Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Judges: The story of Jephthah

At last I get to the story of Jephthah.  I finished Gideon.  I lightly touched upon Gideon's son Abimelech, but I'm not going to do a blog about him because it's painful for me to read Judges 9.  It's very detailed and rather confusing.  He was not a true judge or king of Israel.  He rose up after Gideon died, killed all his brothers, and tried to rule Israel.  Eventually, they all turned against him and he died. 

Then Israel had peace and worshiped the Lord again.  Tola came from the tribe of Issachar.  Then Jair came from Gilead from the part of the tribe of Manasseh that lived east of the Jordan river outside the promised land.  Jephthah would come from this same clan.

Abimelech was the son of a concubine and was ridiculed by his brothers who were born do Gideon's wives.  Gideon was from Manasseh's tribe, but from the west side of the Jordan.  Jephthah was born to a prostitute and was ridiculed by his brothers through his dad's wife.  They disowned him and he moved out into the wilderness.

But then, Israel began to worship the false gods again, and God send the Ammonites to oppress them.  Jephthah had joined a band of ruffians who wreaked havoc around the country.  He must have done a good job with the thug life.  When the nation of Ammon rose up, his brothers finally found a use for him. 

Jephthah had many flaws, as we will see toward the end of this blog, but he proved to be a godly man.  Much godlier than Abimelech.  He did not seek leadership.  He sought the Lord when he was asked to lead.  And he made his brothers repent of their sins against him before he would say yes.  But he never sought revenge against them.

Despite God's mercy on Jephthah, you can still see that he was influenced by his wayward culture.  Before he went to fight the Ammonites, he made a vow to the Lord that if God would give him a victory, then he would sacrifice the first thing that came from his house as a burnt offering.

The fact that he made a vow in the first place is a problem.  God called him to leadership.  He should have had faith that God would give him the victory without having to make a rash vow.

But here's the bigger problem: the first thing to come out of his doors was his daughter.  His only daughter.  Apparently, when Jeph made his vow, a burnt offering would include a human life.  Not just his dog or a sheep, but his own daughter and only child.  If there had been proper education in Israel, Jeph would know that God abhors human sacrifices and that he drove the pagan nations out of Canaan because they burned their children as sacrifice to their gods.  Why would he do the very thing that broke the camel's back in causing God to say, "It's time," when he drove out the pagans?

Some commentators, including my Old Testament prof from Erskine George Schwab, and one of my favorite bloggers David Murray, conclude that Jeph didn't actually kill his daughter.  They suppose that the story was open ended enough that the girl convinced her dad to not kill her but to let her live as a virgin the rest of her life and serve God in the tabernacle. 

I want to believe that.  I really do.  I love Jephthah and consider him a great guy.  He apparently learned from his father's error and had only one wife.  He tried his best to follow the Lord.  Anything good about him is purely God's grace, which is true for all saved people.  But I somehow think, and Matthew Henry agrees, that Jephthah went through with it and sacrificed his daughter.  Many people were dedicated to the Lord such as Samson and Samuel, but they didn't remain virgins.  Samuel had sons and Samson was a player.  Prophetesses such as Huldah and Deborah were married.  Virginity is not necessarily next to holiness, though it's required if you are unmarried.  Perhaps Jephthette (the Bible doesn't say her actual name) decided to never marry in exchange for her life, leaving Jeph without an heir.  But maybe Jeph actually did kill her.

And one more thing: atheists like to use this story to explain that the God who they don't believe in approves of human sacrifice.  "See, he's a monster after all."  To them, God doesn't exist and he's a monster and they hate him.

But God hates human sacrifice and murder.  He did tell Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but stopped him at the last minute and provided a lamb as a substitution.  That showed Abraham that a sacrifice would be provided for our sins one day in Jesus.  But God did not stop Jeph for some reason, and his daughter seemed willing to go along with it.  But at this time, people had mostly stopped following the Lord and those who did were terribly compromised.  It also seems quite pagan that the Israelite girls would go off for four days every year to mourn Jephthette as a tradition.  Girls that never knew her. 

But God left the story open ended to perhaps conclude that Jeph did the right thing and spared his little girl.  Or maybe God didn't tell us because he didn't want the Israelites thinking that human sacrifice was alright.

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