In 2011, archaeologists began excavating the remains of a synagogue in the ancient village of Ḥuqoq, probably built around 400 CE. They found an elaborate mosaic floor with scenes from the Hebrew Bible and postbiblical lore, and have been painstaking uncovering this rare piece of Jewish art ever since. Most recently, they found a depiction of the prophetess Deborah’s battle with the Canaanites, and the slaying of their general by the heroic Yael—a passage (Judges 4 and 5) that was read in synagogues last Saturday. Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan write:

All the other biblical scenes from Huqoq center on men, whether as protagonists or antagonists. More surprisingly, the appearance of Deborah and Yael in the mosaic has no parallel in either Jewish or Christian art from late antiquity and predates other visual depictions of their story by almost a thousand years.

In the top register of the panel, Deborah appears under a date palm whose fronds extend over her head. The figure of Deborah is damaged; only her veiled head and upper right arm are preserved. In Judges 4:5, Deborah performs her work as judge and prophet while sitting beneath a palm tree located between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim.

This image of a commanding Israelite woman seated beneath a palm on the eve of battle would have been particularly potent in the context of a synagogue mosaic from late 4th- or early 5th-century Palestine. Synagogue-attendees might have seen in this image a powerful—and subversive—rejoinder to the anti-Judean imagery propagated by the Romans on Iudaea capta coins and in other media following the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), in which a woman, who embodies the defeated Jewish people, sits in mourning beneath a palm tree, often alongside the arms or armor of the conquered.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.