December 28, 1992

My People

I know I'm not the only one--

We girls who loved Ruth and Naomi

better than Adam and Eve.

I thought I might find my Naomi someday

as I peered into the future of my adulthood

myself then just the age of Ruth, or younger.

For if Ruth found her Naomi after marriage,

then I would find mine

and cleave unto her.

Perhaps I could endure it then:

the boyfriend, the fiancé, the husband--and mercifully--widowhood.

I thought these to be words of truest love

When I wrote in that letter to her:

Whither thou goest, I shall go

And thy people, shall be my people.

But I never sent it.

I wrote without remembering where I had read those words of love

When Deborah Was a Judge in Israel

When Deborah was a Judge in Israel

Sisera of the Kenites threatened the People of Deborah

The Lord said to Deborah the prophet:

         Sisera, the captain of our enemy

         shall be delivered into the hand of a woman.

The women say, How clever is Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite.

Heber the Kenite is her husband

         because her father died when she was a girl.

The women say to each other:

The father of Jael died in his sleep.

Jael is known to our Queen of the Beehives, Deborah.

We have seen Deborah and Jael dancing in the dance of circles.

And when the people pitch their tents in Spring

We have seen the two women pitch their tents near the same pomegranate

and we have seen the two women in close conversation

         near the palm tree.

What do these two women speak of, our Queen and our cousin?

We have seen them even laughing together.

We have heard they knew each other when they were only girls.

When the Judge of Israel was only a girl.

When the father of Jael

         whose name was also Sisera

looked upon his daughter like a pig looks upon seeding wheat.

We have heard that Jael came secretly to the lodging of Deborah

         When the Judge of Israel was only a girl.

"Protect me from the lust of my father," Jael pleaded to Deborah.

Deborah whispered to Jael,

         "Do thus what I will say

         and thou shalt be free of him who harms thee

         do thus what I say with the small things you find in your father's tent."

Deborah said aloud to the girl Jael,

         "Do thus what I say,

         and never forget that I aided thee."

The father of Jael died in his sleep, the women say to each other.

         Though he was not sick, he died in his sleep.

The aunts of Jael who laid out his body say:

         The father of Jael died in his sleep.

So Heber the Kenite went into Jael and made her is wife

         for she was beautiful and clever.

How clever is Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite.

Thirty years passed away;

Then Deborah was a Judge in Israel.

Sisera of the Kenites threatened the People of Deborah.

         Deborah sent for her friend, Jael

And the women saw them in close conversation;

         We have even seen them laughing together.

The women sing:

Blessed above women shall Jael be

The wife of Heber the Kenite,

Above women in the tent shall she be blessed.

Water he asked, milk she gave him;

In a lordly bowl she brought him curd.

Her hand she put to the tent pin,

And her right hand to the workman's hammer;

And with the hammer she smote Sisera,

she smote through his head,

Yea, she pierced and struck through his temples.

At her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay;

At her feet he sunk, he fell;

Where he sunk, there he fell down dead.

And the land had rest for forty years.