The Heart of Jephthah Continued

With a bit more understanding of Jephthah behind us (see previous blog), we can now move forward and tackle some of the theological questions that plague us as we attempt to swallow this unbelievable story.

The broad question that I want to answer is, “what is the purpose of this story in the canon of Scripture?” 

On the surface, this slice of history seems to cause more questions than it answers. So let’s unpack some of the peripheral questions first in order to make headway to the foundational question at hand.

Did God accept Jephthah’s vow and sacrifice?  No.  If we look later into Israel’s history we see a young wise king by the name of Josiah trying to turn Israel back to God.  In his attempts to reform Israel, we read in 2 Kings 23:10 that he defiles Topheth.  Topheth was right outside of Jerusalem and had an altar that was used to offer sacrifices to the false god called Molech (which we talked about last time).  2 Kings says he defiled this altar “so that no one might burn their son or daughter as an offering to Molech”.  Somehow, possibly by the hand of Jephthah, this altar was erected and used for such sacrifices in the land of Israel.  The reason Josiah would have defiled the altar, making it unusable for any sacrifice, would have been because he knew that God would not have accepted these sacrifices; not by Jephthah, and not by anyone else in the land of Israel. 

Listen to Jeremiah’s words as he is the mouth piece of God to the Israelites, “They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jeremiah 32:35)”.

It is clear that Jephthah’s act of sacrificing his daughter was an abomination in God’s sight. 

 

But, one may argue that Jephthah made a vow and he should have kept it, especially since God did deliver the Ammonites into his hand.

I want you to note two things about this.  The first is, God planned to use Jephthah to defeat the Ammonites regardless of Jephthah’s vow.  Judges 11:29 says that the Spirit of God came upon Jephthah.  This happened before Jephthah ever made his vow.  We see another incident of the Spirit of God coming on a Judge, and when He did come upon him, that Judge defeated the enemies of Israel (Judges 3:10).  God was already moving in Jephthah to defeat the Ammonites, and thus his vow was irrational and impulsive.

Secondly, according to God, a man was not held to his word if the vow he made to God was sinful.  Leviticus 5:4-5 says, “or if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that people swear, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and he realizes his guilt in any of these; ⁵ when he realizes his guilt in any of these and confesses the sin he has committed…”

Jephthah truly believed that his oath was honoring to God and that is why he fulfilled it.  But if Jephthah came to the knowledge that his oath was sinful, he was required by God to turn from it and confess his sin to God.  He was not held captive by his words, rather he was led astray by ignorance of the law of God.

The moment Jephthah saw his daughter and was torn by the oath he made to God, he should have confessed his sin to God and made atonement for it through an animal sacrifice and a contrite heart and he would have saved his daughter’s life.

Jephthah’s downfall was that he had a weak knowledge of the Word of God, and allowed the practices of the world to infiltrate his worship to God.  It serves us as a reminder, especially in a world where evil is becoming more rampant and tolerated, that the Word of God acts as our guide in how to worship God, to direct us through the confusion of a world drifting farther and farther away from God.

 

But, this story is not all doom and gloom.  There has to be a specific reason this story is found in the Word of God.  And that reason applies to us today.  This story reveals to us the overwhelming love of our Father in Heaven.  For it is on the backdrop of sin that God’s grace and mercy become more real to us.  What I am about to show you may surprise you, as it did it me.

 

I was reading through the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11 the other day and guess whose name was in it?  No, not mine (mine is in the Book of Life!), that’s right, Jephthah’s!

 

Hebrews 11:32-33 “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— ³³ who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,”

 

What?  I almost screamed “are you kidding me!” when I read it.  But that’s right, by faith Jephthah led Israel, and he defeated the Ammonites. And later in Hebrews, it says, he was commended for his faith.  Commendation literally means to be spoken well of by God.  This mean Jephthah was spoken well of by God because of his faith, not because of what he did do or didn’t do, but because he had faith in God.  Jephthah did a terrible thing, but yet God accepted him as righteous because of his faith.

Incredible!  I need a breather for a minute as I am still processing this. 

Is there any sin that is too heinous that God would not forgive?  If there is, I would imagine it would be killing your own daughter.  But God says no.  Rather, one is justified by faith alone and not by what he or she does. 

