DID YOU KNOW?

Judges tells the story of Jael killing Sisera two times, once in prose and once as a poem. In which telling is he "lying fast asleep" when she strikes?

The answer

Judges 4, the prose story. Jael drives the peg into his temple while "he was lying fast asleep from weariness" (Judges 4:21). The song in Judges 5 never mentions sleep. The two tellings are not quite the same in what they include.

Why it’s interesting

In the song she gives him milk and strikes him, and then he falls: "Between her feet he sank, he fell" (Judges 5:27). The prose has him already lying down, asleep.

Scholarly consensus

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