ABSTRACT
Judges 4 and 5 present the reader with powerful women who speak, prophecy, and act on their own initiative. Deborah, Jael, and Sisera's mother are all connected by the fate of the Canaanite general. But there is no evidence that women of the Hebrew Bible form friendships through the shared use or deployment of male bodies. Instead, this chapter argues, female characters support the homosocial order by embodying and enacting motherhood. In Judges 4 and 5, women celebrate their sons. They birth warriors for Yhwh and they birth the death of the enemy. Women act on the Israelite deity's behalf, but not as friends, allies, or members of any ancient sisterhood. Rather, they play maternal roles that will serve to engender, underpin, and promote the Hebrew Bible's hegemonic masculinity and homosocial order. Friendship among women is, for biblical authors, irrelevant.
