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4) The seed of the woman nailing evil
The scriptures do occasionally give us incidents as cameos of incredible detail. However, in this case, we are told three times that Jael nailed Sisera through the head. In the logic of the record, the death of Sisera by the hand of a woman was important, as it was prophesied by Deborah. However, to repeat three times the detail of the way it was achieved, indicates Yahweh wants us to understand that the manner of the death was significant.
Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him, Come, and I will shew thee the man whom thou seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples. (Judges 4:21-22 KJV)
Jael must have been a heavy handed woman. Of all the body parts the head is the most protected. Why didn't she pierce him through the heart? There is not much protection there and under the ribs is a well known method of killing a person. It also would be a more female thing to do. However she decided to use a hammer as a workman would, or as a carpenter does, and she nailed the head with such force she fastened the nail into the ground. The twice mentioned occurrence may be passed as the record of a curio, an account of a very strong woman. However, it re-occurs in Deborah and Barak's prophetic song of victory. This song of victory speaks of Yahweh fighting in the day of battle, and points forward to a latter day battle.
LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.(Judges 5:4)
The conclusion of the song speaks of all the enemies of Yahweh perishing. In this context Deborah and Barak expand on the manner of Sisera's death in a very striking and significant manner.
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. (Judges 5:26)
The language makes us think of Genesis where the seed of the woman is to bruise the head of the serpent. Here we have a picture, or illustration, of a woman smiting the head of the enemy of Yahweh. The language is suggestive, for the Hebrew word for 'temples' here is 'ra' and means 'bad' or 'evil'. Literally the passage says she crushed, smashed, destroyed and pierced through his evil. A woman, the seed of a woman, as workman, a carpenter, destroys evil by nailing it through to crush and destroy it. This is an illustration of the work of Yeshua. This is an instance of the layering of the pattern of illustrations in the scriptures, where the detail supports the pattern of the whole.
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