From an Angel to a Lethal Monster: Transformation and Subversion in the Story of Biblical Yael

Two Mythical Feminine Poles in the Patriarchal Literature

In their classic book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), Gilbert and Gubar portray the creative woman, as imprisoned in mythical masks put on her face by the patriarch—the person of authority holding the pen. These masks represent two poles of eternal feminine types that fulfill the androcentric need. This dichotomous division enhances the male ownership of women and femininity.

The one eternal type described by the researchers is the “angel”—the pure, humble, gentle, passive woman, the enveloping, submissive, docile, caring, healing, nurturing, devoted mother, who provides advice and comfort to others, and who cares first and foremost, for her household members. The image of the angel, or more precisely, “the angel in the house,” is based on Woolf’s (2004) observation, that the woman is identified with the domestic-family sphere, which she is expected to serve. As the angel in the house, her submissiveness and passiveness allow the man to feel superior and of value. The woman, as an angel, reflects for the man his double and enlarged image, which means that she serves as a “pleasing looking glass” (Woolf, 2004: 45). It is her consent to be and exist as reduced and lessened that enables him to become stronger. Gilbert and Gubar continue this analysis of the image of the woman as an angel, claiming that it reflects an ideal of purity and selfless observation, to the extent that she lacks selfhood. A woman-angel actually relinquishes her selfhood when she agrees to subsist with no significant action in the world. She lives without a story of her own, and her sole role is to support his (the man’s) story—his desires and aspirations. All she wishes is to please the man, and her virtues depend on the extent of her submission to his will. The woman-angel is enclosed in the temple of her home, and she functions as the safe haven, city of refuge, and as the “horns of the altar” for the man, who flees to her warm bosom, escaping from the blood and sweat that accompany the life of significant action in the world.

The other eternal type is the “monster” or the witch. The woman-monster is portrayed as evil and destructive and is characterized by uncompromising personal autonomy. She is opinionated, demands power and control, places her desires and wishes in first priority, and maneuvers her surroundings in order to fulfill her needs and objectives. She has powerful and dangerous talents. Her character refuses to remain in the place designated by the patriarchal text, and she writes her own text, not renouncing her own story.

Going back to Woolf’s depiction of the angel of the house, then, the monster is the woman, who refuses to be another pleasing looking glass for the man. She no longer allows her self-reduction for his intensification. “For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks,” Woolf (2004: 46) writes. The very refusal of the woman to erase her selfhood is a threat to the man’s self-esteem and status, and she therefore, becomes the symbol of all evil and diabolical.

The two images—the angel and the monster—are indeed opposing and even polarized, but in fact, as shown by Gilbert and Gubar, they are also interrelated. The woman-angel contains an intrinsic paradox—she is so pure and chaste that she cannot be tangible and substantial. She is distanced from any reality or selfhood. She is so self-alienated that the power of selfhood within her cannot remain silent any longer, if she wants to stay alive. Within the frail selfless woman, the hidden desire for power awakens, and when it succeeds in permeating and erupting, it also ignites a deadly potential against those who try to limit her steps and block her expressions. The woman imprisoned inside the figure of the angel may, therefore, be filled with a yearning to escape. She has the dangerous (for the patriarch) capability to erupt in a rising fury.

The two images of the woman described by the researchers contain a paralyzing message in the patriarchal world—either the woman lives a life of silence and submission (the angel), or she must be silenced and defeated (the monster). That is to say, either the woman exists as a selfless being, of her own so-called free will and choice, or she will be subjected to paralyzing and oppressive practices that will force her to give up on herself. This is the deadly glass coffin in which women are trapped in the patriarchal texts, as they do not allow feminine subjectivity to fulfill itself as it is, with all its complexity and full humanity. Thus, her vision, her self-development and choices are distorted. In order to release herself from this coffin, the woman is required to shed the dead and false self. She must identify the true self on her own, beyond all the transcriptions and patterns that were made for her, and she must dare to embrace practices of freedom, ¹ sovereignty, and authority.

