The relief on the Capitol Building in Lincoln, Nebraska underscores Deborah’s strength and effectiveness as a leader. Her prophetic authority, firmness, and conviction in the face of oppression are all expressed by her position and posture. Like the other representatives of the Law carved on neighbouring panels, her figure is upright, stately, indomitable—she epitomizes righteousness. She is the just Judge, the advocate of the naked and desperate female Victim. In her fortitude and integrity Deborah is structural; she is the right-angled, solid and cement-brick foundation for the Law. She represents the fundamental architecture of Israel, and she is part of the edifice of the Law that was still being built in the twentieth century and beyond. The Iron Lady in Deborah refuses to compromise on what she knows is right.

The theme of the architectural virtue of woman—or perhaps, the feminine virtue of architecture—re-emerges in the illustrated visions of Saint Hildegard. A synagogue in literal terms is a building; abstractly and etymologically it is a ‘bringing-together’ (from the Greek, synagōgē). Parallel to the Christian conception of the Church, Synagogue is personified as a mother in Scivias. It is she who keeps the family of Israel together; she is its structure and its embodied unity, its patient nourishment and growth. That Moses the Lawgiver takes pride of place in her bosom is surely significant; it is Synagogue who protects and sustains the covenant of her people Israel. It is her body which keeps her family from dissolution and destruction.

In contrast to typical medieval personifications of Synagogue, which tend to be rather more pejorative, the Scivias portrait envisions her as ‘honorable and dignified’ (Gutjahr and Zátonyi 2011: 49). Hildegard writes that:

The Synagogue is of great size like the tower of a city, because she received the greatness of the divine laws and so foreshadowed the bulwarks and defences of the noble and chosen City. And she has on her head a circlet like the dawn, because she prefigured in her rising the miracle of the God’s Only-Begotten and foreshadowed the bright virtues and mysteries that followed. (Sciv. I.5:135)

For Hildegard, Synagogue can carry Moses, Abraham, and the other prophets, and for this she is to be honoured. But she cannot ultimately save them. She can only prepare them for redemption. Like Synagogue, Deborah is in Christian interpretations like Hildegard’s an image and seed—a ‘prefiguration’—of greatness, but not its fulfilment. While she successfully gathers together many, though not all, the tribes of Israel, the peace and unification she manages to achieve will last for only forty years. She is not perfect; her efforts are not her own to fulfil. In this, too, Deborah is a mother and a citadel—resilient, but impermanent.

Completing the cycle, Jacopo Amigoni’s Jael and Sisera captures the brutal and destructive side of feminine conviction. The image is gripping: with a suggestive smile, kind eyes, and a motherly figure, Jael calmly hammers a tent peg into her victim’s head. Her reasoning is ambiguous; her personal stake (no pun intended) in the assassination is not clear from the text. She is not an Israelite, and it is not explicitly stated that Sisera made any unwanted advances towards her (Judges 5:24). Nevertheless, the killing of Sisera has militaristic and sexual undertones. It is directly consequential to the war, and it symbolically inverts and revenges the rape—both real and metaphorical—experienced by victims of violence and oppression. Perhaps surprisingly, Jael’s unflinching slaughter of her enemy is highly praised in the Song of Deborah, precisely for its utter mercilessness. The praise moves from Deborah to Jael—woman to woman, vanguard to victor.

Like the figures of Deborah and Synagogue at the Capitol and in Scivias, the figure of Jael by Amigoni also evokes strength, conviction, and even maternal care in her bearing. But the former establish order, build, create, sustain; the latter makes chaos, deconstructs, destroys, abandons. Jael overturns the normal rules of hospitality; the home turns into the battlefield, the wife into the assassin, and the means of shelter into deadly weapons. Like the tent itself, Jael appears to be defenceless, vulnerable, and welcoming. But the ‘most blessed of all tent-dwelling women’ is in reality a fortress. So disguised, she defeats the general—and the man—at his own game.

The same female battle cry that rouses the virtues of courage, conviction, and righteousness can lead to acts of deception, seduction, vengeance, and brutality. Hidden in Woman is a fearsome power to achieve victory, no matter what it may take. In other words, the lady is of iron.

Awake, awake, Deb′orah!
    Awake, awake, utter a song! (Judges 5:12)

References

Gutjahr, OSB, Hiltrud, and Maura Zátonyi OSB. 2011. ‘Die Synagoge’, in Geschaut im Lebendigen Licht—Die Miniaturen des Liber Scivias der Hildegard von Bingen, 1 (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag)

Saint Hildegard (1098–1179). 1990. Scivias, trans. by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press)

Haller, Robert. 1993. ‘The Drama of Law in the Nebraska State Capitol: Sculpture and Inscriptions’, Great Plains Quarterly, 13.1: 3–20