She put her hand to the tent peg, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer. With the hammer she struck Sisera. She struck through his head. Yes, she pierced and struck through his temples.
Parallel Translations
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She put her hand to the tent peg, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer. With the hammer she struck Sisera. She struck through his head. Yes, she pierced and struck through his temples.
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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.
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Her hand she put to the tent-pin, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote through his head, yea, she pierced and struck through his temples.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (3)
Passages linked to Judges 5:26 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 Samuel 17:49-51 David put his hand in his bag, took a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Then David ran, stood over the Philistine, took his sword, drew it out of its sheath, killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.
- Judges 4:21 Then Jael Heber’s wife took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him, and struck the pin into his temples, and it pierced through into the ground, for he was in a deep sleep; so he fainted and died.
- 2 Samuel 20:22 Then the woman went to all the people in her wisdom. They cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and threw it out to Joab. He blew the trumpet, and they were dispersed from the city, every man to his tent. Then Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (11 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jdg 5:26 She put her hand to the nail,…
Jdg 5:26 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.
Ver. 26. She smote off his head.] Sept., She bored through, or pierced his head; as Ulysses perforated Polyphemus’s eye.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Her hand, i.e. her left hand, as appears from…
Her hand, i.e. her left hand, as appears from the nature of the thing; and from the
right hand, which is opposed to it. Smote off, or, struck through, as the LXX. and Syriac render it; or brake, as the Chaldee hath it.
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When she had pierced, Heb. and she pierced; or, and the nail pierced.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain She put her hand to the nail,.... Her left…
She put her hand to the nail,.... Her left hand, as the Septuagint, Arabic, and Vulgate Latin versions express it, and as appears by what follows; she having taken up a pin from her tent, with which it was fastened to the ground, she clapped it to the temples of Sisera:
and her right hand to the workman's hammer; in her right hand she took a hammer, such as carpenters, and such like workmen, make use of, and workman like went about her business she had devised, and was determined upon, being under a divine impulse, and so had no fear or dread upon her:
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and with the hammer she smote Sisera; not that with the hammer she struck him on the head, and stunned him, but smote the nail she had put to his temples and drove it into them:
she smote off his head; after she had driven the nail through his temples, she took his sword perhaps and cut off his head, as David cut off Goliath's, after he had slung a stone into his forehead; though as this seems needless, nor is there any hint of it in the history of this affair, the meaning may only be, that she struck the nail through his head, as the Septuagint, or broke his head, as the Targum:
when she had pierced and stricken through his temples; that being the softest and tenderest part of the head, she drove the nail quite through them to the ground, Jdg 4:21.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 26. She smote off his head] The original…
Verse 26. She smote off his head] The original does not warrant this translation; nor is it supported by fact. She smote his head, and transfixed him through the temples. It was his head that received the death wound, and the place where this wound was inflicted was the temples. The manner in which Jael despatched Sisera seems to have been this:
1. Observing him to be in a profound sleep she took a workman's hammer, probably a joiner's mallet, and with one blow on the head deprived him of all sense.
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2. She then took a tent nail and drove it through his temples, and thus pinned him to the earth; which she could not have done had she not previously stunned him with the blow on the head. Thus she first smote his head, and secondly pierced his temples.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Jdg 5:26. She smote off his head — Or…
Jdg 5:26. She smote off his head — Or rather, smote through his head, for there is not the least hint given in the story that she cut off his head. The latter part of the verse, When she pierced, &c., may be rendered, She wounded and pierced through his temples.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Rather “she smote his head, and she struck and…
Rather “she smote his head, and she struck and pierced through his temple.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Sisara. Hebrew says with the hammer; (Protestants,) "she smote…
Sisara. Hebrew says with the hammer; (Protestants,) "she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken (the nail) through his temples." But we may rather translate, (Haydock) "she pierced his head, she struck it, and pierced through this temples." (Calmet) --- For we cannot suppose that she severed his head from his body with the hammer; but she fastened it to the ground with the nail, chap. iv. 21.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 26. While he was standing (Jdg_5:27) and about to…
26. While he was standing (Jdg_5:27) and about to drink, Jael dealt him a shattering blow with a wooden implement. We are tempted to suppose that, if he had drunk, he would have been protected by the laws of Eastern hospitality. So in The Talisman, Sir Walter Scott makes Saladin dash the cup from the hand of the Grand Master of the Templars before assassinating him; had he tasted it, he would have been safe. Talisman p. 535 (ed. 1879 A. and C. Black). In Jdg_4:19, however, Jael has no scruples about killing Sisera after he has partaken of her hospitality.
