Judges 5:24-28

The Blessing of Jael. Jael's deed is unhesitatingly and emphatically approved. While the oppressor of Israel stood in her tent, drinking the milk she gave him, she suddenly felled him to the earth with her tent-hammer. In Judges 5:26 read, She put her hand to the mallet, Her right hand to the hammer, And she hammered Sisera. It is often supposed that, seizing a wooden tent-peg in her left hand and a hammer in her right, she drove the peg through his temples into his brain surely a difficult thing to do to a standing warrior. But according to the laws of Heb. parallelism, the second line of Judges 5:26 is merely a variation of the first, so that she had only one weapon, called now a mallet and now a hammer, with which she dealt the death-blow. And when a woman of leonine courage, burning with a sense of intolerable wrongs, becomes the minister of a country's vengeance and of Yahweh's justice, we hold our breath and are silent. Who will blame her? If her victim had fallen in battle, or been led a captive to his doom, everyone would have given thanks. And if the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Gideon and upon Jephthah when they went to overthrow the enemies of Israel, who will say that the same spirit did not impel the wife of Heber to take the life of Sisera, and inspire the prophetess Deborah to call her blessed among women?

Judges 5:25. For butter read sour milk, which is still the most refreshing drink among the Bedouin.