An Analysis of Edward Crutis' The Blessing of Jael
Edward Lewis Curtis has written many articles, journals and entire books filled with biblical interpretations. This specific interpretation is a smaller piece titled “The Blessing of Jael”. It can be found in The Old Testament Student, Vol. 4 on pages 12-18. He picks out Jael in particular to analyze, pointing out the unique circumstance of her divine approval after committing murder. Curtis ultimately explains that because the story took place in the Old Testament, Jesus had not yet brought the word of God to man. In the context of her time, Jael did the right thing. She was a believer in Jehovah, and Sisera threatened her religion. She killed him out of righteousness and love for God and her people.
Toward the end of the text, Curtis compares the work of a detective that brought down the Molly Maguires to Jael’s slaying of Sisera when he says, “Much of the detective system, against which we hear no protest, even from religious bodies, is carried on by the same means, call it treachery if you will, by which Jael ensnared and slew Sisera. And who will condemn the detective, who thus acting, was the means of bringing the murderous clan of the Molly Maguires to justice?”¹ The Molly Maguire’s were a small group within an Irish labor union that claimed to be advocating for Irish immigrant coal miners, but instead used violence to terrorize and murder the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. They were often described as a terrorist force.²
James McParland is the detective that Curtis alludes to in his interpretation. McParland spent two and a half years undercover as a Molly member. The evidence that he acquired over this time was used in court and eventually led to the hanging of the Molly Maguires. The Mollies were active from the 1860’s until the 1870’s. Curtis would have been hearing about this throughout his high school and college years, as he graduated college in 1879. The Mollies were harassing and killing other Americans and therefore the detective was considered to have done the right thing by turning in damning evidence, even if it meant the hanging of these men. This was similar to the way he describes Jael’s killing of Sisera as justified because she was avenging her people.
“As a nearest kinsman must avenge his fallen brother, so every child of Israel in a crisis like this was called upon to avenge the lord’s people”.³
Curtis was born in 1853 and deceased in 1911.4 The industrial revolution which began in 1760 and settled down around 1850, was the transition to the world of manufacturing and offered high paying jobs in factories. Before this, many Americans worked on the farm, men and woman sharing roles and therefore seen as equals in society. As the revolution progressed, women were offered lower wages and fewer employment opportunities, and when children became required to attend school, someone had to be home with them before and after they went to school.5 By the time Curtis was born, all of these factors had turned into gender norms. The man must uphold a very masculine role and the woman a very lighthearted and confined role of femininity. Jael’s slaying of Sisera would likely not be possible in the 19th century, because violence strictly fell under the category of masculinity. There is no doubt that Curtis’ immersion in this sexist culture had an impact on the way he discusses Jael. After Curtis quotes Deborah’s song from Judges Verses 24-27, he begins by discussing the praise that Jael receives from Deborah for fulfilling the prophesy and killing Sisera. He goes on to say, “Its praise also was to the just humiliation of the men of Israel who had hesitated when bidden to go forward, and to whose leader Deborah had been forced to say: ‘The journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honor’ ”.7 Curtis is pointing out that it was men who were originally granted the opportunity to kill Sisera and earn Deborah’s praise. But when these men hesitated, Deborah is “forced” to hand the task over to Jael. By using the word forced, Curtis is making it sound like the first option would have been the better one. But because that could not be, she had no choice but to hand the honor over to a woman. When Curtis says “Its praise also was to the just humiliation of the men of Israel…”,8 this is possibly to say that it would be humiliating for men to see that a woman had done the task that they could not.
A few pages later Curtis clearly points out the inequality that he understands to be between man and woman, specifically their methods of killing. He says, “Had she been a man as a true believer she would have cut him down with the sword, as Samuel slew Agag, because he was an enemy of Jehovah…”.9 and again when he says, “Jael could not slay him openly with the sword. She was a woman, and she took a woman's method. She detained him, and then lest perchance he might up and away before she could deliver him into safe hands, she slew him”.10 He decides that it is because she is a woman that she chose to kill Sisera the way she did. He uses very clear and simple language when pointing out that she is a woman and a woman cannot do what a man can do.
The fact is that we will never know for certain what Edward Lewis Curtis had in mind while writing his interpretation of Jael’s place in the book of Judges. But by looking at the unique aspects of his writing and comparing it to his historical context one can attempt to make some educated guesses.
1. Edward L Curtis, "The Blessing of Jael," The Old Testament Student 4, no. 1 (1884): 16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3156298?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
2. Peter A Weisman, “The Molly Maguires,” 1999, http://www.lehigh.edu/~ineng/paw/paw-history.htm.
3. Curtis, “The Blessing of Jael.” 14.
4. Caryn Hannan, Michigan Biographical Dictionary 1 (St. Clair Shore, MI: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1998), 177-178. https://books.google.com/books?id=aWR5HJJktL8C&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=edward+lewis+curtis+biography&source=bl&ots=lW973IVwLn&sig=hFgRl_w8kVG1M062iZ941vNPy7Q&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=edward%20lewis%20curtis%20biography&f=false.
5. Joseph A. Montagna, “The Industrial Revolution,” 2015, http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html.
6. Curtis, “The Blessing of Jael.” 12.
7. Ibid., 12
8. Ibid., 12
9. Ibid., 14
10. Ibid., 15