Judges 5:26

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

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.

Her hand, i.e. her left hand, as appears from the nature of the thing; and from the right hand, which is opposed to it. Smote off, or, struck through, as the LXX. and Syriac render it; or brake, as the Chaldee hath it. When she had pierced, Heb. and she pierced; or, and the nail pierced.

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.Ver. 26. She smote off his head.] Sept., She bored through, or pierced his head; as Ulysses perforated Polyphemus’ s eye.

(26) Nail. . . . workmen’s hammer.—See on Judges 4:21. Smote.—Hammered.Smote off his head.—Rather, shattered his head. The Hebrew is onomatopoetic, i.e., the sound echoes the sense, recalling the smashing and crashing blows of the hammer. The repetition of these terrible alliterative verbs, “hammered,” “shattered,” “battered,” “transfixed,” the signs that the imagination of the prophetess seems to revel in the description, have been ascribed to “the delight of a satisfied thirst for revenge.” This is hardly a right view of her character. It must be remembered that the feelings of modern times are far more refined and complex than those of previous ages. The sense of tenderness, the quickness of compassion, the value set on human life, are immeasurably increased, and with them the power of realising by universal sympathy the position and sufferings of others. In ancient days no close moral analysis was applied to acts of which the general tendency was approved as right and beneficial. Caesar was not inherently a cruel man, yet he records without a shudder the massacre and misery of multitudes of Gaulish men, women, and children at Alesia; and he suffered the brave Vercingetorix to be led away from his triumph, to be strangled in the Tullianum, without the slightest qualm of pity. Deborah, in the spirit of her day, seems to regard with pitiless exultation the wild throes of Sisera’s death, and the agonising frustration of his mother’s hopes. only because she views those events in the single aspect of the deliverance of Israel. The tenderness of the Mother of Israel was absorbed in the thought of her own long-afflicted, but now rescued, race. “She was a mother in Israel, and with the vehemency of a mother’s and a patriot’s love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips on the people that had jeopardised their lives unto the death against the oppressors, and the bitterness awakened and borne aloft by the same love she precipitates in curses on the selfish and cowardly recreants who came not to the help of the Lord against the unjust” (Coleridge); and we may add, on all connected with the cruel oppressor.

Verse 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.

26. 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, worn out with toil and misery, Job 3:20; Job 20:22; the meaning labourer is only found in Proverbs 16:26 (late); moreover hammer (a doubtful form, and a different word from mallet in Judges 4:21) can hardly be another name for nail or tent-peg. What is meant by this synonym we do not know; but it is clear that Jael used one weapon, not two. The account in Judges 4:21 gives a different version of the tradition. Translate the last two lines: And she hammered Sisera, shattered his head, And crushed and clave his temples. The word rendered clave might perhaps mean caused to pass away, made to vanish; properly it = pass on, or through, here apparently in the sense of piercing, cf. Job 20:24. The description is that of a heavy, crushing blow.

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