For my fourth child and only daughter:
Radley Jael Dawn

Most blessed of women is Jael…
Of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked for water and she gave him milk;
She brought him yogurt in a noble’s bowl.
She sent her hand to the tent peg
And her right hand to the workmen’s hammer;
She struck Sisera;
She crushed his head;
She shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet
He sank, he fell, he lay still;
Between her feet
He sank, he fell;
Where he sank,
There he fell—dead.

Out of the window she peered,
the mother of Sisera wailed through the lattice:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?”
Her wise women answer,
and she repeats these words to herself:
“They must be dividing the captured plunder—
with a woman or two for every man.
There will be colorful robes for Sisera,
and colorful, embroidered robes for me.
Yes, the plunder will include
colorful robes embroidered on both sides.”

So may all your enemies perish, O LORD!
But may those who love you be as the rising of the sun in its might.

And the land had rest for forty years.

~ Judges 5:24-31

Radley means “red meadow.” 

There are days that must die in order for a future to arrive. Some days get stuck on their axis. They do not move time forward but seem only to repeat it, every dawn sinking into the gravity of yesterday’s dusk, every new beginning bound to the same old end. Israel had seen twenty years worth of those days. It all began because they had “done what was evil in the sight of the Lord…” (Jdgs. 4:1). Nothing new. 

But this was in the days of “Jabin king of Canaan,” early in Israel’s history. They did not yet have the luxury of great power. It’s not easy to be godless when you actually need God. They did need God. They were powerless against Jabin’s Canaanite army. The “commander of his army was Sisera…[who] had 900 chariots of iron. He had oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years” (Jdgs. 4:2-3). Rape, pillage, and plunder—that kind of thing. Sisera would return from the battlefield with wardrobes for his mother and women for his men (cf. Jdgs. 5:28-30). Many of God’s people were left without clothes—many were taken without clothes. It was the darkest of days. 

But God raised up Deborah to be judge over Israel. The world had been under the rule of power hungry men all its days–almost all of them (cf. Gen. 1-2)–and God was doing something new, again. Righting this kind of injustice would require a woman’s touch—and sword. Deborah appointed Barak as commander of Israel’s army and ordered him to rally 10,000 troops to go to battle against Sisera and his army. Barak was afraid. He said to her, “If you go with me I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” Deborah didn’t resist or even give him a hard time about it. She was half way to the battlefield before he could finish his proposal. She was ready to put those days to death. She led Barak in the charge against Sisera’s men from the hill country to the meadow by the river Kishon, “and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword not a man was left” (Jdgs. 4:16). 

But Sisera was left, and with him the seeds of yesterday (Jdgs. 4:17). He had abandoned his men on the battlefield and fled to the tent of a Kenite, formally a Canaanite ally. But this tent was not ruled by formalities. Love never is. This was the home of Jael, lover of God, enemy of all who oppose him. 

Sisera barged in and began giving orders. He thought he was in charge here. But Jael had her own way of doing things. He ordered water. She gave him milk, a meal, and a blanket, far more than he asked for, in fact. That was just her way. He then ordered her to stand guard and to lie if anyone came looking for him. And it would be the last order he ever gave. She was not a liar, nor was she his ally, and she certainly was not his slave. Jael was a lover of God, loyal to him alone, and on that day she was called to be the enforcer of his law and hammer of his justice. 

And Sisera said to Jael, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if anyone comes and asks you, “Is anyone here?” say, “No.” But Jael…took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. 

~ Judges 4:20-21

That Day the meadow was painted dark red, coloring the river as it carried the past away, and the land was finally at rest. Twenty years of the same dark night was buried at last and a future was born. It was the Dawn of a new day, for the sun had risen in all its might. 

Most blessed of women is Jael: lover of God, soldier of the dawn, enemy of the dark.