Yael—Between an Angel and a Monster

Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him: “Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not.” And he turned in unto her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. And he said unto her: “Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty.” And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him. (Judg. 4.17–19) ²

If we examine the character of Yael in the biblical story (Judg. 4) and in the song of Deborah (Judg. 5), which adds more details about Yael’s actions with Sisera, then we can clearly see how at the beginning of the story Yael appears as the typical “woman-angel” character. She is maternal and devoted, compassionate, giving, caring, and enveloping. Freema Gottlieb (1981) indicates that Yael is defined and characterized by the text as a housewife—one that dwells in her tent. In chapter 4, she is described as moving around her tent and working in it, and in chapter 5, Deborah describes her as the woman of the tent, when she sings—“above women in the tent shall she be blessed” (5.24). Yael, therefore, corresponds to the image of “angel of the house,” as dubbed by Woolf, and as described by Gilbert and Gubar. She is described as a housewife, who comes out of her tent to greet the fleeing warlord and offer him shelter and cover. She functions like the typical angel figure, as a kind, gracious, and merciful hostess. She offers the character of the male hero the opportunity to hold on to her and to the warm home she offers, as the “horns of the altar”—a safe and comforting refuge from the results of his dramatic and bloody activity on the battlefield.

Until this point, Yael is the woman, who has no story of her own, but works for his (man’s) story and supports his action. In addition, as a typical mother-angel, she is nourishing, soft, and enveloping, and offers Sisera a warm blanket and comforting milk, as a mother offers and provides to her nursing baby.

From this point, there is ambiguity in the text regarding what transpired between Yael and Sisera. In the account of events in chapter 4, there is no hint of a sexual incident, but in the Song of Deborah, in chapter 5, a clear hint is presented when Deborah sings, “At her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay; at her feet he sunk, he fell; where he sunk, there he fell down dead” (5.27). In the Hebrew version, it explicitly says that he fell between her legs. In other words, Deborah clearly implies a sexual encounter. In light of this statement, the researchers express conflicting views regarding the existence of sexual intercourse between Yael and Sisera. Stocker (1998) explicitly argues that Sisera raped Yael, but on the contrary, Mieke Bal (1988) believes that she slept with him voluntarily, and was not raped. Bal explains that Yael probably had sexual relations with Sisera, so that she could weaken and overpower him later. Yael Shemesh (2006), on the contrary, believes that there is no basis for assuming that there was sexual intercourse between Yael and Sisera. She argues that the erotic clues are designed to ridicule the enemy’s expectations and to accentuate its failure and defeat. Shemesh refers to the maternal clues at the beginning of Yael’s story as nullifying the assumption of sexual relations between her and Sisera. She argues that the signs that were interpreted as sexual are in fact an extension of the maternal imagery, and the Hebrew expression “between her legs” or “at her feet he sunk,” which Deborah uses in her song, actually links to the circumstances in which a baby is born between his mother’s legs. In the situation in question, Sisera, who relies on Yael’s help as a protective mother figure while being helpless and weak as a baby born between his mother’s legs, suddenly finds himself attacked by her.

Nevertheless, in relating to Deborah’s problematic statements, Shemesh (2006) regards the story of Judith, which was not included in the canonical tradition, as a purifying and amending mirror story to the story of Yael. In the book “Judith,” the heroine is described as performing a seduction scene for the enemy, whom she later slays, but the narrator stresses that she did not intend to have intercourse with the man and that no sexual contact took place. That is why it says in the Book of Judith (Grintz, 1980), “and the Lord hath not suffered me his handmaid to be defiled, but hath brought me back to you without pollution of sin” (13.20). In this way, the version in the Book of Judith clears the image of the most lethal heroine of all suspicion of sexual promiscuity, impurity, or disgrace.

Despite these arguments, I would like to point out additional clues and ambiguities in the text that reinforce the assumption that the scene between Yael and Sisera did include an encounter of a sexual nature. In addition to the very clear-cut insinuation of Yael’s female genitalia (“between her legs,” in the Hebrew version), Deborah also notes in her song, “where he sunk, there he fell down dead” (5.27). There are various interpretations of this description, such as Bal’s (1988) interpretation, who argues that the described actions actually portray a male orgasm. However, I would like to propose another interpretation of this verse, which relates to the structure of the verse as a description of cause and effect—Sisera sank between Yael’s legs, that is, he bent over her as he tried to rape her, and that is why he also fell and was overpowered by her. Deborah, according to this argument, describes Yael’s rape or attempted rape, and thus she reveals what the biblical narrator tried to obscure, erase, or conceal. Deborah’s song, therefore, does not let us repress or forget, and the allusions to the sexual-aggressive event resonate as opposed to, and in spite of the silencing attempts.

