Judges 5:24-27 Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.… And whose lips are they which pronounce this blessing? Indeed, it is Deborah the prophetess who sings this song; it is Deborah, by whom God spake, who gives utterance to this strain. It is clear that, revolting as her action appears at first view, there must be a way of looking at it in which it deserves all our sympathy and applause. I. First, we would observe THAT HUMAN ACTIONS ARE, IN GOD'S HOLY WORD, SPOKEN OF AS GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS, ALTHOUGH AT THE SAME TIME IT IS CERTAIN THAT THE BEST DEEDS OF THE BEST MEN ARE ALLOYED WITH EVIL. It would not, therefore, be out of harmony with the tenor of the inspired volume, that Jael should be called blessed for her deed, that her deed should meet with commendation from the prophetess, without it being thereby implied that she was quite undeserving blame. If her act contained some elements of good, amidst much of evil, it might, if the good preponderated, be esteemed and proclaimed as blessed. To this general observation we would add another, namely, that under the Jewish dispensation there was a lower standard of religious perfection than under the Christian. Hence it is that you find the most renowned characters of the Old Testament polluted with sins from which men of ordinary morality among ourselves would recoil. So that Jael's deed is to be judged, not by itself in the abstract, still less by the light of the gospel, but in reference to the code under which she lived, in reference to the knowledge of the Divine will then published among men; and so judged, it is not requisite that it should have been free from all blame in order to obtain praise. II. BUT WHAT WERE THE ELEMENTS OF GOOD IN THIS FAMOUS ACT OF THE KENITE WOMAN? Now we must here remind you of the real character of the Israelitish warfare. It is of course true that always the sword is God's weapon, as much as the famine or the pestilence. War is the scourge wherewith the Eternal lashes the nations when they wax proud against Him. But the difference between the case of the Israelites and every other conquering race is this, that the Israelites knew their mission, and went forth to execute it at God's bidding. And now, again, let us apply these principles to the case of Jael. The people of the Lord were in arms against the enemies of the Lord. We do not know whether Jael was a daughter of Israel; if not, her faith, as we shall see, is more remarkable. She had heard of the violence of the Canaanite for twenty years; she had heard that Deborah, in whom dwelt the spirit of prophecy, had aroused the men of Israel against Sisera. To her mind it was not a mere struggle of hostile nations for liberty and power. To her it was the battle of the Lord of hosts against the heathen who refused to worship Him; it was as the mustering of the armies of heaven against the armies of hell. We are aware that it is still open to you to object, that even if the killing Sisera can be justified, the craft which beguiled him must be reprehensible. In answer to this, we remind you of the observations wherewith we started, namely, that we need not prove Jael's act to be free from all defect, we are only concerned to show that it had in it many elements of good; and now we set it forth as an act evidencing strong faith in the God of Israel (faith still more marvellous if the Kenite's wife was not a daughter of Israel), as prompted by love for Him, and zeal for His cause. Such love and such zeal, even when evinced by an action not perfectly faultless, might well earn praise. But we go further. It may be doubted how far the treachery of the act, as it appears, was sinful. Is it wrong to use craft against Satan? May we resist the devil only by open force? May we not use prudence and tact and wiliness in avoiding temptation or in abating its force? III. THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE ISRAELITES IS TYPICAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE REDEMPTION OF MANKIND BY JESUS CHRIST. The delivery of the Jews from their enemies, often as it occurs, is symbolical of the greater deliverance of all people from the thraldom of Satan. And whilst the general history is thus broadly significant, the distinct parts of that history lead us almost irresistibly to the remembrance of particular features in the history of Christ's salvation. (Bp. Woodford.) Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. |
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