The Serpent's Head and the Housewife's Hammer Text: Judges 4:17-22
Introduction: A Most Uncomfortable Deliverance
We live in a soft and sentimental age. Our generation wants a God who is respectable, a Savior who is tame, and heroes who are, above all, nice. We want our Bible stories to be suitable for a flannelgraph board in a climate controlled Sunday school room. We want a Jesus who would never offend anyone and a faith that would never demand anything messy or unpleasant. The book of Judges is God's thunderous rebuke to all such sentimentalism. This is not a tame book because our God is not a tame God, and the world He is redeeming is not a tame world. It is a world at war.
The story of Jael and Sisera is one of the most jarring and, to our modern sensibilities, one of the most offensive in all of Scripture. It is bloody, it involves deception, and its hero is a woman who commits an act of shocking violence in her own home. And for this, she is celebrated in inspired Scripture as "most blessed of women" (Judges 5:24). If this story makes you squirm, good. It is supposed to. It is meant to shatter our preconceived notions of how God works. It is designed to show us that God's methods of deliverance are not our methods, and His instruments of victory are often the very ones the world overlooks and despises.
The context is the cyclical sin of Israel. They had done evil, God had sold them into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, and his brutal general, Sisera, who oppressed them with 900 iron chariots for twenty years. Israel cried out, and God raised up a deliverer, Deborah. But when she called the general, Barak, to lead the fight, he hesitated. He would only go if she went with him. Because of this flicker of faithlessness, Deborah prophesied that the glory of the victory would not go to him, for "the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman" (Judges 4:9). Our text is the shocking, gritty, and glorious fulfillment of that prophecy. It is a story of how God uses compromised treaties, motherly hospitality, and domestic tools to crush the head of His enemies.
The Text
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. 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. 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. 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.'" 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. 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.
(Judges 4:17-22 LSB)
The False Refuge of Compromise (v. 17)
The story begins with the enemy of God seeking a safe harbor.
"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." (Judges 4:17)
Sisera, the mighty general of the iron chariots, has been routed. God has thrown his army into a panic, and he is now a fugitive, alone and on foot. He runs not to his own people, but to the tent of Heber the Kenite. Why? Because there was a peace treaty. Heber's clan, descendants of Moses' father in law, should have been firmly allied with Israel. But they had separated themselves and cut a deal with the oppressor. They had chosen neutrality, which in God's economy is just another word for compromise. Sisera believed this human covenant, this worldly alliance, would be his salvation. He ran to the house of compromise expecting to find sanctuary.
This is a profound spiritual lesson. The world believes it can find safety in its treaties, its negotiations, its truces with evil. Heber's family thought their little arrangement with King Jabin would keep them safe from the conflict. Sisera thought this same arrangement would provide him an escape route. But there is no neutral ground in the Lord's battles. There is no peace to be had with the enemies of God. Any attempt to forge such a peace is a fool's errand, and any refuge sought in it is a mirage. Sisera is running from the judgment of God right into the very instrument of that judgment.
The Serpent's Lullaby (v. 18-19)
Jael's response to the fugitive general is a masterclass in holy cunning.
"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. 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." (Judges 4:18-19)
Jael plays the part of the perfect hostess. She goes out to meet him, an act of honor. She uses submissive language, "my master." She assuages his fears, "Do not be afraid." She offers him the sanctuary of her tent, which in that culture was a sacred trust. She covers him, offering him rest and concealment. Everything she does is calculated to make him feel safe. This is, of course, rank deception. And it is glorious.
Let us not be squeamish here. This is wartime ethics. Rahab was commended for her faith when she lied to the king of Jericho to protect the Israelite spies. The Bible is not a book of abstract philosophical principles; it is a book about a covenant God at war with a rebellious world. In such a war, deceiving the enemy is not a sin; it is a virtue. Jael is not bound by peacetime ethics when dealing with a man who represents a murderous, idolatrous system that has been brutalizing her kinsmen for two decades.
