Remember Taranitno’s the 2009 movie Inglorius Basterds which included the squirmy-satisfying scene in which Hitler is killed? Fantasies involving revenge against tyrants and dictators are not a new thing. Back in the Bible, Arch enemies such as Sisera, the Canaanite General who for a period of seven years ruled over Israel and must have been as liked as Hitler - not only dies a dramatic death - he even becomes the subject of an epic triumph poem, some early revenge porn.
Not only he - but his mother as well - are depicted as totally evil.
The fact that this poem is attributed to Deborah, the judge and leader, mother of Israel only makes this more haunting.
Deborah is the only woman listed as a judge among the dozen or so men in this book who hold the title, all of them chosen for the successful battles with the locals. Her name, still popular today (!) might mean She Who Speaks, or The Bee. Perhaps the Queen Bee. Her voice arises from ancient wells and hills and the song attributed to her is the entire fifth chapter in the Book of Judges. It’s the poetry version of the account in chapter 4, and is considered much older. Deborah’s epic poem in today’s chapter, is considered to be one of the oldest - if not the oldest - fragments of literature in the Hebrew Bible, with its origins in the 12th century BCE. Bronze Age.
The poetic Hebrew is powerful and still familiar to modern ears:
חָדְל֧וּ פְרָז֛וֹן בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל חָדֵ֑לּוּ עַ֤ד שַׁקַּ֙מְתִּי֙ דְּבוֹרָ֔ה שַׁקַּ֥מְתִּי אֵ֖ם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
“Enough! Deliverance ceased,
Ceased in Israel,
Until She arose, O Deborah,
Arose, O mother in Israel!”
Some claim that the poem dates much younger - by 500 or more years. Scholars like Dr.Serge Frolov suggest that “Judges 5 was then likely written in the late exilic or early post-exilic period, more than half a millennium after its conventional date...Deborah’s Song is a monument to the literary genius of the unknown Judean scribe who created a comprehensive – and moving – account of his people’s past.”
Whether it was her or a later author - ancient bards must have sang this rhythmic poem way before it was ever written down. It ends with a vivid, moving and disturbing scene in which she imagines Sisera’s mother waiting for her son to return alive from the war:
בְּעַד֩ הַחַלּ֨וֹן נִשְׁקְפָ֧ה וַתְּיַבֵּ֛ב אֵ֥ם סִֽיסְרָ֖א בְּעַ֣ד הָאֶשְׁנָ֑ב מַדּ֗וּעַ בֹּשֵׁ֤שׁ רִכְבּוֹ֙ לָב֔וֹא מַדּ֣וּעַ אֶֽחֱר֔וּ פַּעֲמֵ֖י מַרְכְּבוֹתָֽיו׃
Through the window peered Sisera’s mother,
Behind the lattice she wailed:“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why so late the clatter of his wheels?”
In the following lines, the enemy’s mother is portrayed as callous, joking with her friends about the many captive women their sons will bring back from the battle, how many wombs, along with finest fabrics and loot.
The poet did not share with us the moment when Sisera’s mother finds out that her anxious wait for his return will not end happily as her wails turn to weeping for the son whose head was smashed by a woman’s hand.
Deborah’s song is simultaneously a triumphalist jab at the Canaanite woman, who, like Deborah, is identified as a mother. But it’s also, surprisingly, a tender moment that invites empathy with the grieving mother and her loss. Mother to mother.
What’s the story of Sisera’s mother who shows up in this song of the mother of Israel?
Why does this poetic turn/twist/focus on the enemy’s mother’s feelings?
The poem’s popularity, whatever its pedigree, made it a favorite for later authors and creative writers who were also curious about this question, expanded the storyline and created some wild commentaries that fill in some of the missing gaps.
One of those interpretive works is the Biblical Antiquities (Liber antiquitatum biblicarum) initially attributed to the first century B.C.E. Jewish historian and philosopher Philo of Alexandria, but better known today as composed by Pseudo-Philo, likely in the first or second century C.E. Still quite old. The text survived only in Latin, but most scholars believe it was composed in Hebrew and translated to Greek and then into Latin to meet the needs of the growing Jewish populations in the Greek speaking Roman empire.
The text adds details and changes a bit of the plot of Deborah and Yael’s triumph against Sisera, the Canaanite General of Hazor. But the most interesting addition concerns Sisera’s mother, who is already an important voice in Deborah’s biblical song and whose story becomes intertwined with later Jewish mythology -- but only in this version she is given a name:
“Now Sisera’s mother was called Themech. She sent word to her friends, saying, “Come and we will go out together to meet my son, and we will see the daughters of the Hebrews whom my son will bring with him as concubines.”
This text does not just reveal her name, it also adds details of her mourning and shame, not found in today’s chapter:
“And Barak, having entered the tent of Yael, found Sisera dead and said, “Blessed be the Lord, who sent your spirit and said, ‘Sisera will be handed over into the hand of a woman.’” And having said this he took away Sisera’s head and sent the thing to his mother, and delivered it to her, saying, “Take your son who you hoped would come with spoil.”
Themech’s grieving cries are not written into the text - but incredibly they live on in the oral ritual tradition where her pain is preserved forever.
Her cries live on not just in these obscure textual fragments but also on the main stage of every Jewish synagogue during the first days of the year. According to Jewish traditions, the sounds made by the Shofar, the ram’s horn, on Rosh Hashaha, echo the cries of Sarah, as she laments the binding of her son Isaac, as well as the cries of Themech, Sisera's grieving mother.
The Talmud claims that we sound 100 Shofar wails on the first days of the year to match this weeping mother’s 100 sobs on that fateful day.
How many of us know this startling origin story of our ‘wake up call’? How does it change this haunting ritual’s meaning?
What is the echo and meaning of the silence between those broken sounds?
Haim Guri, one of Israel’s pioneer poets, heard those cries of the mothers of the enemy during the early year’s of the state’s becoming, alongside the losses of lives and freedom for the Palestinian population. In the poem ‘His Mother’he chooses to also bring her some closure:
“I watch Sisera’s mother captured in the window,
a woman with a silver streak in her hair.
...Forty years the land knew peace. Forty years
no horses galloped, no dead horsemen stared glassily.
But her death came soon after her son’s.”
The peace won’t last for Israel - even with Deborah and Barak’s triumph and Sisera’s death. Forty years of peace will end with battle.
More mothers will wail, another warrior will rise to save and judge the people, with public spectacles and the power of signs. No poems coming up - but some big drama ahead, worth while wailing for.
Image: The Mother of Sisera looked out a Window, by Albert Joseph Moore.
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The mother here (cf 5:7, D'vorah named "Mother in Yisrael") could be the mother of any and every warrior. She is right to wonder and worry. The bit about the vaginal and material spoils of war is the ineffective effort by her friends to cheer her up. Note that וַתְּיַבֵּ֛ב Vatyabev that Talmud considers "sobbed," occurs just this once in Tanach. Targum Onkelos renders it with a word that describes a kind of thoughtful looking. http://good-to-be-a-jew.blogspot.com/2008/07/dvorah-liberated-woman-ju-45.html