Nifrad MiKayin: A Story of Ancient Israel

Shira Eliaser

Author’s Note:

Growing up in an age where Yael was one of the more common names for girls in American Jewish day schools, I have always been surprised by the extremes of opinion surrounding Yael, the powerful Jewish action hero in the book of Judges. I was always taught that Yael was a femme formidable, a hero of the ancient world who seized her chance to lay low a villain who had escaped justice for too long. It is almost impossible to find a sympathetic portrait of Yael in the Christian world of Western art and literature, whereas Judith, her sword-wielding Hellenistic counterpart, receives notable attention. Art historians will quickly assure me that much of the paint spilled on Judith’s behalf is done in praise of her womanly wiles, with or without her trademark fashion sense. However, the Sages in the Babylonian Talmud take a not wholly dissimilar attitude towards Yael, courtesy of the poetic language which the prophetess Devorah uses in her praise. The powerfully literate Orthodox women who taught me did not think this way: Devorah uses the language of power, of destiny, and of motherhood. Yael does also, which led me to imagine an instinctive sympathy between the two women.

I therefore wished to explore Yael’s origins. She herself was not an Israelite: Why therefore did she raise a hand against our nearly indestructible villain? What drove her on in the quest for a better future?

The derashah I received from my teachers answered those questions with a single verse, the one that suddenly breaks the action of a very exciting battle scene with an offhand comment about Yael’s husband, Hever the Cainite. The descendants of Cain were the smiths of the ancient world (Genesis 4:22), and they were based primarily in the Judean territory of the south (Samuel I 15:6). The biblical map begs the question: what was Hever the Cainite doing on the battlefield of north (Canaan)?

Now, Hever the Cainite deliberately separated from Cain, from among the descendants of Hovav, Moshe’s father in law. He pitched his tent as far as the oak at Tza’ananim, that is up by Kedesh. (Judges 4:11)

Separated.              

Deliberately separated.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to be deliberately separated. 

Not a day goes by that I do not ache for my sisters, my mother, the good wives of my brothers. 

There was singing in the tents of the women, and if one woke up in the dead of the night, there was always a baby crying and the sound of its mother crooning and soothing it back to sleep.

In Tza’ananim, I am always alone.

The music of the forge has long since ceased to ring beautifully in my ears. Our ancestor was Tuval-Cain, chosen one of the god Kothar, who first forged brass and iron for the children of men.  My people, the Cainim, have always been smiths, but we have not always been traitors to the gods and merchants of death.

My grandmother would sooner have seen me in my grave than sent off with a man such as Hever-Kasaph. She was devoted to Elit, the mother goddess, mighty wife to Eil Elyon, true king of the gods. To see my husband in service to Yavin of north Canaan, who promoted Ba’al over Eil Elyon and seated Ashtoreth as his consort, would have torn her in two. 

In the south, when my nieces danced me to the wedding canopy and called me Yael the Graceful, I had four bond women to share my burdens. They were good women, merry and kind, and when Resheph struck me with illness, they nursed me back to health like my own mother. When Hever the smith took service with King Yavin of Canaan – that worthless worm of the Ba’al – and my mother spit in my face and called me dead, they comforted me all the long way to the north.

Now they are in the kingdom of Mot, all four, and there is no one to comfort me in this lonely place. Enu, the old one, was poisoned by foul water, where the soldiers camped in the swamp, and Aia died of the fever that swept the army thereafter. Kirsa and Kinar died in childbirth, brought to bed by the soldiers who used them. In Canaan, only the master of the house is required to give consent. That weak man – my husband never could deny Sisera anything.

I tried to raise the infants they left behind. I wrapped them in blankets and soothed them and cooed to them. But the babies were sickly, and one cannot find a good herb woman in the train of Sisera. When Sisera saw how I cared for the boys, he sent me boys from the battlefield, more prisoners, to be my slaves. They carried water for me, and baggage, and they put up my tent and the smith’s tent every time the army moved. But the older ones were rough and tough and cruel and had no need of a mother. They serve my husband now at his forge. The youngest was a good boy, and I miss him dearly. He was so willing and helpful and anxious to please. But he was a beautiful child, and Sisera took him, too.

I put up my own tent now, every time. 

