This is a story of gender in the Hebrew bible. The benchmarks of gender stereotypes, as well as gender politics and situations when gender rears its ugly head are found in this Judges story. More than a story of gender, this is a statement on gender.

Sisera, a Canaanite commander, is the quintessential male warrior. His chariots had been his pride and confidence. As a warrior would experience, Sisera was defeated. He escapes the battlefield in order to survive. The aspects of defeat and escaping in defeat are forebodings on what the masculine gender will eventually suffer in the hands of the feminine gender. This ‘weakness’ and ‘loss of power’ in the character and fate of the male portends the ultimate ‘loss of power’ that will befall this male in the hands of a female.

After Sisera escapes, a woman named Jael offers him shelter and even gives him milk. She offers him comfort and nourishment. These are nurturing characteristics that are attributed to the feminine gender. Jael, in this case, is also the quintessential female.

Canaan has been experiencing massive defeat, and the commanding general of King Jabin’s army is on the run. This scenario of battlefield becomes a stage for the battle that is inherent in gender relations. On this stage that has been set to make the gender statement, the story of Jael is the story of a strong female defeating a weaker male.

Jael proceeds to kill Sisera by driving a peg into his temple with the use of a mallet. He dies very soon after. Jael is one of the very few women in the Hebrew Bible that commits physical violence. The peg being driven into the head is a phallic symbol that adds another layer of insight in this gender story. According to Susan Niditch in “Eroticism and Death in the Tale of Jael,” the biblical story of Jael is replete with sexual language and imagery. An example of this erotic imagery is that of Sisera’s death throes between Jael’s legs in Judges 5.

Niditch further adds that the story of Jael is also about the reversal of roles in rape. If Sisera is known as the male aggressor with females, in particular, the role of aggressor is overturned and taken from him this time. The potential rape victim kills her potential rapist.

Jael also overturns the gender stereotype of ‘object of sexual desire.’ This time, Jael who is a female, becomes the aggressor – making it a reversal of gender roles. The gender statement is further stressed with the woman Jael inviting a warrior rapist, and that this woman spoils a spoiler of women. A woman conquers a man and snuffs the life out of him. A woman uses the tactic of a man to eliminate a man.

Gender has always been a battleground between man and woman. In this gender story, the woman defeats the man in the battle, in much the same physically violent way that a man would fashion the manner by which he would defeat and conquer someone – by way of killing. On the other hand, in this microcosm of a gender battlefield, the woman is not the victim this time. This is a statement that point to the fact that the female need not always be the victim who is extinguished, vanquished, annihilated, disadvantaged, or marginalized.

The keen survival instinct that is also associated with males and the masculine gender are reversed in this story. This time, a woman is the one that exhibits this keen sense. Jael uses her femininity that attracted the typical masculine being. She eventually deploys this same femininity, though in a fiendish way.

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