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Yael’s story is recounted in Judges 4 and in the poetic Song of Deborah in Judges 5. Many scholars have argued, based on its linguistic features, that the poetic account is earlier than the prose version, and in fact that the Song of Deborah may be one of the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible. However, concrete dating has proven slippery. Scholars have debated the relationship between the prose account and the poem, with some arguing to treat them as two separate traditions, perhaps one an elaboration on or rewriting of the other, or perhaps both based on earlier oral traditions. An alternative analytical strategy argues for reading the chapters as they are presented: as a single story, told in two different genres, agnostic as to which came first or what their common source may have been. Each text contains details and emphasis that the other lacks, and for more than 2,000 years they have been read together.

In the prose account, Deborah first sends Barak to fight the Canaanites, and, when he protests that he will not go unless she goes too, she agrees to accompany him. She prophesies that the victory would not be a glory for him, for Sisera would fall “by the hand of a woman” (4:9); that woman will be Yael. This pronouncement is meant in part to shame Barak for his apparent cowardice: because he will not readily “man up,” a woman will get the credit for taking down the enemy general.

When the battle goes disastrously for Sisera and his troops, rather than die with his men on the battlefield, Sisera flees and goes to Yael’s tent, for there is “peace” between King Jabin and Yael’s husband, Heber the Kenite (4:17). When Sisera approaches her tent, Yael goes out to greet him, invites him in, covers him with a blanket or rug (the word used here appears nowhere else in the Bible, so its meaning is uncertain), and, at his request for a little water, gives him milk. Yael is a surrogate mother for Sisera, promising him that no harm will come to him, giving him milk, and tucking him in. Some have suggested fancifully that Yael covers Sisera with her body—that is, she has intercourse with him—but this is unsupported by the text. However, even if we do not envision actual sex between the characters, Judges 4 and 5 are suffused with sexual overtones—and maternal ones. Yael’s words to Sisera (“Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me” [4:18]), are suggestive, especially as they position her to be alone in her tent with a man. Her use of the address “my lord” may also be a bit of verbal foreplay; this address is often used in the Bible by women towards men with whom they have or will have a sexual relationship (cf. 1 Sam 25, Ruth 2:13, 1 Kgs 1).

Once inside the tent, Sisera tells Yael to stand at the entrance and respond negatively to whoever asks whether anyone is inside (4:18–20). The text reads: “He said to her, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if it happens that any man comes and asks you, ‘Is there a man here?’ say, ‘None.’” In a sense, there is no man, only a little boy, cared for by his stand-in mother. As he lies asleep, exhausted from the battle, Yael takes a tent peg and drives it through his forehead into the ground. She then shows his dead body to Barak, who has come in pursuit of the enemy general (4:21–22). Yael has accomplished what Barak could not, and Sisera has indeed been delivered into the hand of a woman.

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