fection as regards civilization, and due esteem of those who are to become the mothers of the next (and perhaps still more enlightened) generation. Yet start not, gentle reader; the heroic Israelite may have been endowed with a heart as tender, a mental organization as delicate, to which the very name of violence, or a deed of bloodshed, was as repellent as to your own, or to that of any other sensitively-nurtured daughter of our favored land! Let us gratefully acknowledge, therefore, the boon, that to us is intrusted the performance of religious duty, unfettered by persecution and untried by the ordeal of nature's most fearful conflict. The history of Jael is brief: she is reported to have been the wife of Heber the Kenite, and Scripture hints at the relationship of her family to Moses by Hobab, who, doubtless, as well as his progeny, had derived many advantages by means of Israel; indeed, Moses premises this in the words, "We will surely do thee good." When Jabin, King of Canaan, intrusted Sisera, his captain of the host, with the campaign against Israel, the power of his army appears to have been very great, and for a long period his success ascertained: since it is said that he possessed "nine hundred chariots of iron, and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel." At the request of Deborah the Prophetess, who then judged Israel, Barak attended to receive the promise from God, of Sisera's overthrow; but whether as a punishment of Barak's faithlessness, who refused to go without Deborah, or from some other reason of the divine mind, the appointed commander of the Israelitish army was informed that the Lord would "sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." Whatever difficulty may exist in the minds of commentators as to the subsequent conduct of Jael, the words quoted appear to imply that the Lord would overrule her acts for good to his people, as upon another occasion he made Balaam's cupidity a vehicle for assuring the promise of Messiah to the world, and even converted the remorse of Judas into a method of vindicating the fulfillment of his word. Much allowance must be made for the obscurity which envelops the motives of Jael, as well as the circumstances which attended the presence of Sisera in the tent, his conduct toward her, and the exasperation, probably, his tyranny excited in the hearts of all the Jews, a people ever brave and patriotic. No cause except one of these last appears of sufficient power to incite a woman of the East, notoriously proverbial for its strictness in maintaining hospitality, to exhibit what must otherwise be deemed one of the most flagrant proofs of treachery and malice. By way of apology, the rabbis say that the words "at her feet he bowed, he fell," signify that he offered violence to her, for which cause she put "her right hand to the workman's hammer;" but this seems very improbable in a man who was overpowered by sleep. Again, the difficulty is increased by the implied security of the food given by Jael to him, which is in the East of considerable importance. Taylor suggests, 1st, that Jael had felt herself the oppression of Israel by Sisera: 2d, that she was moved by patriotism: 3d, that the general character of Sisera was so bad, that his death was desirable at any rate. However this may be, certain it is that the whole history is exactly parallel to that of Judith, in the anxiety it evinces to deliver the people, and the use of artifice to accomplish the desire. It is safer, on the whole, in matters of this kind, to adhere simply to what is known, without endeavoring to wrest the actions of others to our own rule of conduct, when we know little of the circumstances of the former. As the narrative appears shorn of all explanatory relations, it strikes us with horror that blood should be spilled by treachery, be the victim ever so hated, or the motive ever so strong: indeed, it is an anomaly to say, as many do, that a bad action can spring from a good motive, for the turpitude of the former casts back a reflective stain upon the latter. A person may moreover be spoken of as "blessed," in reference to the results of a certain action, and not as to its inherent goodness; but knowing that God abhors a lie, and that he desires truth "in the inward parts," it is sufficient for us "not to seek to be wise beyond what we are able," in cases which, like the present, are so stated as to render heroism doubtful, by the very questionable incidents which surround it. |