- verses
- 6
- first named
- Judges 4:17
- last named
- Judges 5:26
- period
- before Israel's Monarchy
- role
- Woman
Description
Who was Jael?
Jael was the wife of Heber the Kenite, an ally of the Israelites during the time of the judges. She is best known for her role in the defeat of Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army under King Jabin of Hazor (Jdg.4.2).
After the Israelite victory over the Canaanites led by Deborah and Barak, Sisera fled on foot and sought refuge in Jael's tent (Jdg.4.17). Jael welcomed him, offering him milk and a place to rest. Sisera, exhausted from the battle, fell asleep in her tent (Jdg.4.18-19).
While Sisera slept, Jael took a tent peg and a hammer, and drove the peg through his temple, killing him (Jdg.4.21). When Barak came in pursuit of Sisera, Jael showed him the dead commander, thus confirming the Israelite victory (Jdg.4.22).
Jael's actions are also celebrated in the Song of Deborah (Jdg.5), where she is praised as "most blessed of women" for her bravery and decisive role in the defeat of the Canaanites (Jdg.5.24-27).
Jael's story highlights the significant role that women played in the history of Israel, as well as the importance of cunning and courage in the face of enemy threats. Her actions, though violent, are portrayed as an act of loyalty to the Israelites and a means of bringing about God's deliverance for His people.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Partner of
Stands in the same events as
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Jael is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
6 verses across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Judges (6).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 6, across 1 book.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources