Judges 11:29-40.  Oh, this story.  So yesterday the Gileadites get tired of waiting for God to bring a deliverer to them.  They take matters into their own hands and go find their own guy, Jephthah.  Yesterday mentioned how both Gideon and Jepthah are called valiant warriors.  I also pointed out that it was God who called Gideon that but it was the people who saw Jephthah that way.  To the people Gideon must have seemed like anything but a valiant warrior.  Judges 6:34-40 tells us that after the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon that he gathered all the troops together and then tested God’s orders, twice, to see if he was really supposed to go to war.  In Judges 7:9-15 he was still afraid as he faced 135,000 enemy troops with just 300 men on his side.  So he got one more signs from God and then went to battle.   Again, in today’s story there seems to be some comparison between Gideon and Jephthah.  The first verse of our reading today indicates that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah.   Then Jephthah goes around and gathers the troops.  Or at least I think he did.  The rest of verse 29 sounds kind of like a trip a politician takes around his territory, shaking hands and meeting people, but in verse 33 it says that the sons of Ammon (that means the Ammonite army) were defeated by the sons of Israel.  So it looks like Jephthah had help, although the rest of the battle description only mentions him.   Anyway the Spirit of the Lord came upon him (like Gideon), he gets the troops together (like Gideon), then he prays (like Gideon).  But Jephthah is nothing like  Gideon.  Gideon (at lest at first) was afraid and he totally needed to rely on God.  He was a “worm” like Tola (Check out the post from Friday on Judges 10:1-18)(at least at first).  Jephthah doesn’t seem afraid.  He does pray to God for a victory.  But his prayer is more about what he will do for God if he gets the win rather than asking God for help.  Gideon prayed, “If you are going to work through me give me a sign.”  Jephthah said, “If you let my hand win I will give you…”   That … is where the story becomes “Oh this story”.

What Jephthah promises to give to God is the first thing that comes out of his house if he returns from the battle a winner.  Not just give it to God but offer it up as a burnt offering.  What was he thinking?  First of all it had to be something living because it would me “coming out of his house”.  Sheep, goats, doves, bulls, rams those are the kinds of living things we see being used in the Bible as burnt offerings.  If we get very literal here we can only wonder was Jephthah’s house some sort of zoo?  Or was Jephthah ready to offer up the family dog? Or cat?  (Hmmmm)  Of course by “house” he probably means comes out from his property to meet him on the road.  House is used that way in the Bible.  So we’re back to the family dog at least.  I am self-employed and my office is in my house.  I leave my house to go to work and go back there at night.  When I get home our dog is usually right there at the door or sometimes the gate by the porch whining and waiting for me to come in and pet her.  So the family dog definitely could have been what he had in mind.  But I also have 5 children and when they were little I would often come up and here, Daddy!”  Well that is what Jephthah heard first as he got close to home.   What was he thinking?  Himself no doubt.  “How can I impress God?  What can I do to prove to God that I am serious?”

Jephthah’s one and only daughter comes out to meet him.  And he is very upset.  You may think, “Well Duh!”  But he is probably more upset for himself than for her.  This self made man, this valiant warrior, was about to lose his one and only chance for his name to continue.  His family would end with the sacrifice of his daughter.  Some scholars think that after the two month delay that he just sent his daughter away to be a perpetual virgin in the local shrine.  They cannot believe that he would actually sacrifice his daughter.  In Judges 10:10 at the beginning of the story we saw that the Israelites were serving the Canaanite gods, the Baals.  Canaanaites were well known for offering their children as sacrifices to the Baals.  Aside from his prayer to God there is no hint that he knew God at all.  He knew about gods and was sort of religious but he did not know God.  Leviticus 17 gives options for buying back things that have been given to God.  It seems that Jephthah did not know God had made these provisions.  He had made a reputation for himself, he was a well known valiant warrior, and now by his own hand he would become unknown and unremembered, the end of his family.

His daughter on the other hand is a picture of faith and trust.  Although she was clearly upset she felt that God must be honored above all else, even her own life.  After a time of mourning, she was executed by her father.  It seems kind of interesting that she mourned for her “virginity”.  I don’t think she was sad that she had never been with a man.  Being dead seems a little more important to me than being a virgin.  Maybe she realized that this was more than the end of her it was the end of her family and that was why she mourned.  In a way though it wasn’t the end of her.  The Israelite women set aside four days each year to remember her.

