Judges 5:24

_BLESSED ABOVE WOMEN SHALL JAEL THE WIFE OF HEBER THE KENITE BE, BLESSED SHALL SHE BE ABOVE WOMEN IN THE TENT._ Blessed above women shall Jael ... be. A high eulogy is pronounced on her devoted loyalty to Israel, and the important service she rendered by her deed of extraordinary daring. In these verses is a most graphic picture of the treatment of Sisera in the tent of Jael....

24-31 Jael had a special blessing. Those whose lot is cast in the tent, in a low and narrow sphere, if they serve God according to the powers he has given them, shall not lose their reward. The mother of Sisera looked for his return, not in the least fearing his success. Let us take heed of indulging eager desires towards any temporal good, particularly toward that which cherishes vain-glory, for that was what she here doted on. What a picture does she present of an ungodly and sensual heart! How shameful and childish these wishes of an aged mother and her attendants for her son! And thus does God often bring ruin on his enemies when they are most puffed up. Deborah concludes with a prayer to God for the destruction of all his foes, and for the comfort of all his friends. Such shall be the honour, and joy of all who love God in sincerity, they shall shine for ever as the sun in the firma...

Verse Judges 5:24. _BLESSED ABOVE WOMEN SHALL JAEL - BE_] She shall be highly celebrated as a most heroic woman; all the Israelitish women shall glory in her. I do not understand these words as expressive of the Divine approbation towards Jael. See the observations at the end of Judges 4:24. The word _bless_, both in _Hebrew_ and _Greek_, often signifies _to praise, to_ _speak well of, to celebrate_. This is most probably its sense here....

The blessing here pronounced is in strong contrast with the curse of Meroz. Deborah speaks of Jael’s deed by the light of her own age, which did not make manifest the evil of guile and bloodshed; the light in ours does....

EXPOSITION JUDGES 5:1 THEN SANG DEBORAH, etc. The ode which follows was doubtless the composition of Deborah the prophetess, and was sung by her (as the gender of the Hebrew verb indicates), assisted by Barak, who perhaps sang the antistrophe (cf. Exodus 15:1, Exodus 15:21). It is a song of wonderful beauty and lyric power, somewhat difficult, as all Hebrew poetry is. JUDGES 5:2 Her first feeling was one of patriotic joy that her countrymen had been roused to the venture of war, and of gratitude to God that it was so. "For the bold leading of the leaders of Israel, for the

BLESSED ABOVE WOMEN SHALL JAEL THE WIFE OF HEBER THE KENITE BE,.... Under the same influence that Meroz was cursed, Jael is blessed, the one for not helping Israel in a public way, the other for doing it in a private manner; this blessing is pronounced, either in a way of prayer that it might be, or in a way of prophecy that it should be, and indeed in both: BLESSED SHALL SHE BE ABOVE THE WOMEN IN THE TENT; above all women that dwell in tents: this being a proper description of a woman, whose character it is to abide in her tent, dwell at home, and mind the business of her family; and may have respect to the manly action she performed in her tent, equal, if not superior, to what was done in the field....

CHAPTER 5 The Song of Deborah and Barak _ 1. The praise of Jehovah (Judges 5:1)_ 2. The condition of the people and their deliverance (Judges 5:6) 3. The celebration of the victory and the victors (Judges 5:12) 4. The fate of the enemy (Judges 5:23) This is one of the prophetic songs of the Bible. It is full of the fire of passion and enthusiasm, reflecting the character of the woman through whom the deliverance had been wrought. It has been classed with the barbaric outbursts of the battle-hymns and odes of triumph of heathen nations, likened to some wild chant of a victor, whose blood-thirst has been que

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

BLESSED ABOVE WOMEN. Compare Luke 1:28 "among". See notes on Judges 4:4; Judges 4:17; Judges 5:7; Judges 5:11; Judges 5:30....

The courageous devotion of Jael is set effectively against the unpatriotic selfishness of Meroz. Jael here receives enthusiastic praise for what strikes us as nothing less than a treacherous murder. According to the standards of the times, however, it would not appear in this light at all, and such are the standards by which we must judge the morality of the deed. _the wife of Heber the Kenite_ interrupts the parallelism and spoils the rhythm of the verse; it is evidently a gloss from Judges 4:17, where the words are in place. _women in the tent_ The Bedouin are described as _dwellers in tents_Judges 4:11; Judges 8:11; Jeremiah 35:7