The assumption presented here that the Song of Deborah speaks of the silence of the act of rape, is based, among other things, on the fact that it speaks of the silence and marginality of other feminine experiences. Lederman-Daniely writes as follows in her study of the Song of Deborah:

Deborah places the mother in center stage, even when referring to the mother of the enemy. Her song relates to female experiences that are “blind spots” in the male definition of culture and experience. She speaks of the mother’s agonizing wait for her son to return from war and the practice of raping women as a customary cruel, violent and demeaning act of male conquest. Her description of the weeping mother of Sisera waiting for her son, and the explanations of her maids that he is late because he is busy in raping the wombs of the conquered women, were interpreted as a song of derision and mockery of the enemy, yet Dijk-Hemmes and Brenner (1996), have proposed a different approach. They argue that the hegemonic text should be read as a text with a double voice—one voice is an obedient voice that is consistent with the prevailing ideology, and the other is a subversive feminine voice, encrypted and hidden from the eye. The tone of mockery of Sisera, then, may be revealed as a harsh criticism not only of the man from the enemy army, but also of the male culture of war and rape as a whole. (Lederman-Daniely, 2017: 19–20)

The tone of derision, according to Lederman-Daniely, based on Van Dijk-Hemmes and Brenner (1996), functions as the obedient veil consistent with the male order, which enables the encryption of feminine criticism on a more concealed level. And so, if the Song of Deborah exposes silenced feminine experiences while expressing an encrypted criticism, one can also consider the verse “At her feet (between her legs) he sunk, he fell, he lay; at her feet he sunk, he fell; where he sunk, there he fell down dead” (5.27) as a description of an act of rape, which was blurred and obscured by the author of chapter 4. In addition, the very information that Deborah adds that Sisera was infamous for raping the wombs of the women he conquered, as this was his common practice, reinforces the hypothesis that as a serial rapist, he also tried to rape Yael.

Another clue to the act of rape may be found in verse 21 in chapter 4. In the description of the killing of Sisera, it reads,

Then Jael Heber’s wife took a tent-pin, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the pin into his temples, and it pierced through into the ground; for he was in a deep sleep; so he swooned and died.

When examining the actions described in the verse, one can detect a confused order of actions, which is not necessarily consistent or logical—If the first action performed was the insertion of the peg into his temple, how did Sisera fall asleep following it, and then he was tired, and only then did he die? The lack of logic in the order of actions may indicate an attempt to obscure and re-edit an ancient tradition that told a different story than the one told by the later edited tradition.

It is possible that the ancient tradition told of rape, and the description of “into the ground,” describes not Sisera’s temple, but Yael, who was thrown to the ground while being assaulted and raped. After this sexual activity, Sisera apparently got tired and fell asleep, and then, Yael retaliated with a parallel rape, by inserting the peg into his temple and killing him (see Ashman, 2003). This hypothesis, regarding the revision of ancient tradition, is reinforced by Zakovitch’s (1981) argumentation. Zakovitch, who examined this scene, argued that the differences between the Song of Deborah (chapter 5) and the description of the killing of Sisera in chapter 4 stem from the later processing of an ancient tradition. According to the older version, Sisera died in Yael’s bed, but in order to defend both Yael and God’s honor, the ancient tradition was clouded and re-edited as the known version that appears in chapter 4.

If we go back to the analysis of Yael’s character according to the eternal feminine images that were presented in the beginning, then at this stage of events, Sisera, as well as the readers, discover that Yael, who matched the image of the angel-woman lacking a “story of her own,” is not necessarily so. In her choice to act against Sisera, Yael transforms and suddenly becomes a key figure in the plot of heroism and salvation. She becomes a major factor that defeats the enemy’s warlord. In the face of the woman-reader, Yael removes the mask of the mother-angel and puts on the mask of the lethal monster.