“Oh this story”.  This story is a mess.  You might notice that it’s almost all about Jephthah.  He does this and he does that.  Now God did give the victory, that was God’s plan, He was answering the prayers of the Israelites.  The rest was all Jephthah and the losers (Judges 11:3) he surrounded himself with.  He was “the man” and he was his own undoing; the end of his own family.   That’s what happens when we run ahead of God.  When we tell God to honor our plans instead of asking Him what his plans are.  It’s destructive in our own lives and the lives of those around us.  God’s plan goes on but there are consequences.  There is always a way out though (1 Corinthians 10:13).  After cheating with other gods, the Baals, God allowed the people to turn around and come back.  There is no road you can go so far down that God will not let you come back from, as long as you live there is alway a chance to return to Him (But see Hebrew 9:27).  Some say God is the God of second chances.  I say God is the God of hundreds of chances.  Once a man asked Jesus how many times he needed to forgive someone who acted wrong toward him, “Seven times?”  Jesus reply was, “70 times 7.”  490 times and I don’t think God would ever do less than he asks of us.  We need to be careful to ask God what he wants us to do, even when we are pretty sure we are on His path.

Lord, help me remember to ask You want your plans are.  Help me see and understand.  Help me see the way out when life or my own feelings tempt me.  I know I will fail.  Protect others from my own selfishness and stupidity.  Help me alway return to you.  Thank you for being the God of many chances.

Judges 11:1-28.  Manasseh was one of the twelve sons of Jacob (Israel.  See “What’s in a Name” and “The Twelve?”).  Manasseh had a son named Machir and Machir had a son named Gilead (Genesis 50:23; Numbers 26:29).  Sometimes in the Bible the word “son” is used to mean a descendant like a grandson, great-grandson or someone further down the line.  The word “father” is also used in the same way but going the other way.  Based on Genesis 50:23, Numbers 26:29, and the fact that certain land is called Gilead very early on in the Bible it looks as though Gilead was the grandson of Manasseh.  Our story today is about a guy named Jephthah.  Judges 11:1 says that Gilead was the father of Jephthah.  It also tells us that his mother was a prostitute.  In this case the use of “father” probably means his actual direct father, a man named Gilead.  However this is not the same Gilead that the land was named after.  Just like we name our childern after  people in our past, like a grandfather or uncle, people in Bible times would do the same.  The land of Gilead was on the east side of the Jordan River in the territory that was given to Manasseh.  Eventually the name also referred to land that overlapped Gad’s territory just south of Manasseh’s.  Gilead was a fertile hill country.

Yesterday we left the story with two groups of people, the Philistines and the  Ammonites, invading the land of Israel and more specifically the land of Gilead.  The Ammonites live in the desert  region east and south-east of Manasseh and Gad.  The Philistines originally lived on the coast to the west but some had moved inland and now lived in the land of the Ammonites.  The story started out like the typical cycle in Judges.  “The people again did evil in the sight of the Lord” (The sin part of the cycle). God allowed them to be invaded and taken over (The servitude part of the cycle).  They begged God for help (The supplication part or the cycle). But then the cycle was interrupted, God said, “No.”  The people beg some more and got rid of their idols and started to honor God again.  We learned that God was very upset by their troubles, He felt compassion for them.  Then at the end of yesterday’s reading the Ammonites (No mention of the Philistines from this point on) invade again.  Setting up the story for God to save (The next step in the circular pattern or cycle that we have seen in the book of Judges).

