Ever work so hard at something, just to loose? This is what gambling is, working at something so often, and winning minuscule amounts compared to one’s overall losses. It’s reported that those with a gambling problem owe between $55,000-$90,000 dollars in gambling debt (https://www.jpost.com/special-content/which-country-has-the-highest-gambling-losses-721830#). If you were to average out all the gambling debt per year for every person in the US, it would come to about $633 per person (https://gamblingriot.com/how-much-does-the-average-person-lose-in-a-casino/). Some statistics show that the US incurs 100 billion dollars in gambling debt per year.
Gambling is a way to win to lose. You might win here and there, but in the long run the house always wins.
And it’s this idea of having wins but ultimately losing, that brings us back to our series where we’ll be picking it back up in the last verse we covered last week in Judges chapter 10, starting in verse 18. And as we open up to Judges 10:18, lets recap where we are in our summer series.
Within the book of Judges we have seen three themes put into a generational case study to see the macro themes of Scripture play out over about a four to five hundred year snap shot. These three themes are, God’s faithfulness in the face of humanity’s unfaithfulness, obedience leads to a right relationship between God and humans, whereas disobedience leads to turmoil in every facet of human life.
The book of Judges also shows us, through the history of Israel, how little sins lead to major catastrophes on both a personal and societal scale. In fact, the ramifications of the Judge Gideon, are felt through his son, and the next three Judges. This works out to about a hundred years of consequences from the actions of one man.
So when we move into Judges 11 today, we will continue to see how the sin of Gideon effects the Judge Jephthah. Now as we read together Jephthah’s story, we’re going to look at it in two sections, one this week and one next week. In this first section, because it’s forty verses long and in three events, we’re going to read parts of the passage so that we understand the full scope of the idea that’s being relayed. So let’s read starting in Judges chapter 10, verse verse 18.
“10:18 And the people, the leaders of Gilead, said one to another, ‘Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.’
“11:1 Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. 2 Gilead’s wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. ‘You are not going to get any inheritance in our family,’ they said, ‘because you are the son of another woman.’ 3 So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.
“4 Some time later, when the Ammonites were fighting against Israel, 5 the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob. 6 ‘Come,’ they said, ‘be our commander, so we can fight the Ammonites.’
"7 Jephthah said to them, ‘Didn’t you hate me and drive me from my father’s house? Why do you come to me now, when you’re in trouble?’
“8 The elders of Gilead said to him, ‘Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be head over all of us who live in Gilead.’
“9 Jephthah answered, ‘Suppose you take me back to fight the Ammonites and the Lord gives them to me—will I really be your head?’
“10 The elders of Gilead replied, ‘The Lord is our witness; we will certainly do as you say.’ 11 So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and commander over them. And he repeated all his words before the Lord in Mizpah.”
What we just read is the introduction to the one and only judge of section three of the book of Judges. And there’s a lot of ungodly, and underhanded things that go on here. In fact there are six ungodly things that we see.
The first of these ungodly actions comes in verse 18 of chapter 10. Every single judge that we have seen before has been called by God to be a part of God’s saving work in Israel. But in this case, we get no mention of God calling Jephthah, rather it is the elders and people of Gilead who seek after a warrior to lead them. In doing so, they make a vow to put this person as a head, or ruler over them.
This leads us into a brief introduction of Jephthah, the one who will be their head. But we’re told that he is conceived outside of marriage by a prostitute. This is our second ungodly action. His father brings strife to his family by going outside his marriage bed. And though this doesn’t disqualify Jephthah from being used by God, if his father would have kept his marriage vows, what follows in Jephthah’s life, wouldn’t have occurred. Yet even in this ungodly action Gilead does right by the boy and makes him a full son, which means he will be entitled to some portion of inheritance.
But after Gilead’s death, his other sons drive Jephthah away so that he will not be a part of the inheritance, another ungodly action.
In this pseudo exile, Jephthah makes a name for himself as a warrior, mostly like an outlaw, because the people that he surrounds himself with are called worthless men or in the ESV, scoundrels . Now this is very interesting because Jephthah is called a mighty warrior, which is the same terminology that God used of Gideon mighty (gibbor [ghib-bore’] man of valor/warrior (chayil [khah’-yil])] (6:12). In this way, the Holy Spirit, through the writer of Judges, is connecting Jephthah back to Gideon. But Gideon isn’t the only person that the writer connects Jephthah to. By telling us worthless men surround this soon to be judge, the writer is connecting him to Abimelek as well, who also surrounded himself with worthless men (9:4). So what we’re being directed towards, is that Jephthah has both the military prowess of Gideon, but also the moral bankruptcy of Abimelek. This is because the word worthless, is the Hebrew word, req (rake) which means vain and empty of morality. So the man we’re dealing with, isn’t a moral man, though he is a fighter.
That’s four of the ungodly actions with three left to go.
The fifth action is the elders again. Though their vow was to make the man the head or king over them, they offer Jephthah a military command instead. This is probably because Jephthah was a morally corrupt man and they didn’t want what happened across the river with Abimelek to happen to them.
But when Jephthah rejects this offer, and is then given the true offer of being made head over the people, he jumps at the chance. This reinforces the reality that Jephthah is out for self interest not to help the people of Israel.
This bring us to the final ungodly action. In verse 11, God is invoked as a witness to the elders and Jephthah’s decision, but no where do we see that God agrees with this decision. Rather what we’ll end up seeing is that God works within this ungodly alliance, which gives us another example, that even when we do evil, God works it out for his purposes.
