Sisera

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Yael Killings Sisera, by Palma the Younger.

Sisera, Heb. סיסרא, mentioned in the Book of Judges 4:2 in the Hebrew Bible, was the captain of Jabin's army which was routed and destroyed by the army of Barak on the plain of Esdraelon.

His name is usually regarded as Philistine, Hittite or Hurrian. Some speculated that its origins were Egyptian (Ses-Ra, "servant of Ra").

After all was lost, he fled to the settlement of Heber the Kenite in the plain of Zaanaim. Jael, Heber's wife, received him into her tent with apparent hospitality and "gave him butter" (i.e., lebben, or curdled milk) "in a lordly dish." Having drunk the refreshing beverage, he lay down and soon sank into the sleep of the weary. While he lay asleep, Jael crept stealthily up to him and, taking in her hand one of the tent pegs, with a mallet she drove it with such force through his temples that it entered into the ground where he lay, and "at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead." (Judges 5:24) It was because Sisera's mother cried a hundred cries when he did not return home that the shofar is blown for a total of 100 blasts on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

1 Sisera in the Midrash
2 Sisera in Kabbalistic Thought
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Sisera in the Midrash

According to the Midrash (Yalḳuṭ Shim'oni on Judges iv. 3), Sisera hitherto had conquered every country against which he had fought. His voice was so strong that, when he called loudly, the most solid wall would shake and the wildest animal would fall dead. Deborah was the only one who could withstand his voice and whom it did not cause to stir from her place. Sisera caught fish enough in his beard when bathing in the Kishon to provision his whole army. According to the same source (lii., end), thirty-one kings followed Sisera merely for the opportunity of drinking, or otherwise using, the waters of Israel. The descendants of Sisera, according to B.Gittin 57b, were teachers of the young in Jerusalem.

[edit] Sisera in Kabbalistic Thought

There is a most remarkable passage in Judges 5, within the victory song of Deborah concerning Sisera's defeat, which reads:

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. -Judges 5:20

It is a profound insight into a much greater truth that is being conveyed, which is, according to this Hebrew passage, that Sisera "fought from heaven." The Kabbalistic allusion is that Sisera not only was a captain of an army, but is also a mystical representation for what may be a constellation within the second heaven (outer space).