Devorah's song

“Out of the window she looked out and peered, the mother of Sisera through the lattice: ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?”  Judges,  5 v 28:

So Sisera, the wicked, feared General- the mighty enemy of the Israelites had a mother after all....and a mother who worried about him because he is late home from work!

In  this week's  Haftarah, Deborah conjures a very unexpected image as part of her victory song which celebrates the defeat of Sisera and his army.

Deborah sings of an imagined scene in which Sisera's mother looks out of the  window,  from behind a lattice, waiting for her son, and wondering why he is so late home from the battle.   She and her attendants reassure themselves that surely Sisera is delayed as he is simply enjoying the plunder, including "a womb or two for every man." (Judges 5:30) This is a shocking and cruel  image, with   its startling   violence towards women  being   expressed  another  woman.   Surely maternal  fears cannot  excuse this contemptible  comment.

Perhaps the purpose of  this image is, as suggested by  the  Protestant theologian James B Jordan   that "the reason why Sisera was such a vicious enemy of the Israelites was that he had such a mother." Deborah "delights in the misery of the enemy mother, whose savage expectations will not be realised.”

Sisera is in fact not just late home, he is dead.  The reader knows this, though Sisera’s mother does not. Like Deborah, we are triumphant in that knowledge.  Yet  there is also   sympathy  and  even  empathy  too behind our tradition  that  connects   her  cries  to the blasts  of the shofar on Rosh Hashana.  The  Talmud  goes further  to  actually define the teruah  note of the  shofar as  echoing and evoking  the yevava (sobbing) of Sisera's mother.  (Tractate Rosh Hashana 33b).

War brutalises its soldiers- but war also dehumanises  their  mothers who are left behind, helpless and defenceless, waiting  ever  anxiously by the window, for their menfolk..who may not return.