{"id":55217,"date":"2019-05-09T12:50:20","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T09:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=55217"},"modified":"2022-12-04T12:42:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T10:42:29","slug":"stealth-or-strength-story-and-song-show-us-two-yaels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/stealth-or-strength-story-and-song-show-us-two-yaels\/","title":{"rendered":"Stealth Or Strength? Story And Song Show Us Two Yaels"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[622,876,363,574,600],"acf":{"old_id":"55217","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":52873,"related_cahpter":"216","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"But neither present her as demure seductress","content":"

When the warrior comes to her tent, Yael treats him with dignity. Then, as he stands there, Yael grabs the tools she has on hand and fells him, smashing his skull and piercing it. The more familiar story portrays a sleeping Sisera, but in the Song, he is erect, and sinks to his knees and falls prone as she stands over him.<\/span><\/p>\n

The song emphasizes that he lay <\/span>between her legs<\/span><\/em>. Midrash and some modern scholars see sexual allusion here, envisioning a scene in which Yael disarms Sisera through sexual enticement, or even says a midrash, through exhausting him sexually, once for each “between her legs.” But the image of Sisera falling between Yael’s legs is not a sexual allusion. It is rather a savage grotesquery of childbirth. Sisera doesn’t find sexual release and <\/span>petit mort<\/span><\/em> (“little death”) of orgasm; he finds total death\u2026 He is delivered to death, and in so doing Yael helped deliver Israel to life. Just as the “motherhood” of Deborah involved directing battle, this savage “motherhood” of Yael “rebirths” Sisera to his death\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Song remembers Yael of Strength; the story Yael of Stealth. Neither presents a Yael of Seduction. This is left to later readers, beginning with the Greco-Roman period, when many of the biblical stories about women were eroticized. The figure of Yael is often merged with a much later heroine whose story is presented in the Apocryphal book of Judith. Judith’s story, written in the Graeco-Roman period, is set at the time of the Assyrian invasion of Israel. The Assyrian general Holofernes besieged Bethulia (Bethel), called for surrender, and announced his intention to mutilate the men of the city\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to save Israel, Judith clothes herself sumptuously, and has her hair dressed in splendid Hellenistic fashion. The result is that she is so stunningly beautiful that she is able to walk past the guards\u2026 and reach Holofernes. Holofernes drinks more than he ever has before and falls drunk at her feet. She takes his sword, cuts off his head, puts his head in the bag she brought with her and goes back to the city. The rest of the book is a paean of praise that makes allusion to all the old heroes of Israel, including Yael.<\/span><\/p>\n

The similarities between Yael and Judith are obvious: both are domestic women who kill the enemy general. But the differences are equally striking. The story portrays Judith in erotic terms and describes both her beauty and the male reaction to it. There is no doubt that her beauty is the weapon by which Judith saves Israel. Yael’s appearance, by contrast, is never described, nor does Sisera react to her as anything but a source of help. The difference between Yael and Judith is precisely the difference between biblical ideas and the ideas that came into Israel from the Greek world. In classical biblical works, the beauty of women is never their weapon. It can make them vulnerable to male desires, as with Sarah and Bathsheba, but it does not help them manipulate such desires.<\/span><\/p>\n

From: Tikva Freymer-Kensky, “Warriors of Weapon and Word: Deborah and Yael,” in <\/span>Reading the Women of the Bible<\/span><\/em>, <\/span><\/i>Schocken: 2002, pp. 45-57.<\/span><\/p>\n

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