But again there is a break from the cycle.  In the first cycle in the book of Judges the people cry out to God, God “raises up” a deliverer, “the Spirit of the Lord” comes on the deliverer, the deliverer fights off the invaders, and then there is peace in the land until the deliverer dies (Judges 3:6-11).  Six verses and it’s done.  No stopping.  No delays.  Boom and it’s done. Thirteen verses into the current story and we are already at a second  break. Instead of  ” and God raised up a deliverer and the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah”  and “Jephthah kicked some Ammonite behinds right out of Gilead and there was peace”, we get to meet the deliverer.  Of course the action hasn’t alway moved as quickly as it did with the first couple of Judges.  And the author does not always say “and God raised up”.  In the story of Gideon we stopped and met Gideon and saw how God moved him from threshing wheat to threshing the invaders (well actually the invaders beat themselves up at first).  In Gideon’s story the author doesn’t say “and God raised up Gideon.”  But God did tell Gideon to go and deliver his people (Judges 6:14).  There was something else that God said to Gideon that is important to today’s story.  In Judges 6:12 God calls Gideon a valiant warrior.  As I mentioned before Jephthah was the son of  guy named Gilead and a prostitute.  We also find out that he was a valiant warrior.  But notice that it was not God calling him that, we are just told that he was one.  Next we saw his half-brothers deciding that they didn’t want to share their inheritance with him so they basically kicked him out of the family and he moved away.  This all happened before the current invasion.

As far as the Gileadites knew the action up to this point had gone this way:  Sin’  invasion by the Philistines and Ammonites’  prayer for help,  no savior but God did speak to them and told them to go talk to the gods which they had chosen to serve and see if those gods would save them,  More  prayer along with getting rid of their idols and honoring God.  Now a second invasion by the Ammonites and fighting begins.  But no deliverer is being sent.  So the sons of Gilead send for their own.  They go get Jephthah, the man with a reputation as a great warrior, and offer to let him be their leader if he will fight for them.    He too tells them no.  He too mentions how they had pushed him out of their lives.  But then he takes the job as long as he gets to be their ruler when it’s all over.  They swear, with God as their witness, that they will make him the boss and actually set him  up as their leader.

It’s interesting in verse 11 when Jephthah speaks all his words before the Lord at Mizpah.  According to Judges 10:17 Mizpah is where all of the troops have gathered to fight.  There is no record of any place set up for honoring God in Mizpah.  Notice that it says he spoke all his words to God.  In the past stories in Judges God has spoken His words to the deliverers.  So we see no more asking and waiting just planning and telling, informing God of the plans they had all made.  Jephthah then sends a message to the king of the Ammonites asking, “What is it between you and me that you are invading my land.”  The Ammonite king’s reply, “Hey, your ancestors took some of my land away when they came up from Egypt.  Give it back.”  Jephthah then gives the other king a history lesson reminding him that the Israelites were passing through peacefully when they were attacked by the Moabites (Ammonites and Moabites are descended from two cousins or brothers, Moab and Ben-ammi.  The were both sons of Lot by his two daughters (Genesis 19:36-38)).  The Moabites and Ammonites were closely connected.  That battle by the king of Moab represented the Ammonites too.  In that battle God gave the victory to the Israelites and the territory became theirs.  Jephthah then tells the king that they each have what their God or god has given them and that it’s been this way for 300 years.  Jephthah then tells the other king that that king is the one who is wrong and that God will decide who’s right.  The Ammonite king blows Jephthah off.

Jephthah’s answer at the end reminds me of God’s answer when the Gileadites first cried out for help, “Hey you don’t want me to be your God any more go get help from your new gods.” (Judges 9:13-14).  God even reminded them of some of the same history Jephthah used in his argument.  What the Gileadites and Jephthah failed to see though is that God still wasn’t their God.  They had replaced their idols with the idol of self.  They were not worshipping little pretend gods but God was not running their lives they were.  Notice that Jephthah calls it his land and wants to know what is up between him and the other king.  If you have read “The Old Testament Connection” you know that the Old Testament tells us the specific part of history about God fixing our relationship with Him.  We see in the Old Testament God moving history forward for His purposes according to His plan.  To be sure God will decide.  The question for us is will we be part of what He decides or part of what we decide.  It’s interesting that earlier in the story the people had begged God for help but were still worshipping their false gods.  You can’t have it both ways.  Jesus said you cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).  In that case he was talking about another idol we can have, money, but the idea still applies to the idol of self.  In Matthew 12:30 Jesus told some religious leaders of his time that if they were not for him they were against him.  There is no sitting on the fence, we are either for God or for something else.  So who’s your boss?

Lord, truly be the lord in my life.  Help me not relpace you with me.  When I get impatient help me listen to your Spirit, I know He wants to produce patience in my life.  Help me wait and listen.  Help me trust.  Thank you with your patience toward me.  Let my life be about your plans not my own.