For two years now, we have pitched our tents in the shadow of Mount Tavor, the tallest mountain in Canaan. The glory of Eil Elyon crowns the mountain peak with thunder. My sisters in the south burn offerings at the shrines, for our mighty ancestresses are descended from Hovav the Priest and his seven daughters, first in the confederation, acolytes of the God Most High. I will burn alone, if that is His will.

…Not quite alone. The twelve tribes of Israel, who came north from Egypt and west from Kadeish Barnei’a, have settled across the country, and they know that Ba’al, Master of the Great Hose, is not the king over heaven and earth. They have been our allies from the days of Hovav and his oldest daughter. My husband came to Yavin, King of Canaan, to help Sisera grind them into the earth. Since that day, my sisters have called me the Wife of That Traitor, and no one sends word to Yael of her nieces and nephews. But there is peace between Yavin, King of Canaan, and the house of Hever the master armorer. I was given him to wife.. He is paid well. What can I do?

The tribes of Israel have risen in rebellion. Despite the summer’s heat, five northern tribes have banded together and mustered a force, gone in the night up to the top of Mount Tavor. Sisera’s entire camp thunders with the sound of nine hundred charioteers all shouting for their drivers and archers and spearmen. The whetstones in the armory shriek for blood, as forty thousand swords are sharpened for the glory of Anat. The rebels have the high ground, but they are armed with wood and stone and bronze, and Sisera has forty thousand men mounted in chariots of iron. By mid-morning the camp is empty, and Sisera’s men have surrounded the mountain. There will be no way out, except through their spears.   

We hear the roar of Sisera’s men as the command is given to fall upon the mountain. In the dry heat of summer, the wadis lead up the mountain around the rocks like the gods’ own roads.  Gataru, my blind old one, spits after them from over her millstones. At least for a few hours, we will have peace, she says. Milku, my deaf one, brings the rugs out to beat as soon as the men are gone. She beats in time with the creak of the chariots, though she does not know it. She will not leave my tent when the men are about. She never speaks of what she has lost. 

It should have been midday, with bright Shapsh at the top of her great ascent. But on that day, the windows of Heaven were opened, and gentle Pidraya fled before the thunderstorm of Eil Elyon, king of the gods and Ruler of the Most High. Within a quarter of an hour, the rain made rushing rivers of the mountain roads, and Nahal Kishon, that ancient brook, thundered down the mountainside in torrents. Ever’s slaveboys, left behind by their master, raced down the mudslides on broken shields. I did not need to ask where their master was. Iron chariots are not much use in a river of mud.

As midday turned into afternoon, the boys began to throw mud at my women, so I called them to heel and set them to packing. There was plenty of water for them to wash in, so there was no need for them to bring mud into the clean tents. Thus it was that I saw the man coming down the mountain. Had it not been for his red cloak, I would have thought him another one of my muddy boys. No sunlight gleamed off his bronze helmet, so plastered was he with mud and blood. His eyes were haunted and hollow. He had seen the destruction of everything he had ever loved, and his life had contracted to a circle of pain and blood, growing smaller and tighter by the hour.

I knew that face.

And inside me, my heart burned and crackled like the mighty lightning of Eil Himself. After fifteen years, I stepped out of my tent to raise my eyes to the monster who made a traitor of my husband, made my name a curse and a byword among my own kin, who laid low my maids and humbled my boys. In that moment, I knew I would deliver him.

“Turn in, my lord Sisera, over here. Come and hide. Have no fear. There, there. Here you’ll be safe.  Come to Mother.”

The boys sluiced him down as if he was one of their own, a slave left behind by his truant Master. When he was clean and starting to shiver, I took him into my tent and covered him with a blanket. I wrapped him and swaddled him and hummed the song of the weavers. It had been my Kinar’s favorite song, but he would not have known that.

“Water,” he croaked, interrupting me in the middle of a note. “Please, my lady. Give me a little water to drink, for I am parched with thirst.”

Poor boy! Come from the field all parched and famished. “There now,” I told him.  “I will take care of everything. What a day you have had! You lie and rest and I will bring you something soothing to drink.”

The cream was rising in the milk skins. I filled for him a cup so large it might have been a bucket. The storm of Eil did not reach Eilon Tza’ananim where we were camped, and the afternoon was wearisomely hot. Who doesn’t love a cup of warm milk when they are exhausted and ready for sleep?

Sisera grunted with approval when I put the great cup into his hands. He tossed away the cup when it was empty, too weary to wait for someone to come and take the heavy thing from him. Spoiled boy. I might have said something to him, but a noise from outside startled him and he pulled the blankets around him like a frightened child.

