Jaël

This article deals with the biblical person Jaël, Jaël is also the pseudonym of the singer Jaël Malli . For an Israeli special unit see Jael .

Jaël or Yael ( Hebrew יָעֵל, "Capricorn") is a biblical figure.

Biblical figure

Jaël and Sisara (1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi

The biblical narrative in the Book of Judges tells of Jaël, the wife of the Kenite Heber ( Ri 4,11  EU ): According to Ri 4,17–24  EU she killed an enemy of the people of Israel, the Canaanite general Sisera from Hazor . After a lost battle against the Israelite Barak and the judge Debora, he fled to Heber's tent. There Jaël covered him with a rug (supposedly to hide him) and then drove a tent peg through his temple with a blacksmith's hammer .

The prophet Deborah had foretold the deed, and she praises Jaël in the song of Deborah . It is considered to be one of the oldest surviving seals in the Old Testament . In the song Jaël is seen as a heroine for the people of Israel ( Judges 5,24–31  EU ). Like Mary, the mother of Jesus , she receives a Magnificat (hymn of praise): “ Praise be to Jaël among women ” (verse 24). By her deed, Jaël brought forty years of peace to the people of Israel; she loved the Lord of Israel and is compared to the rising sun and its power (v. 31).

Strictly speaking, however, the act of the Jaël was a betrayal and a breach of hospitality , because her husband Heber had already been at peace with Jabin , the Canaanite king of Hazor.

The figure of Jaël also appears in pictorial representations of the Nine Good Heroines , she is a representative of Judaism in this iconographic series. This also corresponds to the quoted Talmud passage, where the praise is interpreted “among (by or in front of) all women in the tent, be she praised”, with “the women in the tent” meaning the archwives Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah.

Out of 24 translators, 18 note that Jael was a Kenite. This contradicts not only the mentioned Talmudic passage, but above all verse Ri 5.6, which speaks of Canaanite highwaymen, whom Jael would not have had to fear before her marriage to Heber if she had already been a Kenite woman.

See also

• Woman (old testament)

Web links

Commons : Jael and Sisera  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Heinz-Dieter Neef:  Jael. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Article Jaël. In: Lexicon of the Bible. R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1998.