We do not love to dwell on the treachery of Jael—­we do not feel called upon to justify the act, although Deborah might well rejoice in the deliverance of her people from so stern a foe, so foul an oppression.  Sisera appears as abject in the hour of defeat as he had been insolent and arrogant and cruel in the hour of triumph.

After Israel was restored to liberty we hear no more of Deborah; but “the land had rest forty years.”  She again returns to her own sphere, to the unostentatious, yet all-pervading usefulness of domestic life.  No honours, no triumphs, no statues were awarded to her.  No monuments seem to have been erected to her memory.  The palm-tree was her fitting memorial; delighting the eye, affording shade, shelter and nourishment; asking and securing nought from man, watered by the dew and rain of heaven, and rejoicing in the beams of the sun—­still pointing to heaven while sheltering those beneath it.

Jehovah seems to permit such examples to stimulate woman to usefulness and to vindicate their capacity; and thus there ever have been and are still Deborahs—­mothers in Israel—­those who, dwelling under their own roof, in the seclusion of domestic life, yet send forth an influence which extends far and wide.

The sound, rational piety of such women, and their lives of humble faith, of prayer, and of consistent usefulness, have often awakened a high tone of religious feeling and led to extensive revivals of pure religion.

Without departing from their allotted sphere, without forgetting the delicacy and proprieties demanded from their sex, they have been greatly instrumental in elevating the moral and religious standard of a community by their faithfulness in reproving the erring and reclaiming the backsliding, while by their kindly sympathy and effectual co-operation, they have aided, encouraged, and, by their prudent, judicious counsel, guided—­the appointed leaders of Israel.

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JEZEBEL.

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Although the family of Jeroboam were soon swept from the throne of Israel, yet those who succeeded still pursued the policy by which he had been governed; and through all the contention and bloodshed which marked the reigns of different dynasties, they all persisted in the idolatry established by him.  “They all did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin, wherewith he made Israel to sin.”  But of Ahab, the son of Omri, it is written that “he did more to provoke the God of Israel than all that were before him.”  He pursued the path which had been marked out by his predecessors when he married, and he found in his wife an efficient aid.  By the strength of her mind, by the energy of her character, by the introduction of an idolatry at once more corrupt and more ensnaring, she did more to complete and seal the apostasy of Israel than all who had gone before her.