“There, there,” I hushed him. “The slaves are cleaning my lord’s tools and putting them away. There is no one here but my own people.”

“You!” he barked, and I actually turned towards the door to see if one of the rough boys had poked his head in. The fact that General Sisera was addressing me did not even register, for that You was a man’s word. “Amod!” he told me, as if I were one of his grubby soldiers. “Stand there at the door, and if anyone comes and asks whom you have in here, tell them no one.”

How quickly he had dropped the “please” and “my lady”! But what could I do? I told him that everything was all right, and I made him comfortable with a fort of cushions and covered him with a blanket so no one could see who was inside. “They’ll never find you here,” I promised.

“By Anat, it’s hot as ten hells under here!” Sisera complained.

“Shush, shush,” I told him. “Lie quiet and rest. No one will see you if you keep still.” Even then, he might have shaken off all the blankets in the stifling heat had not Gataru in the yard made a great squeaking creak with her millstones, as shrill as the wheel of a chariot crooked on its axle. Sisera subsided into his cushions, and I put another blanket on top of the pile.

He slept like the dead, that one.

The other maids were cowering outside the tent when I came out. They would not work in the same tent as that monster, and the terror on their twisted, ugly faces made me glad.

He was still asleep when I came into the tent, warm and comfortable in his pile of blankets. I could feel the heat radiating off of him as I set the tent peg to his temple. “Eil Elyon, King of the gods and Master of the thunder,” I prayed. “Give me strength, and avenge me for one of my two maids!”

I took the workman’s hammer in my right hand and swung with all my strength.

Men have called me cruel and heartless. They have said that I violated the laws of hospitality, which are sacred to the Hellenist gods. They say nothing about my maids and what was done to them in the name of suitable hospitality. But I did not long have to wait for the gods’ judgment. The commander of the Israelites burst into the camp with the first rays of the blood-red sunset. He was called Barak, the Thunderbolt of Kedesh Naphtali, and I showed him the man he was seeking.

The music of the victory march swells from the massed armies of the Tribes of Israel.  Among my people, the women go out to dance before the conquering hero, welcoming him home after a successful day in the field. But here the Thunderbolt of Kedesh Naphtali stands  to the side while the women of Israel beat their timbrels and dance before a King Unseen, before Eil Elyon himself, who has been victorious over the King of Canaan and that upstart rain god Ba’al. He has brought a wise woman with him, a prophetess: men bow before her as if she is their chief. She has a beautiful voice, strong and powerful, the voice of a poet. She sings to Eil Elyon of strife and trouble, of generosity and sacrifice. She sings to the princes of Israel and sends news to Se’ir in the thunder of the dancing women’s footsteps. 

The prophetess’s words bring light to my heart. Se’ir is home to my only living child, my precious daughter, whom I sent off in marriage away from the soldiers as soon as she had grown hair enough to be a bride. The wings of the wind and the tremors of the earth will bring the good news to her from afar, that the upstart rain god has been put in his place and her mother is no longer the cowering wife of a traitor.

The mevaserot, the female sopranos whose high, carrying voices ululate national security news from mountain peak to mountain peak, follow after him in chorus. Their voices rise louder than a volley of arrows, louder than a waterfall,  as they sing about the rescue of the unprotected villagers. Barak thanks each tribe by name, as well as the princes who fed and armed them. The soldiers cheer and laugh and return his thanks, blessing the prophetess and the general for their leadership, their fortitude, and their daring. The tribe of the wolf howls lustily in appreciation; the tribe of the auroch-ox adds a few verses of mock thanks to the seafaring tribes who “thought about” coming to our aid.  

“Lo, they are even now still thinking about it!” catcall the men under the banner of the sun and moon.

“Praise their mighty intellects!” Devorah adds sardonically.  

“Cursed is Meiroz,” roars Barak, “who call their ignorance their justification, who cheer for bloodshed and rapine when it is comfortably far away, but protest when the roaring tide brings violence and blood to their own shores.”

“Blessed is Yael, wife of the Master Armorer!” sings the prophetess, and there is a great echo of ululating from the edges of the field. My slavewomen are singing from the doors of the tent, and a crowd of women has joined them, rescued slaves and orphans, the wives and sisters of the Hebrew tribesmen. “From all the women in tents shall her praises rise!”  

