Sisera

Scripture: Judges 4:1–22; 5:19–31; Psalm 83:9

The Canaanite oppression (Judges 4:1–3), After Ehud died, the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, and YHWH sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. Sisera's military advantage was overwhelming: nine hundred iron chariots, the iron-age equivalent of tanks in a period when Israel had none, and he had oppressed Israel cruelly for twenty years (4:3). The nine hundred iron chariots appear in the text to make clear what Barak's forces were walking toward.

Deborah's instruction and Barak's condition (Judges 4:4–9), Deborah, the prophetess and judge of Israel, sent for Barak son of Abinoam and gave him YHWH's command: take ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulun to Mount Tabor. YHWH would draw Sisera to the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his army and give him into Barak's hand. Barak answered: "If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go" (4:8). Deborah agreed to go, but gave him the prophetic consequence: "The road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for YHWH will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." The glory of the victory would not go to the military commander; it would go to a woman.

The battle at the Kishon (Judges 4:12–16), Sisera was told that Barak had gone up to Mount Tabor. He gathered all nine hundred iron chariots and all his troops to the Wadi Kishon. Deborah told Barak: "Up! For this is the day in which YHWH has given Sisera into your hand. Does not YHWH go out before you?" (4:14). Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men behind him. The text of chapter 5 (Deborah's Song) fills in what the narrative prose omits: "From heaven the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera. The river Kishon swept them away, the ancient river, the river Kishon" (5:20–21). The Kishon flooded. The iron chariots that were Sisera's military advantage became useless in the mud and the rushing water. "And YHWH routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot" (4:15). The general abandoned his chariot, the weapon that made him invincible, and ran.

Jael's tent (Judges 4:17–22), Sisera fled to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. There was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the house of Heber. He came to the tent she ran out to meet him: "Turn aside, my lord; turn aside to me; do not be afraid" (4:18). He entered. She covered him with a rug. He asked for water; she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. He said: "Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, 'Is anyone here?' say, 'No'" (4:20). He was hiding. He fell asleep. "But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died" (4:21). Barak came, pursuing Sisera. Jael went out to meet him: "Come, and I will show you the man you are seeking." He entered, and there was Sisera, dead, with the tent peg in his temple (4:22).

Deborah's song (Judges 5:19–31), The ancient poem in Judges 5 is one of the oldest texts in the Hebrew Bible. It describes the battle as a cosmic event ("the stars fought"), narrates the disaster at the Kishon in elevated poetic language, and then gives a devastating final scene: "The mother of Sisera peered through the window and wailed through the lattice: 'Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?'" (5:28). She and her attendants reassure themselves: he is dividing the spoil, a girl or two for every man. The poem lets that reassurance hang in the air, the mother waiting, inventing excuses for the delay, and then closes: "So may all your enemies perish, O YHWH! But your friends be like the sun as he rises in his might" (5:31). Sisera does not come home.

Psalm 83:9, "Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon." Sisera becomes the byword for a defeated enemy in the psalmic tradition.

Sisera is the military commander whose overwhelming advantage, nine hundred iron chariots, was nullified by a flooded river, a fleeing general, and a woman with a tent peg. Deborah's prophecy was precise: the glory of the victory would go to a woman. Judges 5 ends with his mother waiting at the window and inventing explanations for why the chariot is late. The Sanctum holds Sisera as the instance in which YHWH's stated method of defeating his enemies was unconventional: not a general, not a thousand men, but a flooded wadi and a tent peg. And a woman.