Notice the detail about the milk. He asks for water, a simple request. She gives him milk. This was likely a thick, fermented yogurt drink, a delicacy, but also something that would induce a deep, heavy sleep. She is not merely quenching his thirst; she is drugging him. She is giving him a serpent's lullaby, preparing the enemy of God for his execution. This is not simple hospitality; this is strategic warfare disguised as hospitality.
The Arrogance of the Condemned (v. 20)
Even in his desperation, Sisera's arrogance remains.
"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.'" (Judges 4:20)
The great general, now helpless and hiding under a rug, still thinks he is in command. He orders a woman to stand guard and to lie for him. He seeks to use her as a human shield. He is utterly blind to his situation. He sees a subservient woman, a useful tool. He does not see the hand of God, the appointed executioner. This is the spiritual condition of all who stand against the Lord. They are puffed up with pride, confident in their own schemes, right up to the moment the hammer falls. They cannot conceive that God would use something as common as a housewife in a tent to bring about their utter ruin.
The Hammer of God (v. 21)
Here is the central, brutal, and triumphant moment of the story.
"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." (Judges 4:21)
Jael uses the tools of her trade. A tent peg and a mallet were the instruments she used every day to build and secure her home. This is sanctified domesticity. She did not need a sword or a spear. She used what was in her hand, in her sphere of dominion. With quiet resolve, "she went secretly to him." There is no hesitation. She takes the instrument of stability, the tent peg, and makes it an instrument of judgment.
The target is precise: his temple. The seat of his proud and rebellious mind. This is a literal enactment of the promise made in the garden of Eden. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Here, a daughter of Eve drives a stake through the skull of the serpent's seed. The description is graphic and unflinching: "it went through into the ground." This was not a glancing blow. It was a decisive, powerful, final act of execution. Sisera died in his sleep, in a place he thought was safe, at the hand of someone he thought was weak and subservient. This is how God deals with His enemies.
The Victor's Revelation (v. 22)
The story concludes with the arrival of Barak, the hesitant general.
"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." (Judges 4:22)
Barak arrives, hot on the trail, ready for the final confrontation, only to find the war is already over. The promise of God through Deborah has been fulfilled to the letter. The honor has gone to a woman. Jael's invitation, "Come, and I will show you the man," is an announcement of victory. Barak gets to see the result, but he had no part in the final, decisive act. This is a humiliation for Sisera, certainly, to be killed by a woman in a tent. But it is also a gentle rebuke to Barak, a reminder that God does not depend on the strength of generals and armies. His purposes will be accomplished, and He is free to use whomever He pleases.
The Gospel in a Tent Peg
This raw and violent story from the Old Testament is shot through with the light of the gospel. Sisera, with his iron chariots and his arrogant pride, is a picture of Satan, the great enemy of God's people. He oppresses, he terrifies, and he seems invincible.
Jael, the housewife in her tent, is a picture of the church, and more profoundly, a type of Christ. God uses the weak things of the world to shame the strong. The victory over our great enemy was not won by an angelic army with swords of fire. It was won by the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, through the ultimate act of weakness and humiliation: the cross. The cross was the tent peg. It was a common, dirty, domestic instrument of execution. And on that cross, Christ went secretly, as it were, into the enemy's camp, and drove a stake through the head of the serpent, disarming the principalities and powers and making a public spectacle of them (Colossians 2:15).
The enemy thought he was safe. He thought he had lulled Jesus into the sleep of death. But in that very act, the hammer of God's justice fell, and the head of the serpent was crushed. The invitation of the gospel is the same as Jael's to Barak: "Come, and I will show you the man." Come and see your enemy, sin and death and Satan, lying dead, with the stake of the cross driven through his temple. The victory has been won.
Therefore, we are not to be ashamed of the scandal of the cross, nor are we to be squeamish about the righteous judgment of God. We are to be like Jael. We are to be loyal to God's people, not making peace treaties with the world. We are to use the ordinary tools God has placed in our hands, in our homes, in our vocations, to be instruments of His kingdom. And we are to trust that our God is a God who delivers His people, who crushes the heads of serpents, and who is most glorified when He wins the greatest victories through the most unlikely of means.