24. Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife be of Heber the Kenite, be; blessed shall she be above women in the tent. [But feminine heroism shall exhibited in honourable contrast with such shameful neutrality. Let the benediction of heaven rest upon the head of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, above all other women! Blessed shall she be above all other female, heads of families who remained at home, having with masculine-courage completed in her tent, what was so happily begun in the field.]
25. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. [Sisera, famished and fainting, requested water to allay his thirst; she opened a leathern bottle, and with feigned respect presented him with butter-milk; yes, she poured him out butter-milk in a vessel of copper, such as nobles use. [33]]
26. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera; she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. [Lulled into a fatal security by her deceptive homage, he slept--to wake no more! She seized a nail of her tent, and a hammer, approached in cautious silence the sleeping adversary of Israel, and, animated by an irresistible impulse of patriotic zeal, she drove it through his temples, and cut off his head.]
27. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead. [Thus fell the great instrument of Canaanitish oppression at the feet of a woman; thus ingloriously he perished [34]]
28. The mother of Sisera looked out at a window and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots? [O day of triumph! Methinks the mother of Sisera, anticipating the fruits of victory, and the final subjection of all Israel to their oppressor's yoke, stood at her window, chiding the tardy moments, and impatiently exclaiming from behind the lattice-work, Why is the chariot of our victorious general so long in returning? Whence this painful delay? Hasten, ye fleet animals that draw his chariots, and restore him to our embraces!]
29. Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself,