber tried to make a separate peace, but there is no separate peace. You are either for Christ or against Him. Jael understood this, and she chose her side decisively. We are called to the same uncompromising loyalty.

Finally, this story is a glorious picture of the gospel. Sisera, the proud enemy, is lured into a place of false security, put into a deep sleep, and then utterly destroyed by a mortal blow to the head. This is what Christ did to Satan at the cross. Through His death, He destroyed him who has the power of death. The victory has been won. Our task, like Barak's, is often simply to come and behold the finished work of another, and to give God all the glory.