Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. J A E I, AND SISEBA. Judges iv, 31. Then Jael Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. The narrative of which, these words are a part has been read to you in the first lesson of this morning’s service. Perhaps, as you listened to it; as you heard of Sisera fleeing for his life from the field of battle, and seeking shelter in the tent of Jael; and then of Jael as receiving the fugitive with open arms, performing towards him all the offices of hospitality; and when, confiding in -her honour, he had fallen fast asleep, advancing in the manner described in our text, and murdering him; yes, murdering her wearyand slumbering guest; I say, when you heard all this, probably your feeling was, what a frightful crime! what a monster of a woman! But if you were to go on to read the next chapter, the first lesson of this evening’s service, in which the Prophetess Deborah celebrates, in inspired strains, the overthrow of Sisera, you would find a very different judgment passed upon Jael. Thus it is that she is spoken of,
Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be: blessed shall she be above women in the tent. And then the Prophetess proceeds to use the language of encomium on that very part of Jael’s conduct which appears to us most revolting and atrocious?her deceitful kindness towards the wanderer whom she was about to assassinate.
He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. There is a great difference then between the estimate which we should be inclined to form of Jael, and that delivered and recorded by the Spirit of God. She cannot h…