“Short Stories, Lasting Calls” Part 6: Ja’el
August 20, 2023 — Ordinary Time
Judges 4:1-22; 5:1, 24-27, 31
Pastor Mike
If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters, ah-ah
All over this land
The book of Judges is a bridge between Joshua, which tells the story of the Israelite’s initial conquest of the Promised Land, and 1 & 2 Samuel, which tells of the founding and failures of their unified Kingdom. In the time between settlement and monarchy, the judges – Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Samson, Gideon, and others – were temporary chieftains who helped Israel manage through decades of instability and disunity. The judges acted as military leaders and delivered the Israelites from militaristic oppression; some were legal experts who handled tribal disputes; and, on occasion, as with Deborah, the judge offered spiritual guidance as well. But the thrust was political. A judge’s leadership was considered successful if a period of prolonged peace followed his or her activity. In chapters 4 & 5, we learn that Deborah (a judge), Barak (a soldier), and Ja’el (a foreign woman) together win forty years of peace for Israel at the expense of King Jabin’s army and its general, Sisera.
All you have to do is read the story of Ja’el to know that the Bible is anything but boring or tame. Ja’el receives Sisera, the fleeing leader of Jabin’s defeated army, into her home. Sisera goes to Ja’el’s people because Ja’el’s husband, Heber, has an alliance with King Jabin. Sisera trusts that this political agreement plus the unbreachable cultural convention of hospitality will keep him safe among the Kenites. He confidently demands Ja’el’s cooperation.
Unfortunately for Sisera, Ja’el has a mind of her own, and King Heber isn’t home. Ja’el lulls the weary general to sleep, covering him with a thick rug and giving him warm milk to drink instead of the water that he asked for. She promises to stand guard while he rests. But once Sisera starts snoring, Ja’el takes a hammer in one hand and a tent peg in the other and pounds the peg through Sisera’s temple, nailing him dead to the floor.
If I had a hammer…
When Deborah and Barack come looking for Sisera among the Kenites and are shown his dead body by Ja’el, they sing a song of praise to God which tradition names the Song of Deborah. It is widely believed that the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 is the oldest written text of the Hebrew Bible that exists. Countless stories were told, certainly, but this song is, at least so far, the earliest written Hebrew scripture that we have. That taproot of the scriptures is a war anthem, sung by a woman, who’s praising another woman for hammering a tent stake through a sleeping man’s head. If you feel that this is both awesome and cringeworthy, join the awed, perplexed company of Bible interpreters everywhere.
Offering hospitality to guests was the pre-eminent social obligation of the ancient world, and Ja’el grossly violated it. She also transgressed her role as a woman, breaking the strategic political alliance forged by her husband. She also, contrary to the whole “thou shalt not murder” and “love thy neighbor” business of the Bible, killed a defenseless man in cold blood. She nailed a man to the floor of her home. Cringeworthy. On the other hand, why not hold Ja’el in the same emotional place we hold young David as he slings his river stone right into the temple of the giant Goliath? An underdog, a nobody, acting decisively to end a war, to say, “The bloodletting stops here. You don’t think I’m strong or important, but let me show you how God can use me.”
Regardless of how you and I might feel several thousand years on, the Bible has absolutely no qualms with Ja’el’s action. The whole story is designed to set her up as an unexpected hero. She has been memorialized in scripture and song: “Most blessed of women,” Deborah sings, “of tent-dwelling women most blessed.”
In this sermon series on call, drawing a one-to-one correspondence with Ja’el is a challenge. It’s one thing for me to say to you, “Go, be like Shiphrah and Puah, and preserve life where you’re being pressured by an authority figure to harm it.” Or, “Go be like Jethro and offer counsel and a listening ear to those younger than you.” It’s quite another to send you out to take a peg-and-hammer approach to the problematic people in your life.
What I think I can draw is an analogy between Ja’el’s response to Sisera and our Christian response to the times when evil and sin cease to be things “out there” abstractly and actually shows up in our hearts and homes. To make the analogy work, we must remember that God had already helped the Israelites to win the battle against Sisera’s army. Ja’el and her hammer didn’t change the outcome of the battle, but they did make God’s victory definitive; they brought the war to an end. Ja’el answered the question of whether Sisera would live to fight another day against God’s people. An enemy in flight is still an enemy, and what happened on the battlefield far from Ja’el – the victory of God – was realized personally, was brought to perfection, through her decisive response to the general in her tent.
