Judges 5:26

_SHE PUT HER HAND TO THE NAIL, AND HER RIGHT HAND TO THE WORKMEN'S HAMMER; AND WITH THE HAMMER SHE SMOTE SISERA, SHE SMOTE OFF HIS HEAD, WHEN SHE HAD PIERCED AND STRICKEN THROUGH HIS TEMPLES._ No JFB commentary on these verses....

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 5:26. _SHE SMOTE OFF HIS HEAD_] The original does not warrant this translation; nor is it supported by fact. _She smote his head_, and transfixed him through the temples. It was his _head_ that received the death wound, and the _place_ where this wound was inflicted was the _temples_. The manner in which Jael despatched Sisera seems to have been this: 1. Observing him to be in a profound sleep she took a _workman's hammer_, probably a _joiner's_ _mallet_, and with one blow on the head deprived him of all sense. 2. She then took a tent nail and drove it through his temples, and thus pinned him to the earth; which she could not have done had she not previously stunned him with the blow on the head. Thus she first _smote his head_, and secondly pierced his _temples_....

Rather “she smote his head, and she struck and pierced through his temple.”...

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

SHE PUT HER HAND TO THE NAIL,.... Her left hand, as the Septuagint, Arabic, and Vulgate Latin versions express it, and as appears by what follows; she having taken up a pin from her tent, with which it was fastened to the ground, she clapped it to the temples of Sisera: AND HER RIGHT HAND TO THE WORKMAN'S HAMMER; in her right hand she took a hammer, such as carpenters, and such like workmen, make use of, and workman like went about her business she had devised, and was determined upon, being under a divine impulse, and so had no fear or dread upon her: AND WITH THE HAMMER SHE SMOTE SISERA; not that with the hammer she struck him on the head, and stunned him, but smote the nail she had put to his temples and drove it into them: SHE SMOTE OFF HIS HEAD; after she had driven the nail through his temples, she took his sword perhaps and cut off his head, as David cut off Goliath's, after he...

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

While he was standing (Judges 5:27) and about to drink, Jael dealt him a shattering blow with a wooden implement. We are tempted to suppose that, if he had drunk, he would have been protected by the laws of Eastern hospitality. So in _The Talisman_, Sir Walter Scott makes Saladin dash the cup from the hand of the Grand Master of the Templars before assassinating him; had he tasted it, he would have been safe. _Talisman_p. 535 (ed. 1879 A. and C. Black). In Judges 4:19, however, Jael has no scruples about killing Sisera after he has partaken of her hospitality. According to the parallelism of Hebr. poetry _her hand_and _her right hand_mean the same thing; and so should _nail_and _workmen's hammer_. But can the latter term be thus rendered? _workmen_ought rather to be sufferers,

DISCOURSE: 264 JAEL AND SISERA Judges 5:24. _Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead._ THE subject of assassination, one would suppose, should not admit of much diversity of sentiment: but there are those even in the Christian world, who think that in extreme cases, where the death of a tyrant would put an end to grievous oppressions and desolating wars, the dagger of an assassin might be employed. I am not aware that any w