“For those within, who do not dare step out!” calls one woman.

“For those laid low by men who should have cared for them better!” calls another.

“For those forced to bow to power and serve wickedness!” calls Gataru, my blind one.

“For all those who have asked, what can I do?”

The holy woman acts out my story for all to see, and the men keep time for her, chanting as she sets the record straight. The men lean forward eagerly as she tells how I soothed the man to sleep with his bloody hands, how he tossed the empty cup away and lay down to greet Death. Barak signals for me to come forward to the dais and accept the grateful thanks of the nation, and the men make way for me, bowing as if I was the wife of a general and not his executioner.

I never for a moment doubted the will of the gods.  But perhaps I doubted the inclinations of men, who are none too quick to praise a woman for doing what they themselves wish they had done first. My mother says that it is not seemly for a woman to be praised in public, that such attention makes her haughty and selfish. She is not wholly wrong. I have been smiled on by the gods; I do not need these brave tribesmen to bow to me. But yes, I confess that I enjoy it.   

The prophetess greets me like a daughter and pours blessings on my head. Everyone calls me “Wife of Hever,” as if my husband were a friend to all of Israel and God Most High, rather than the friend of the silver coins, a traitor and a runaway. At the end of the meal, the Thunderbolt of Kedesh Naphtali  intimates that if the smith were to return home after being so regrettably lost in the woods, they might, for my sake, be willing to overlook his treachery and pay him to work for the Israelites. Poor Barak is so disappointed when I tell him that between the battle and the unpaid debts, Hever has by now probably gone to the kever, the grave. If my sisters’ many curses have caught him at last, I will weep for him, but I do not want him back.

I want to go home to my sisters.

Our caravan leaves for the south a week later.  My slaveboys have all gone to Barak to learn the arts of war; he tells them that after they have decimated Yavin, King of Canaan, they will then go to the plow and learn the arts of peace. In their place, the prophetess gives me Old One Eye, whose soldiering days are over, and two maids and two young men whose farms were destroyed by the king of Canaan and have no homes to return to. One of the young men has a sister, and I take her into my service as well. The other young man cannot take his eyes off of Milku, but humbly promises to keep his hands to himself until I see fit to bless the match. He says she will make a fine wife, for she cannot hear and thus cannot scold. I will ask Old One Eye to teach him a few things about women.  

I strike my tent with my own hands.

We travel south with one of the Benjaminite gangs who are returning to their town, and another six families from the south who want to reclaim lands that Yavin’s men laid waste in the war. Old One Eye tells me that our wolf pack is on its way to close ranks with Shamgar ben Anat, that wizened old warrior whose might holds Israel’s southern boundaries. We are a well-armed party, and with Yavin’s men on the run from Barak, we are safer on the road than wayfarers have been in many a year. As the days pass since the great battle on Har Tavor, more and more travellers appear on the road. The princes of Ephraim overtake us on their swift mules halfway to Shiloh, and we give way before the black banner of the charging bull. My young men cheer the noble chiefs with their malachite badges, but the soldiers of Benjamin wolf whistle at them rudely.

Later that day, as we approach the cistern at the crossroads, our caravan overtakes a palanquin, and our Benjaminites indicate that it is their turn to get off the road and make way for us. The driver is wary and the mules are spooked; they kick and rear and bray so that the palanquin is almost overturned. The Benjaminites laugh and taunt as the driver struggles to keep the whole thing from tipping over; I see the curtains quiver and a face appear at the window. The old woman behind the veil sees the Israelite soldiers and lets out a wail.

I know that face. I know that voice. I never thought to hear it raised in agony.

There is already a crowd of travelers around the cistern, other Ephratim come to greet their returning brothers, a battalion of Naphtali on pilgrimage to Shiloh. Two Danite refugees in the train of Naphtali scream, and then my new slavegirl is screaming and running towards them, embracing them, spinning round and round and weeping through her smiles. She is their youngest sister who was carried off by Yavin of Canaan. We smile and cheer, and the Ephratim begin a chant of thanksgiving to the Lord of Hosts. The Danite embraces both his sisters, and shouts, “Blessings be to God Most High! I went into battle a man alone, and now I have two beautiful sisters, one for each arm!” The girls throw their arms about his neck and weep.