What Jephthah did was absolutely horrible, but his sinful act was not beyond the reach of the grace of God.  Jephthah found favor in God’s eyes because of his faith (Hebrews 11:6) and God was pleased with him because of that.

Jephthah is a picture of God’s unfathomable mercy on a fallen person.  God’s love is so deep and so wide, that we can’t even begin to fathom it.  I believe Jephthah is in the Bible to remind us of the greatness of God’s love and mercy that can cover a multitude of sins.

You may feel as if you have done something so terrible in your life that God cannot forgive you. It may seem to you that your faith has been fatally wounded by a sin that is so atrocious, that no one in this world will ever accept you.

Let me encourage you to let the story of Jephthah serve as a reminder of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  You are declared righteous because of your faith in Jesus Christ, not because of what you have done or how good you can be.  You can boldly approach God and take hold of forgiveness and that will set you free from the bondage of the guilt that has followed you through life.

On the other hand, there is only one incident of a child sacrifice that was acceptable to God the Father, and that was Him sending his beloved Son to die as a sacrifice for you on the cross.  His love for you caused him to do what Jephthah should have never done, but was acceptable for God to do. That is because his Son, Jesus, is the perfect Lamb of God who was and is able to atone for your sins.

I have labored to bring you the best answers I could find about the confusion surrounding Judges 11. Regardless if my interpretation of Jephthah is completely accurate in it’s details, this story is a beautiful picture of God’s faithfulness to those who are his children.  If sacrificing your own daughter isn’t enough to thwart God’s love for you, then what is? 

The Heart of Jephthah

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “Hey God”, Jephthah’s petitioned began, “I really need your help right now.  Israel has asked me to lead them against the Ammonites, and I don’t think I can do this on my own.  I’d like to strike a deal with you.  If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give you the first thing that comes out to meet me when I arrive home as a burnt sacrifice.”  There is no recorded response from God in Judges 11.  Rather the narrative plays out and Jephthah does defeat the Ammonites as the Spirit of God was upon him.  Like any soldier coming off the battlefield, he is eager to head home to see his family, fully aware of the vow he made to God. 

 

One can only imagine the blissful scene that quickly turned to anguish as Jephthah arrives home and meets his daughter. I picture Jephthah’s daughter playing with some of the servant’s children in the entry way of his home as she did every day, hoping for her dad to come home safely from war. Finally, to her delight, she notices a group of men on horseback heading her way.  There is only one person it could be, her dad!  As the battalion of men grows closer, his daughter recognizes the man in the front, and runs outside to give her dad a huge hug and welcome him home.  As Jephthah draws nearer to his house, he sees his daughter running towards him with a smile that stretches from ear to ear.  Her excitement cannot be contained, not even by her dad’s dreadful words.

 

“Daughter!  You have made me very sad!  I have made a vow to God that I cannot take back.” Jephthah says with a torn heart. “Father, I am just glad you are home, but you need to keep your vow to God, do to me as you vowed.”  The narrative leaves us befuddled as it says ,”he does with her as he vowed” then goes dark moments later leaving us horrified at what appears to take place.  (You can read the entire passage in Judges 11:29-40).

 

There are so many questions that rattle us when we read this account in Judges.  Did Jephthah actually sacrifice his daughter?  Did God accept the sacrifice?  How could this happen?  Why would Jephthah make such a foolish vow, wouldn’t he had known that it would have been a human that would have come out and met him, let alone possibly his daughter?  Why did he even gamble with a vow like this knowing he had a daughter?

 

Buried in this story is a legion of lessons for the modern reader.  But to get to those lessons we have to begin peeling back the layers of the story to understand what is really going on here.  Let’s start by asking the question, why did Jephthah make a vow like this?

 

To begin, let’s look at the book of Judges as a whole.  Judges is rightly named as Israel resides in the long awaited Promise Land and is governed by officials called Judges.  A Judge was typically a military leader who helped Israel conquer their enemies.  The victory would boost this leader to a prominent political status, yet not quite to the status of a King. 

 

Lacking a physical King, Israel takes up residence and settles down in this land flowing with milk and honey.  Their nation is governed by a theocracy (where God is the King and the Law giver).  As time passes in this Promise Land, Israel begins to drift away from God through the worship of false gods of the nations around them. 