According to the parallelism of Hebr. poetry her hand and her right hand mean the same thing; and so should nail and workmen’s hammer. But can the latter term be thus rendered? workmen ought rather to be sufferers, worn out with toil and misery, Job_3:20; Job_20:22; the meaning labourer is only found in Pro_16:26 (late); moreover hammer (a doubtful form, and a different word from mallet in Jdg_4:21) can hardly be another name for nail or tent-peg. What is meant by this synonym we do not know; but it is clear that Jael used one weapon, not two. The account in Jdg_4:21 gives a different version of the tradition. Translate the last two lines:
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And she hammered Sisera, shattered his head,
And crushed and clave his temples.
The word rendered clave might perhaps mean caused to pass away, made to vanish; properly it = pass on, or through, here apparently in the sense of piercing, cf. Job_20:24. The description is that of a heavy, crushing blow.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (26) Nail. . . . workmen’s hammer.—See on Jdg_4:21.
(26) Nail. . . . workmen’s hammer.—See on Jdg_4:21.
Smote.—Hammered.
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Smote off his head.—Rather, shattered his head. The Hebrew is onomatopoetic, i.e., the sound echoes the sense, recalling the smashing and crashing blows of the hammer. The repetition of these terrible alliterative verbs, “hammered,” “shattered,” “battered,” “transfixed,” the signs that the imagination of the prophetess seems to revel in the description, have been ascribed to “the delight of a satisfied thirst for revenge.” This is hardly a right view of her character. It must be remembered that the feelings of modern times are far more refined and complex than those of previous ages. The sense of tenderness, the quickness of compassion, the value set on human life, are immeasurably increased, and with them the power of realising by universal sympathy the position and sufferings of others. In ancient days no close moral analysis was applied to acts of which the general tendency was approved as right and beneficial. Caesar was not inherently a cruel man, yet he records without a shudder the massacre and misery of multitudes of Gaulish men, women, and children at Alesia; and he suffered the brave Vercingetorix to be led away from his triumph, to be strangled in the Tullianum, without the slightest qualm of pity. Deborah, in the spirit of her day, seems to regard with pitiless exultation the wild throes of Sisera’s death, and the agonising frustration of his mother’s hopes. only because she views those events in the single aspect of the deliverance of Israel. The tenderness of the Mother of Israel was absorbed in the thought of her own long-afflicted, but now rescued, race. “She was a mother in Israel, and with the vehemency of a mother’s and a patriot’s love, she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips on the people that had jeopardised their lives unto the death against the oppressors, and the bitterness awakened and borne aloft by the same love she precipitates in curses on the selfish and cowardly recreants who came not to the help of the Lord against the unjust” (Coleridge); and we may add, on all connected with the cruel oppressor.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain With the hammer. These words are not in the…
With the hammer. These words are not in the Hebrew, and should be omitted. She smote (not smote off), yea, she wounded; (Psa_68:21) she pierced through his temples.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 She put her hand to the tent peg
She put her hand to the tent peg
"Jael grabbed the tent peg with her left hand"
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tent peg
This is a pointed piece of wood or metal, like a large nail, that is hammered into the ground to hold down a corner of a tent. See how you translated this in Judges 4:21.
her right hand to the workman's hammer
This can be stated as a complete sentence. AT: "she grabbed a hammer with her right hand" (See: Ellipsis)
hammer
This is a heavy tool made of wood used to hit a tent peg into the ground. See how you translated this in Judges 4:21.
Sisera
See how you translated this man's name in Judges 4:2.
limp
without strength or movement
he was violently killed
This can be stated in active form. AT: "she killed him" or "he died" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
hand
tent
skull
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.