This raises the question, what makes Yael turn from a compassionate woman into a cruel and violent warrior? It is possible that she planned beforehand to strike and defeat the warlord, that is, she was “a monster” from the outset, in both her personality and character. And indeed Sivan (2004: 156) argues that portraying Yael as a compassionate caregiver was in fact a misleading move, and from the very beginning, her behavior as a gracious hostess gives a clue regarding the adoption of masculine patterns of hospitality that do not conform to accepted “coy” feminine patterns. However, the character evidence provided by Deborah regarding Yael’s personality may negate this assumption. Deborah claims in her song that “Blessed above women shall Jael be, the wife of Heber the Kenite, above women in the tent shall she be blessed” (Judg. 5.24). Yael is blessed with all women as a woman in the tent—that is, as a woman in her home. So, according to Deborah’s testimony, Yael is a loyal housewife, and not (at least not from the outset) a warrior and a murderer. This is also evident from the weapon she used—she did not carry a knife or any other weapon, but used what was at her disposal, apparently in a spontaneous and unplanned moment—the tent peg.

What, then, created the revolutionary transformation in her character, from a woman-angel in her tent to a lethal and fearless murderer?

From a Subjugating and Domineering Trauma to Expressions of Courage and Subversion

In the beginning, if there ever was such a time, Demeter, the goddess of life, gave birth to four daughters, who were named Persephone, Psyche, Athena and Artemis. The world’s first children were unremarkably happy . . . A chariot thundered, then clattered into their midst. It was Hades, the middle aged god of death, come to rape Persephone . . . come to commit the first act of violence earth’s children had ever known.

What has become of Persephone and Psyche . . .? They became Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, whom Demeter, in the form of stepmother, sentenced to be trained and dumb. (Chesler, 2018: 47, 51)

As portrayed by the researcher and psychologist Phyllis Chesler, rape and sexual abuse in ancient mythology are mutilating, oppressive, offensive, subjugating, and weakening elements in women’s lives—both in ancient times and throughout the ages. Judith Herman (1994) in her constitutive book Trauma and Recovery, and Naomi Wolf (2012) in her revolutionary book on female sexuality, depict findings that attest to the devastation caused to the soul, spirit, and even the biology and neurology of the woman as a result of rape and sexual assault.

Long-term sexual oppression undermines the very being and existence of the woman, argue Dworkin (2003) and MacKinnon (2006):

when you are objectified sexually, your being is enforced by a social meaning that defines you as an object for sexual use, according to the uses that are required of you . . . The mechanism employed in sex is power, which is imbued with significance, since it is the means of death, and death is . . . the ultimate transformation of a person into object. (MacKinnon, 2006: 390)

Irigaray (2003) described the female body as an “object machine” and the bodies of women as “flying and raped . . .” (p. 65). The body exists as distorted and alienated to itself in the patriarchal system and framework. She argues,

You try to conform to an alien order. Exiled from yourself, you fuse with everything you meet . . . You become whatever touches you. In your eagerness to find yourself again, you move indefinitely far from yourself . . . passing from master to master, changing face, form, and language with each new power that dominates you. You/ we are sundered. (Irigaray, 2003: 71)

These descriptions spell out the extent to which the female body is vulnerable to the processes of weakening and subordination under the hegemonic system. However, the female body is also a source of defiant power, as well as the basis of the forces of formation, rehabilitation, and rebirth. Cixous (2006), for example, identified in the corporeal-feminine sphere rebellious and subversive forces that have the potential for healing and liberation from the toxic substances of oppression. She points to the instinctive and creative expression that stems from the feminine-corporeal self, as connecting the woman to boldness that is breaking boundaries, and guiding her toward the violation of the regimenting law of the father. In her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous describes a physical-mental dimension that opposes its taming and restraining and devotes itself to its rebellious rage. When this power of selfhood awakens within the woman, she will do anything and everything to liberate her “immense chained physical territories . . .” (Cixous, 2006: 139). From these wild dynamics, the woman will strive to regain and appropriate the right to speak, and to revive her text to life—that is, the physical-instinctive and creative voice that lives within her and flows from her.

Inspired by Cixous, Halpern (2012: 25–26) also argues that the female body manifests, in certain extreme situations, a rebellious, revolutionary, and defying display. She presents in her study, through an analysis of literary texts, the ways in which the body strives to express the possibilities of feminine identity that have been censored and silenced in the male culture. She illustrates how the body, which has been taught to be a passive material, manifests in certain situations, an active display of heresy and defiance, and breaches in various ways its policing and restraining mechanisms. In other words, the feminine body is not only text that was written and enforced by the system, but it also writes the rebellion against the system.