 

With each turn of the Biblical page, comes further deprivation on Israel’s part.  The end of the book of Judges makes a startling revelation of the people of God; “everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.”  Israel had walked away from the law of God and each individual had established a code of ethics based upon each one’s own desire.

 

Jephthah was no exception as he made and fulfilled a vow that was right in his own eyes, yet it would have been an abomination in the eyes of God.  But To fully understand what led Jephthah to make such a foolish vow, we need to understand his history.

 

Jephthah had a rough childhood.  He was the only child in his home that was the child of a prostitute.  His brothers picked on him because of this and eventually drove him out of the home.

 

Jephthah fled to a land called Tob.  We don’t know much about this land except that is was located 13 miles south east of the Galilean Sea on the northern border of the Ammonite territory. ^[1]  Living in such close proximity to the Ammonite territory, Tob would have been influenced by the practices of the Ammonites.  This could be one of the reasons Jephthah was summoned back to Israel to lead them in a military campaign against the Ammonites, as he would have been familiar with their land, practices, and pagan worship.

 

One of the gods of the Ammonites was a god called Molech.  Scripture reveals to us a little about the religious practices of this false god.

 

2 Kings 23:10 says, “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.”

 

It was a religious practice for the Ammonites to offer their children as burnt sacrifices to this god.  I could just imagine how desperate a parent would have to be to appease this false god by killing their own child.

 

As I dig into Judges 11 a bit more I see a man who is desperate to rebuild his reputation among his brothers and desperate to do so by defeating the Ammonites.  After being exiled by his family, he is called back to lead his brothers in war against the Ammonites. It appears (in my opinion) that he becomes anxious not to fail them, possibly to be accepted back into the family he was once shunned by.  In so doing, he makes an irrational vow to God that was motivated from his religious affiliation during his time in Tob by becoming acquainted with the practices of Molech. 

 

Jephthah was a man who knew Yahweh, Israel’s God (as is evident in the fact that Judges 11 says, “The Spirit of God came upon him), but because of his time in a foreign land, he did not know how to worship or commune with the One true God.  So Jephthah resorted to what he was familiar with, the religious practices of the pagans that he was surrounded with while in Tob (Judges 11 also points out that worthless men followed him to Tob and lived with him there. This indicates that Jephthah or these men lacked a knowledge of the Law of God as Israel would have been governed by.)

 

In analyzing Jephthah’s vow, we see hints that he planned to sacrifice a human as his burnt offering.  Here is why I believe this.

 

Judges 11:30-31 says, “And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of from my doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.’” (Italics added). 

 

One reason I believe Jephthah planned to sacrifice a human in this vow are the words whatever and it.  These words can also be translated from the Hebrew as whoever and he, as it is somewhat ambiguous in the Hebrew translation.  If this is the case, then Jephthah would have determined to offer a human as a sacrifice all along.

 

A second reason I believe this is because of the phrase “to meet me”.  This phrase indicates that whatever Jephthah had in mind was a creature or human that had the intent of coming out for the specific purpose of meeting Jephthah and welcoming him back.

 

My premise is that Jephthah was hoping for a child of a servant to come out to meet him.  Regardless if sacrificing a human was his intent or not, he made a foolish open ended vow that included the option of burning a human life.  We see his true intent when his daughter runs out to meet him and his heart is grieved as he sees her as the object of his upcoming sacrifice.

 

Some believe he never sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering but rather committed her to the Lord as a virgin the rest of her life.  If we read this story at face value, we are led to believe that he does offer her as a burnt offering as verse 39 says “…who did with her according to his vow that he had made.”

 

Every time I read Judges 11, I am forced to pause and ponder why God would allow something like this to take place inside of his chosen nation?  He clearly could have put a stop to it by sending a prophet to Jephthah to correct his reckless behavior and thwart his plan to sacrifice his daughter.  But since God doesn’t, I must assume that this story has purpose in the overall plan of the redeeming power of the Gospel.

 

Jephthah is a picture of the state of Israel during his time.  Being located in the middle of the book of Judges, it represents a nation who has amalgamated faith in Yahweh with the religious practices of the nations around them. 

 

In Jephthah’s vow, Jephthah has blended the worship of Yahweh with the religious practices of the god of the Ammonites, Molech.  This picture shows the reader of Judges the state Israel was in.  They were still God’s people, yet their worship of God was polluted with the worship of false gods around them.

