Finally, Jael emerges as the real heroine of the narrative. But this is ironic, too. She is hardly an orthodox hero. Rather, she shares the unorthodox qualities of Ehud and Shamgar. Similar to Ehud, Jael is “a lone assassin” who through deception “dispatches her victim” when alone “in a private chamber (hers, in this case, rather than her victim’s).”47 Moreover, like Shamgar, she improvised a weapon from a domestic implement. Like Shamgar, Jael is a non-Israelite. Shamgar, if a Hurrian or a Canaanite, was a member of Israel’s enemies. Likewise, Jael is a member of a Kenite splinter group,
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