Lederman-Daniely (2014) has written along the same lines, when pointing out the need to relate to the physical dimension in a discussion about a liberating feminine theology:

the female organs are not only a pleasant cushion to cuddle up in, a breast to nourish from and a containing womb to grow in, but they are the symbols of the female authenticity and the female source. They are her power, the self that will not give up on itself, and the urge to rebel against anything that threatens to eliminate, erase, or silence her self. (p. 13)

In light of this, it can be construed that the feminine corporeal-mental experience, which is generally perceived as associated with the angelic-maternal aspects that envelop and nourish the other, is not necessarily merely that. From this experience, the monstrous power can also flow—a resistant force that fights for the might of its vitality, resources, and possibilities.

Another example of the way in which the body becomes an oppositional demonstration of struggle, defiance, and disobedience can be identified in the art of abjection, as described by Oryan (2013) in her book Blood of Your Body. She argues that the female body is enslaved to patriarchal values with passivity, cleanliness (obedience to a symbolic order), and idealism, but it is not only a means of expressing the values of the man but also functions as the liberating dwelling place of women (Oryan, 2013: 14). The art of abjection is characterized by the attentiveness of the women artists, to their inner self. Women appear in this art as turning their attention toward the interior of their bodies—toward the womb, blood, milk flowing from the breast or other gaping limbs. They are smeared with blood and hair, seated in a pile of bones, wrapped in skin and tendons, secreting blood and holding prickly sticks, as if engaged in aggressive rituals. Their bodies do not appear as a purified and appealing object for the man, his organ or method, and they are not subject to external observation. The body is presented as the center of expression and inner-authentic emanation, which deconstructs and shatters the imposed structures and projections, and opens a sphere for rediscovery.

Oryan claims that the disrupted, wild, bleeding, wounded, and wounding body symbolizes the disruption and breach of order as an oppositional practice that undermines and destabilizes the dictated system (Oryan, 2013: 23). The unrefined and disturbed body displays are an assault that confronts the signs of identity forged by the male order. Although the woman was taught to reject her internal and bloody substances, as she is supposed to reject any deviation from the boundaries of order, then in the creation of abjection, the woman artist is not afraid or fearful of her blood, internal organs, or their outbursts. She touches them, immerses in them, and creates with them, re-appropriating them. The body thus ceases to be a male colony, and becomes a sovereign-feminine site (Oryan, 2013: 25).

In summary, it can be said that the subordinate and tamed female body under the patriarchal system is not merely a passive object of subordination and oppression. It also has the potential to express itself as breaking out of and opposing the restraining mechanisms, while turning into a representation of lawlessness and order breaching. It is precisely from that tamed physical experience that a resistant force gushes, unwilling to be disciplined and silenced any longer.

Going back to Gilbert and Gubar’s arguments concerning the female mythic archetypes, then their claim that the angel and the monster are not that disconnected from each other is reinforced by the observations of these theorists. When the woman-angel becomes estranged from herself to the point of fading and even death of her selfhood and being, her force of selfhood may struggle for its survival and rise with all its might. When the rage over silencing overflows within the weakened, devoid woman, a subversive potential that Gilbert and Gubar (1979) named the “demonic yearning to escape,” arises in her body (p. 26).

This demonic yearning, which is evident in bodily actions and expressions that disrupt the normative order, is often attributed to areas of feminine insanity. Susan Bordo (1995) and Phyllis Chesler (2018) argue that madness, lunacy, and abnormality among women indicate the violence and oppression that have been exerted on the woman. Madness is a political act and the only way for the female voice-body, which is silenced and erased in a patriarchal society, to voice and express itself. The display of madness expresses a protest against and a rejection of the oppressive actions of the order. A similar position is expressed by Adler (1975), who viewed women’s perverse and criminal behavior and the breach of the normative order, as a sign of an attempt to liberate themselves from being traditionally tamed.