 

My conclusion is, Jephthah made a pagan vow to the Holy God.

 

This still leaves us with a slew of unanswered questions.  Did God accept his vow?  What should have Jephthah done the moment he realized his sin?  Was there a way out for him?  What can we learn from his foolishness?  These are all questions I will address next time as we see how we have a merciful God who longs for something much greater than sacrifice and burnt offerings. 

 

My belief is that Jephthah did sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering as he vowed to.  This was not God’s desire for Jephthah, but God still found favor in Jephthah faith. 

 

Read on next time to see the hope we have in a merciful God who looks beyond our foolishness to grant us grace and mercy.

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^[1] Easton, M. G. (1893). Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Twisted

It was the lie that would change the eternities of billions of people over the course of history; the lie that would require God himself to step into time, to offer himself as a living sacrifice, to right the wrong caused by these words. It was carefully crafted by the deceiver to not only appear to be true, but to make God out to be the liar.  The lie unfolded like this:

Serpent: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

Eve: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

Serpent: “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ^[1]

In order to see the full picture, let’s compare this conversation with the one alluded to by the serpent and Eve.

Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” ^[2]

What was the serpent’s lie?  Do you see it?  If not re-read the transcript again until it grabs you. 

Satan’s tactic was to put to test God’s promise that Adam and Eve would die.  And sure enough, the deceiver’s words seemed to prevail against God’s words.  Eve sank her teeth into that fruit and sure enough, she didn’t die.  Yet, to her ignorance, her biological time clock had just started counting down.  But, seeing that she was not dead and beginning to believe that God duped her into thinking she would die, Scripture reports, “she also gave some to her husband who was with her.” 

She now became the catalyst to the serpent’s lie as she handed her husband the poisoned fruit that would curse him and the rest of mankind if he was to eat it.  Sure enough, Adam set aside his ability to critically think, and ignoring the words of truth by God himself, he took a bite of the fruit.

The serpent was very crafty.  He knew that if he twisted God’s words slightly that he could throw Eve into a state of confusion.  Once confusion set in (which revealed itself in Eve not being able to remember God’s exact command), he could then get into her weakened mind and manipulate her to do what he wanted.  God told Adam and Eve that they would surely die the moment they ate of that fruit.  The serpent said they would not die.  Did they?  Not immediately.  Eve bit the fruit but did not keel over, causing her to believe the serpent over God.  But to her unawareness, something changed in her at a cellular and spiritual level that she could not see. 

Physically, her body began to age. Her physical days on the earth were now set in stone. 

Her immune system would begin to operate as never before to fight off death and other debilitating diseases. Her skin was now prone to damaging effects of the sun, revealing.  And tragically, she will witness the death of her very own son, Abel.  I could only imagine the thoughts Eve was plagued with as she buried her son as a direct result of not being more careful in the Garden.

Something else that resulted in her outside of her physical body was her relationship with God.  She could no longer walk and talk with God as she did just the day before.  Now she would need a sacrifice to atone for her sin.  She would need the death of someone else to ultimately allow her to live again.  Death would be the only thing that could turn this curse around.

God’s words are being twisted to this day.  I urge you to stay close to the Words of God that are found in the Bible.  When we set down God’s words and subscribe to blogs and articles and use these as our means of the truth, then we have no way of seeing the subtle lies (innocent or not from the one speaking them) of the enemy.  They are out there.  The enemy is actively looking to deceive you.  Your greatest protection is to know the truth.

Psalm 119:15-16 says, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. ¹⁶ I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.”

Can you make that promise to God today, “God I will not forget your words.”  If so, then you are one step closer to discerning the twisted words of our enemy.

 

 

 

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^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Ge 3:1–5). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

^[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Ge 2:15–17). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

Flipped

It was just another midnight drive home from another elder meeting.  I was heading west on Aurora Rd, letting my mind unwind from a 16 hour day of work. 

The road was dimly lit.  The combined efforts of my fogged over headlights and sporadic street lights were doing the job to guide me home.  As I traveled further down Aurora, I noticed what appeared to be two lights on the side of the road. These lights were oddly placed on the horizon, giving me the illusion that a person was walking with two flashlights.

As I got closer, the outline of a car began to emerge.  The two lights were headlights, and they were oddly placed because the car had flipped upside down and was in a ditch.

