The Tent Peg

Sisera fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. There was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and Heber’s household. That peace explains why the defeated commander came here, away from his ruined army. The tent belonged to a household he had reason to approach.

Jael went out to greet him: “Come in, my lord. Come in with me. Do not be afraid.” Sisera entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket. The man who had summoned nine hundred chariots was now beneath a covering in someone else’s home.

He asked her for a drink. “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” Jael opened a container of milk and gave him some. Then she covered him again, repeating the act with which she had first received him.

Sisera gave her an instruction for the entrance. “Stand at the entrance to the tent,” he said, “and if anyone comes and asks you, ‘Is there a man here?’ say, ‘No.’” He wanted her to receive whoever came looking and conceal his presence. Having left his chariot behind, he was asking a woman to keep his hiding place secret.

The account records his words and then his sleep. Exhaustion overcame him, and he lay sleeping beneath the covering. It gives no answer from Jael to the instruction about the entrance. Her next action came while the man she had admitted could no longer see what she was doing.

Jael took a tent peg and a hammer and went silently to Sisera. She drove the peg through his temple and into the ground, and he died. The account names the objects, the act, and his death. It does not give her a speech explaining herself.

The peace between Heber’s household and Jabin had brought Sisera to this tent. Jael had met him outside, invited him in, covered him, and answered his thirst. Those details remain beside what she did while he slept. The telling does not remove any of them or supply the thoughts that joined one action to the next.

Then Barak arrived in pursuit of Sisera. Jael went out to greet him, just as she had gone out to meet the commander. “Come, and I will show you the man you are seeking.” This time the invitation brought the pursuer through the entrance.

Barak went in with her. Sisera lay dead, with the tent peg through his temple, and the search ended where Jael led him. Deborah had said that the LORD would sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Barak had pursued the commander, but Jael was the one who showed him where he lay.

The account then turns from the tent to the king whose army Sisera had commanded. It says that on that day God subdued Jabin king of Canaan before the Israelites. Their hand grew stronger and stronger against him until they destroyed him. The defeat at the Kishon was followed by the end of his rule over them.

Twenty years of oppression had led to a cry, a summons, and a descent from a mountain. Now the commander was dead and his king’s power was being broken. The account had told what happened at the river and inside the tent. Deborah and Barak were about to give that day a voice.