“See here,” says the Danite’s sister, lifting her head. “They reclaimed some of the property stolen from our farm, and we will use it to make a fresh start in life. We have grandmother’s lamp, and a great store of the fabrics that mother used to weave. See here, you can recognize her embroidery in the double layers of this cloak!” 

One of the Ephratim buys the cloak on the spot to bring home to his wife. I see the work: the embroidery is truly remarkable. “We will be scarf merchants!” the Danite promises, throwing a kerchief around my serving girl’s neck. “We will wear two scarves apiece to advertise our wares until every scrap of our patrimony is sold to the princes of Israel.”

The Danite begs to be allowed to buy his sister’s freedom, but how can I sell a girl whom I was given as a gift by the prophetess? I propose instead that all three of them work for me, and they can keep my house until they have enough to buy one of their own. In the midst of the hubbub at the crossroads, two scouts from the north ride up on swift mares, bringing news of victory to Shamgar ben Anat. Word flies from mouth to mouth: King Yavin is dead, his army decimated, his palace plundered to fund the reconstruction of the north. Seeing us gathered around the great store of dyed and embroidered fabrics, the scouts take out the treasures they have brought from Yavin’s storehouses: ivory flutes and vessels of bone, soft and supple leathers shiny with oil, a fine cloak of green and blue wool, a wall hanging that the general’s mother presented to the king on the occasion of his ascension to the throne. 

I am told that all women are sisters, daughters of the same goddess, and therefore, as women, we should stand shoulder to shoulder against our men, demanding our rights, rallying for our safety, united as one to wipe out all violence against us. Perhaps somewhere in a deep, misty valley lies an isolated temple where moonstone priestesses live like this, but flesh-and-blood women do not behave this way. Show me a woman who does not rally around her father, her grandfather, her brothers, when daughters of a foreign god cry outrage against her people. I myself have cast a stone at that nasty little temptress who broke my brother’s heart, and I would have followed it with my fist had she been fool enough to turn and fight me for it. But I hear the whimper of Sisera’s mother as her weaving is passed around by the soldiers who killed her son, and it goes straight to my heart.

It is the same noise I made when my baby son died.

The driver of the palanquin eyes our crowd with fear, not daring to approach and take water for his parched beasts. He is too preoccupied with safety to offer any comfort to the bereft mother. I remember that look from the faces of Sisera’s soldiers – the cold bitter calculation of men whose hearts have broken once too many and left only hard eyes and hard hands to survive in the world. He knows we will not let him live if he identifies himself or his lady, if he stands and makes his demands. And he wants to live. He wants her to live.

My other little son died from a snakebite. I chopped the snake in two with my own hands. I turned out the woodpile and killed the little snakes before they could grow fangs. But this is not a snake. This is a  mother in distress. I cannot turn my back as she grieves. Not like the men of Canaan did when we moved on, leaving my poor baby scarcely cool in his little grave. That string of a mother’s whimpering… with that sound, it all comes back.

I draw the water with my own hands. The scouts and travelers and princes around the cistern give way gladly, calling me Mighty Mother, Wife of Hever, Daughter of Anat. They give me the royal weaving freely when I ask to buy it, and will not take any money for it, even when I tell them it is not for myself. The reunited sisters dance a few steps ahead of me as I stagger back with my lordly bucket, as if we were back on the field of victory at Kedesh Naphtali and I were the conquering hero. It is very flattering and I enjoy myself greatly, but I cannot do what I mean to do with everyone watching me. So I send my slaves back to the Ephratim with a blanket of my own weaving, as a gift. It is, I regret, somewhat stained. The princes give a mighty cheer and seize upon it like a trophy of victory. Their bloodlust disgusts me, and it makes what I am about to do easier.

While the slaves are filling our skins with water and loading them onto the donkeys, I carry the bucket of water to the palanquin. The driver stares at me, hostile and unblinking, but the mules paw and stamp to be watered, and he slowly puts down the trough for me to help. The mother of Sisera peeps through the curtains, and I pass the dipper of water through the window to her. When she has drunk her fill, I return to her the hanging that she wove for her son.

I think she has heard enough to know who I am. I do not know what she will do when I try to return to her this broken thing. I do not know what will happen to either of us.  I only know that I must try.  

So let all Thy enemies be lost, O Lord, and found again. May their enmity itself perish,
and let them that love God be as the mighty sun when it rises. (Judges 5:31)

May the land lie quiet in the peace that comes from justice to all, and may we not have to wait forty years to see it.