But something wasn’t right.  No one was around.  No fire trucks, no police, no bystanders, just a car with headlights on and the radio playing upside down in a ditch.

I immediately dialed 911 and gave them the needed information.  I then began searching the car and the area for a body but couldn’t find one.  I called Mark, one of the pastor’s of Midtown to come out (who beat the emergency vehicles to the scene) to help aid the search, and still, no body, just an upside down car.

The fire department and EMTs eventually showed up and also began to search for the driver of the car, using hi-tech devices such as sonar as they searched the water for any signs of life, still no body; just a car in a ditch on the side of the road sitting on its roof. 

Before long, theories started to emerge from those searching for the driver.  Was the car stolen and the driver darted out of fear?  Did the driver get ejected and was submerged in the water somewhere?  Did he panic and frantically leave the scene of the accident?  It didn’t make sense.  But soon the pieces of the puzzle would begin to fall into place.

At 1:15 am, I was leaning against my truck, watching the first responders do their work (a fine job, I may add!).  They were waiting for the Florida Highway Patrol to pull up on scene, as they continued to search for the driver.  By this time though, they had concluded that the driver was not around and was probably ok.    As I was leaning against my truck, I saw a middle aged woman walk up to the scene.  She was clearly upset at something, as she walked in protest straight to the Fire Marshall on duty.  “There is nothing wrong here!  You all shouldn’t be here!  My son is fine, he just flipped his car and is now home in bed!  I called the tow company about an hour ago and the Highway Patrol.  The Highway Patrol was not interested in coming out because no one was hurt.” She continued in her remonstration as she felt the compulsion to defend her son’s actions, “He was simply driving down the street and lost control.  A tow company will be here soon.”  “Ma’am, you do realize this car is upside down and partially submerged?  This is the scene of a terrible accident in which we are doing our duty to ensure no one is hurt.” The Fire Marshall went on to gather information for his report, and the emergency crews left leaving me standing there with the frustrated woman.  “I’ll wait here until the tow truck gets here, it’s spooky out here this late at night.”  I said to her, in hopes to satisfy my curiosity of what unfolded in those moments her son sent his car rolling into the ditch.  As we conversed, she settled down, and her motherly compassionate side began to emerge as she was able to explain to me that her son just bought this car and had a lot of pride in it.  As she talked, the joy of her son’s safety bubbled to the surface as did the concern of what really transpired between her son and the road that night. 

We can only speculate at the details of how that Subaru ended up on its roof.  But I do know this, from my own 16 year old encounter with a ditch and my car, that her boy was pretty shaken when that car flipped upside down.  I bet you he panicked and didn’t know what to do except run home and ask his mom for help. 

Sometimes life leaves us in that state of panic.  We find ourselves at one moment enjoying a peaceful drive down some road; with the windows down and our hand banging to the beat of the melody rolling through the stereo, and then suddenly, to our surprise, the next moment we are frantically trying to escape out of a flipped car in a ditch on the side of the road.

Being human, you know that life has it’s ways of taking us by surprise.  Perhaps you are suddenly served with divorce papers, or a child revealed to you some dark area of their life they had been hiding for all these years, or maybe an adulterous affair is revealed between your spouse and best friend.

How do you react in those moments when life flips you upside down?  Do you retreat into the solitude of your home?  Do you practice breathing in order to control your temper?  Maybe you recite a Bible verse that reminds you of God’s faithfulness. 

There is one thing we all need in those moments, and that is a friend, the type of friend that Proverbs 18:24 speaks about, “but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”  Finding that type of friend can be difficult to do sometimes, but they are out there.  A true friend knows how to weep when you weep and rejoice when you rejoice.  A true friend can forgive reckless hurtful words from a person who has lost control of life and is striving to get it back.  A true friend is what we all need in those moments.

I can’t point you to your next door neighbor, or the mom you meet at M.O.P.S.  But I can point you to a classical hymn named, What a Friend we have in Jesus.

“What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry Ev'rything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry Ev'rything to God in prayer.”

Sometimes all we can do when life takes us by surprise is turn to our friend named Jesus and carry everything to Him in prayer.

If you are experiencing one of those surprises in life, I am sorry.  I know how tragic they can be.  But can I tell you person to person, friend to friend, that Jesus does care.  He has been by my side in all my twists and turns in life and he wants to walk with you in yours.