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In our study of Deborah the prophetess we have already noticed the conditions in which Jael the wife of Heber was placed. We find her in the midst of war, the enemy of Israel defeated, and Sisera the captain of the Canaanitish army fleeing the battle on foot. He flees for refuge with Heber the Kenite.
Now, as the scripture tells us, Heber the Kenite was a descendant of Moses’s father-in-law (Judges 4:11). Naturally speaking, Heber should have had bonds through marriage to the children of Israel – however, we find him severing himself from his family and taking a neutral position, making peace with the enemy of God’s people. Therefore, the Canaanitish captain flees to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber.
Repeatedly in this account, Jael is referred to as Heber’s wife. Like Deborah, Jael is a woman under headship, the headship of her husband. Only here we find that Heber had failed in headship by making peace with the Canaanitish king. It is evident that Jael felt this failure, and was minded to rectify it.
Like Deborah, Jael does not assume the place of a man. She doesn’t take her husband’s sword and go out to strike Sisera down. She uses a quilt and a flask of milk to subdue the fainting captain, and then despatches him with a tent-pin and a hammer.
Again, we have a striking example of a woman operating powerfully in her own sphere (it is her tent, not her husband’s, to which Sisera comes) to correct a failure in male leadership and headship.
In God’s ordering, “woman’s head is the man” (1 Corinthians 11:3), and a husband is rightly regarded as head of his household. Deborah and Jael are both referred to in relation to their husbands. Headship, however, comes with responsibility, and in Heber we see the head of a household failing in responsibility. Clearly, Heber hadn’t thought to ask his wife for her counsel, otherwise she would have advised against the alliance with Jabin. I speak as an unmarried man with no first-hand experience to draw on, but I believe that a wise husband looks for spiritual counsel from his wife, and in providing it she supports him in his exercise of headship. We would be reminded of the scripture in Proverbs 31:11 regarding the woman of worth: “The heart of her husband confideth in her, and he shall have no lack of spoil.”