It is possible to identify expressions of reactionary and oppositional madness to oppression, in various Jewish traditional stories. One such story is the midrashic (early rabbinic interpretative) story of Hannah the Maccabee. In the Midrash of Hanukkah, it says that when Hannah’s brothers are about to hand her over to the ruler’s bed, to be raped before her wedding, she defiantly removes her clothing, and remains naked in public. This female undressing in public and in front of her brothers is interpreted institutionally as a kind of “evil spirit,”—a witch or a monster, entering the body of the woman. This monstrous spirit is perceived as coming from the liminal peripheral regions outside the boundaries of the sphere defined as normative and proper (see, for example, Douglas, 2010; Kristeva, 2005). Through the act of removing her clothes, Hannah undermines the boundaries of order and system. With her bare body, she creates a menacing female chaos, signaling a breach and deviation from the proper regimenting order. Hanna’s nude body is in fact a display of “abjection” as described above, a defiant display of deep rejection, disruption, and breach of the repressive system. She outlines through her body her rebellion against a violent, offensive, and annihilating culture. The danger of rape raises in Hannah the same “demonic yearning to escape,” as dubbed by Gilbert and Gubar. Her obedient, virginal, and chaste body suddenly becomes a show of defiance and protest.

If we return to Yael’s story, then, as in the Midrash of Hannah, it is also possible to detect “manifestations of insanity” expressed through the actions of her body. These expressions of insanity represent a battlefield of conflicting ideologies and forces.

The tent-home of a woman, like her body, is a site where she undergoes a process of regimenting and disciplining in a patriarchal society. She is restricted to domestic activity, and is ordered to serve, with her bodily actions, the needs of the patriarch and patriarchy. Yael, as a housewife, a woman who dwells in her tent, as depicted by Deborah, implements and expresses a text written for her—a text imposed upon her and her body, stifling and silencing many parts of her selfhood. Yet, and perhaps because of this, her story and actions are not limited only to the repressive text written for her, and her story reveals that her body also writes a text of protest.

Yael transforms the actions of her body from an obedient, submissive, serving, and victim-like action toward Sisera, into a belligerent, vengeful, lethal, and subversive action. From a victim of rape, she becomes a rapist, as she inserts the peg of her tent into Sisera’s temple. It is not only Sisera, as a patriarch, who pierces and scorches the violent culture of rape within her, but it is also she, who pierces and scorches a violent and lethal act of penetration into him in a sharp response.

If we read the description of the act of inserting the peg by Yael in the Song of Deborah, in light of the ideas that were presented, we will identify this description as embodying an oppositional practice and a subversive display of abjection:

Her hand she put to the tent-pin, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote through his head, yea, she pierced and struck through his temples. At her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay; at her feet he sunk, he fell; where he sunk, there he fell down dead. (Judg. 5.26–27)

Deborah chooses to elaborate on the description of the murder, repeating again and again the portrayal of the striking and pounding on Sisera’s head, and the description of the crushing and smashing of the skull between Yael’s legs. This produces a feminist performance of abjection, as Oryan (2013) described the art of female abjection. This performance pounds and strikes the reader—the female blood that flows between Yael’s legs (whether as a menstrual blood or as a bleeding wound following the rape) mixes and blends with his blood, skull, and even the brain fluid of the man, the warlord, who came to rape, and was penetrated and raped himself.

The display of killing created by Yael in her actions and by Deborah in her opulent and subversive poetics, is wild, menacing, and monstrous. The image of the “monster”—the woman possessed by madness incessantly pounding on the temple of the warlord, crushing his head to the death, is, as we understand, an enraged extreme response to an institutionalized and severe repressive action. From the experience of rape, the defiant disruption of the mother-angel figure emerges. The compassionate and enveloping tent woman becomes a murderous woman. The tent peg—the basis of the house—turns into a lethal, bloody weapon in Yael’s avenging hands.

And so, Yael’s biblical story, and especially that reflected in the Song of Deborah, illustrates how the sites of the female regimentation—the home and the body—may undergo extreme transformation, following oppression and trauma, and become a rebellious site of bold, furious, and vengeful decision. This transformative process spurns petrifying and oppressive feminine identities and produces a liberating and charging response, stemming from the core substances of the female entity.