Now with the establishment of who Jephthah is, we move into his communication with the Ammonites who are the aggressors in this situation. Now we’re going to just read the final six verses in this communication, because what the gist of it is, is that the Ammonites claim that the land the Israelite tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan river live on, was stolen from them. Jephthah retorts that if that were truly the case, they should have done something about it earlier and not waited 300 years. So a part of your homework this week, is to go back and read this section.
It’s at the end of this that we pick it back up in verse 23, “23 ‘Now since the Lord, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, what right have you to take it over? 24 Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess. 25 Are you any better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever quarrel with Israel or fight with them? 26 For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time? 27 I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the Lord, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.’
“28 The king of Ammon, however, paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him.”
In Jephthah’s words he is trying to accomplish two things. First he is setting out a reason why the Ammonites do not have a justifiable reason for going to war. Second, he is goading them into that very war. He is calling their reasoning false, and that their god Chemosh (key-mo-sh) needs to give them the land if they are really entitled to it. In other words he saying, “We’re not going to give the land back, so if you want it, come and take it.”
But it’s Jephthah’s last words to the Ammonite king “Let the Lord, the Judge, decide (v.27c)…” which leads into the Spirit of the Lord showing up for the first time in the story. These are the best words Jephthah could say, even though they might not come from a place of faith, but as a final way to goad the Ammonites into war.
So let’s read the final part in this first section of Jephthah’s story, starting in verse 29.
“29 Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: ‘If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.’
"32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.
“34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, ‘Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.’
“36 ‘My father,’ she replied, ‘you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But grant me this one request,’ she said. ‘Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.’”
Like I said earlier, this is the first time that God’s Spirit shows up in the story. It shows that though Jephthah is a morally corrupt man, God still uses him to bring an end to Israel’s punishment, that we talked about last week. God’s opening up a path to victory is emphasized in the directional language that’s given. We’re told that Jephthah “…crossed…passed through…he advanced…” This language all points to God bringing a swift victory. Which in fact, we see when we’re not even give details of the battle later on.
But though God has opened this path of victory up before Jephthah, instead of glorifying God, he tries to manipulative God into giving him victory. In a sense, being the one who brings about the victory by his actions, instead of by the power of God alone. This was a typical pagan way of dealing with deities, something that we can be guilty of doing today. In Jephthah’s vow, he goes beyond what he should. He makes a rash vow of sacrificing whatever comes out. The vow is left ambiguous as if to say, whether human or animal it will be given as a sacrifice.
What happens next is that we see the swift victory occur and now the vow is looming as the focal point of what happens next; to which the question arises, by the Lord bringing victory over the Ammonites by Jephthah, did God accept Jephthah’s vow?
The answer is no, and there’s three reasons why. First, God had already stated in places like Deuteronomy 12:31 where it states, “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.” So God has forbidden the Israelites to sacrifice their children, which carries with it the idea of a rejection of all human sacrifice.
Second, God has not spoken since his rebuke of the nation in chapter 10:11-14. This shows us that even though God is working for the victory of his people, it is more because of his grace towards them, than their own actions. We need to remember that God didn’t raise up Jephthah to be a judge, the people did. And through this entire story, Jephthah has done morally questionable things, because we’ve already been told he is a morally questionable guy.
Thirdly, as we talked about with Gideon a few weeks ago, just because the Spirit of the Lord comes upon someone, it doesn’t mean that God overrides that person’s choice. Hence what Paul says in places like Romans 7:22-24, “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Paul is speaking of a war between the good law of God and the evil law of sin. In other words, there can be the righteous work of God happening, at the same time as the sinful act of man. So the vow that was made and the repercussions of that vow, reinforce what we said last week, a seemingly small sin, in this case a rash vow, can lead to horrible consequences of our action. So no, God is not accepting Jephthah’s vow by bringing victory, because the victory was already in the works before the vow.
What’s interesting about this whole situation is that again, it is a woman who is the most godly. The daughter’s words in verse 36, “Do to me just as you promised…” echo the words of Numbers 30:2, “If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.” This again is to disgrace and dishonor someone who is out for themselves.
Now there’s debate on what happens with the daughter, is she killed or is her sacrifice perpetual virginity. From what we know of Jephthah and his own moral bankruptcy, I believe the implication is that he indeed killed his daughter, thinking it’s what God wanted. Though he really didn’t know his God at all.
This brings us to what we should walk away with this week.
Rash and manipulated actions, leave us more broken than we can imagine. This is why we’re told in places like Ecclesiastes 5:2, “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.”
And it’s why Jesus taught in Matthew 5:33-37, “33 Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”
In the last several weeks, we seen men trying to build there dynastic kingdoms through their sons. In Jephthah’s story we see someone who sought his own kingdom, but lost the only child he had to his own rash actions.
The disciple of Jesus is not to seek their own will but the will of the Father. It’s because of this that Paul writes to his protege Timothy in the final chapter of his first letter, “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness (1 Timothy 6:11).” We are to seek the things of God, and flee from this things of ungodliness. In this way, we will know our God and do the things of God, unlike Jephthah, who at almost every turn seemed to walk in a different direction than the pathway of God.
My challenge for you this week is to re-read this section in it’s entirety and context, knowing the end to this morally bankrupt man’s actions. Then seek God to make corrections in your own life, before a time when those actions lead to horrific outcomes. Don’t let the time slip away where your actions cause irreputable harm to those around you. Don’t make rash decisions, speak rash words, or sacrifice others for your personal gain. And if you have, repentance and seeking forgiveness is the cure to it.
We are called to be a people who are humble, let us be that people who seek the Holy Spirit to bring us closer to the God who is gracious towards us. Amen.
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