From the time of the New Testament to today, Christians have drawn upon the language of warfare, battle, weaponry, soldiering, and victory to describe salvation and the Christian life. “Put on the full armor of God,” says Paul. And he encourages us to “fight the good fight.” This is because one way to explain what happened in Christ’s death and resurrection is so say that Jesus triumphed over sin, the death, and the devil. Defeated them. Won a cosmic spiritual war. On the cross, Jesus emptied the darkest and most broken manifestations of humanity of their power. He suffered betrayal, abandonment, injustice, denial, and pain. He exposed the collusion of political and religious power. He despaired at God’s apparent absence. And yet he was kept by God on the other side of death, and resurrected into a fullness of life that is greater than death. He canceled the power of sin through forgiveness; he filled the nothingness of death with his life; he duped the devil. He emptied hell of its prisoners. Warrior, liberator – Jesus overcame it all.
Which leads to one of the stranger dimensions of Christian faith. We believe that Jesus has already reconciled all things to God. He has already made peace, defeated death, forgiven sin. Yet we pray every day, “Deliver us from evil.” The kingdom is already and not yet; darkness has been overcome, but shadows still linger. As the Apostle Peter writes in his first epistle, “Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary, the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith…” (1 Peter 5:8-9a). We are like Ja’el in this respect: we didn’t fight the Lord’s battle, he fought it for us on the cross and in the tomb. Yet Satan – just like Sisera – is in retreat, looking for a foothold.
We must experience the triumph of God in our intimate spheres – heart, home, and neighborhood – to know it as a present reality.
“The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus taught (Luke 17:21). His complete victory over what is false and oppressive exists for us potentially. And it really exists. But believing in what he’s done and opening our lives to experience his victory takes work, and that work is at the heart of our baptismal call. Paul writes in Romans, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom. 6:8-9). He says in Colossians, “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly…” (Col. 3:5). Jesus himself once said that if one of our hands causes us to sin, we ought to cut it off, or if it be one of our eyes, to pluck it out (Matt. 5:29-30).
This vigilance against the echoes of evil has been called by many names in the long history of Christianity: repentance, fasting, testing the spirits, discernment, exorcism, death to self, ego-death, asceticism, to name a few. No matter how it manifests, it is part of the great journey of sanctification, our being made ever more perfect in love.
Here are the questions that Ja’el’s story poses to us:
First, what am I entertaining in my tent that needs to be gotten rid of? Consider all the things that Christ has already defeated – pride, greed, lust, violence, apathy, hatred, envy, despair. Are any of them showing up on your stoop, asking for a safe niche to rest and be nourished back to strength. Grab your hammer.
Second, what great battle out there has come into my space demanding my response? Consider all the battles that feel too big or distant for us to fully fathom how our engagement with them could possibly matter or take shape. Racism, environmental destruction, worker exploitation, cultural addiction to violence, homophobia, you name it. It’s easy to feel too small or overwhelmed to do anything about those battles. But when they come to your home, when they affect you or your loved ones, suddenly a respond is necessary. And doing nothing is an unfortunate response. So, grab your hammer.
And the final question: what would keep us from acting? Consider what boxes and boundaries you might need to transgress if you are going to be decisive against sin and evil while you have the chance. Our hindrance to action usually comes from some story we’ve created about who we are supposed to be or how we want other people to see us. These false stories must also die, though it is difficult to face the ego, the false self, head on in the moment. Brute strength won’t do. Like Ja’el, notice it’s there, lull it to sleep, and grab your hammer.
What can we learn about call from Ja’el, most blessed of tent-dwelling women?
She is not explicitly called by God. God never speaks to her. She never speaks to God. She is not one of the chosen people, the Israelites. She’s not, like Deborah, a spirit-filled judge. She’s a marginal character on the fringes of sacred history. Nevertheless, she knew when the battle between good and evil had arrived in her space. She inspires us to vigilance and courage when it comes to keeping a pure heart and a pure home. Whenever we battle what is false in us or in front of us, we can summon the memory of Ja’el. We can channel her boldness, rashness, and ingenuity, and drive the peg of our faith through Sisera.
This warrior woman is in our cloud of witnesses. She is there beside us when it’s time decide whose company we’ll keep.
Amen.