Summary

The stories of women slaying the enemy hero are written from a male perspective. Stories from this perspective bear no reference to any representation of the women’s anxiety of the threatening status of being raped, however the focus on the silenced perspective of the women may reveal a different story. It is possible that these women murder men not only to save their people but also because they know that they face a particularly cruel equation. The victory of the enemy signifies rape and sexual violence towards them, or towards their daughters. The elimination of the hero turns the enemy into a passive object and thwarts the custom of turning the woman into a rape victim. In this radical act, they change the reality imposed on them. (Ashman, 2003: 182–183)

In these words, Ashman, who studied the weakened state of women in biblical wars, points to the absent feminine angle and the silenced feminine experience in the canonical text, when it comes to the rape of women as a customary act during wars. This essay strove to further illuminate the feminine perspective in the story of biblical Yael. In light of the insights presented, this story emerges, along with being a canonical story of salvation, as an antithetical story of the hegemonic spirit—as one that fulfills a subversive and rebellious oppositional practice. The story of Yael was accepted in the Israeli tradition as a patriarchal text that presents the saving of the people of Israel during the period of Deborah. But, when the dutiful veil—according to which a foreign woman chooses to cooperate with the leaders of the people of Israel in their struggle against their enemies—is removed, another story resurfaces. This additional story represents a female voice, defying gender-class obedience and the offensive and repressive masculine order.

The subversive significance attributed in this essay to Yael’s actions fits well with the gender-wise subversive theme, which appears in the Song of Deborah. Lederman-Daniely (2017) has illustrated that apart from the fact that the Song of Deborah is a song of praise to the warriors and the victors in the war (under God’s leadership as representing the symbolic order of the Father), it positions, at the same time, in the biblical center stage the image of the mother and her unique experiences. Deborah’s song of praise is in effect a double feminine text—it seems to obey the patriarchal order of the Father, but it actually reveals the silenced voice of the woman-mother. It sounds like a mockery of the enemy warlord, who planned to rape the women of Israel, but as it was previously argued, it scorches the hegemonic text with a sharp and piercing indictment against the male culture of rape as a whole. This indictment also goes to the ruling phase and the fatal verdict in Yael’s story, which, as described, continues to intertwine a double narrative thread and integrates into the textual “weaving” that Deborah spins.

This double textual weave is assigned a vast cultural and spiritual significance, when its weaver is such an influential and eminent prophetess in the tradition and heritage of Israel. Keren (2010), in her study of the way in which the feminine text survives as a woven code encrypted into the regulating hegemonic text, refers to the importance of the code inherent in the text of the female soothsayer. ³ This woman operates as a great and wise mother in ancient literature, and her weaving represents and symbolizes her mission as a corrective, restorative, and healing figure. Deborah in her role as the prophetess of the nation, that is, as the great and wise woman-mother, proclaims very clearly that she is the mother who arose to restore her people: “That thou didst arise a mother in Israel” (5.7). As a restorative national mother, she announces in the same breath that Yael is blessed above women. Yael, as illustrated in this essay, demonstrates in her choices and story the transformation of the obedient and passive woman-angel figure into the form of the fighting and rebellious “monster.” She represents the revolutionary transformative process undergone by a woman from a situation in which she silently accepts her fate, remaining without a story of her own, into a state in which she spurns the patriarchal mechanisms of submission and assumes sovereignty over her story and body. If, in doing so, she is crowned by the wise prophetess as “blessed above women,” then, there is a revolutionary and liberating message here. The code of the weave that she encrypts under the supervising radar of the patriarchy guides the women listeners and readers to dare to choose such a transformative action. By praising Yael’s character and story, she points to the possibility of turning the subservience of the victim into an assaulting force.

The subversion of this message should not be underestimated, especially when it is enacted in the male canonical text. Opposition to the role of the mother-angel is one of the most threatening actions on patriarchy and its agents—“Only when we understand how much she has offered him, can we understand how much she disappointed him,” Gottlieb (1981: 194) says. With regard to this menacing disappointment, Rich (1989) pointed to the patriarch’s horror at the possibility that compassion and the maternal nourishing cloak would be denied to him.

In this process, Deborah facilitates the restoration and healing of the body and soul of the women, who turn from victims—torn and subjugated—into heroines who regain their selfhood and the sovereignty over their bodies and their lives.

Then, with the moon for guide, she left to found a city—no, it was a tribe, no, it was a culture, the likes of which the world had never known. Every woman in it was a soldier and a mother, tears were as common as physical bravery, marriage was scorned, rape unthinkable. (Chesler, 2018: 50)