I’ve spent the last couple of months studying the Minor Prophets, but today my Bible study took a little detour into Judges. And may I just say, the Bible does not talk enough about Jael.
Church has done a wonderful job introducing us to the ‘good girls’ like Esther who fasted, Ruth who was loyal to Naomi, Mary who never touched a man, and kind Dorcas who made clothes for widows. We know these women, and rightly so. They were remarkable.
But then there are the women who don’t quite fit into our neat Saturday School boxes; women like Jael (and Vashti? Gosh, I love Vashti, but today is not about her).
Her name in Hebrew means ‘wild mountain goat’, which already tells you she wasn’t about to have an ordinary story. If your parents named you Wild Mountain Goat today, HR would probably ask a few questions.
Her story begins in the middle of a national crisis. The Israelites had spent twenty years under the oppression of King Jabin of Canaan, whose commander, Sisera, was basically the military guy you didn’t want to meet. He had nine hundred iron chariots, which, in those days, were almost unfair. Imagine showing up to a fistfight and the other person arrives with tanks.
God raises Deborah, a prophetess and judge, and tells Barak to gather an army because victory has already been decided. Barak, in a move that has always amused me, says he’ll only go if Deborah comes with him. Deborah agrees, but quietly lets him know that although Israel will win, Sisera won’t die by Barak’s hand. God will hand him over to a woman.
Now, if I were standing there, I would have immediately assumed she meant herself. Deborah was already leading Israel, after all. Surely she’s the woman.
Except… she wasn’t.
This is where I think the Bible writers were having a little fun.
Because while everybody’s attention is on the battlefield, God is quietly preparing someone else entirely.
Meanwhile, something fascinating is happening that you only fully appreciate when you read Deborah’s victory song in the next chapter. Judges 4 tells us what happened. Judges 5 tells us how Heaven saw it.
Deborah sings that “the stars fought from heaven; from their courses they fought against Sisera.” Then she mentions the River Kishon sweeping the enemy away.
I love that imagery because it suggests the battle wasn’t won by swords alone. Many scholars believe a heavy storm turned the battlefield into mud, rendering Sisera’s famous iron chariots almost useless. Suddenly the very machines that had terrorised Israel for two decades were stuck in the ground, and Sisera, the mighty commander, had to abandon them and run.
I don’t know why, but that makes me smile.
Imagine spending years building the most powerful army around, only for God to say, “Lovely chariots. Shame about the weather.”
Sometimes we think God only works through miracles that look supernatural. A voice from heaven. Fire falling from the sky. But here He simply… made it rain.
The stars fought.
The clouds fought.
The river fought.
Creation itself seemed to understand the assignment.
And then Sisera, exhausted and desperate, stumbled into Jael’s tent.
He asked for water.
She gave him milk.
Which is already funny to me because if I ask for water and someone hands me warm milk, I’m asking follow-up questions.
She covered him with a blanket. He fell asleep, probably believing he’d found the safest place imaginable.
Instead, he’d walked straight into the last chapter of his own story.
Jael picked up a tent peg and a hammer, and with what I can only assume was extraordinary upper-body strength, drove the peg through Sisera’s temple.
The end.
Honestly, the Bible can be unexpectedly dramatic.
What I love most, though, isn’t the tent peg. It’s that God fulfilled Deborah’s prophecy through someone nobody was looking at.
Jael wasn’t leading armies. She wasn’t standing under Deborah’s famous palm tree judging Israel. She wasn’t delivering prophecies. She was simply living her life until history knocked on her front door.
I find that incredibly comforting.
Sometimes we spend so much time wishing we were Deborah that we forget God is perfectly capable of using a Jael.
Maybe your role isn’t to lead the meeting. Maybe it’s to have exactly the right conversation at exactly the right time. Maybe it isn’t to stand on the stage. Maybe it’s to quietly change the ending of someone else’s story.
And maybe that’s what I learnt today.
When God decides to bring about victory, all of heaven cooperates. Stars. Rain. Rivers. Prophets. Housewives with tent pegs. Nothing is random.
Also…
Can we please start talking about the Bible’s bad girls a little more?
They’re absolutely fascinating.
Rusty Fingers 