Judges 7

Chapter 7. Jephthah, or the Faith That Leads to FaithfulnessHis master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21)And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 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.“Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.” “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.” (Judges 11:30-36)The story of Jephthah illustrates with great power two important principles in the divine economy. The first is that God “chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). The second is that God not only wants men who can trust Him, but men whom He can trust. His Birth Jephthah was born a child of misfortune. His father slept with a prostitute, and Jephthah was the result. However, his father was married and had other sons by his wife. Evidently, Jephthah lived with his father’s family, because we read in Judges 11:2 that when these other sons grew up, they forced Jephthah to leave. “‘You are not going to get any inheritance in our family,’ they said, ‘because you are the son of another woman.’” In most persons this engenders a spirit of misanthropy and bitterness, and often develops into hard and heartless unbelief and ungodliness. How natural it is to say, “What is the use of trying? Everything and everybody is against me. The very heavens are hostile, and either there is no God or there is no God for me. Religion is for the fortunate and favored ones. I am a child of cruel fate. Because everyone is against me, I will be against everyone, except if I can use them for my own advantage.” This would be the typical reaction of human character apart from the grace of God. But grace always proves an exception to every ordinary and natural law. And so we find Jephthah, this poor little child of shame and wrong, rising above the unfavorable circumstances of his life and developing into a person with character. He wrung strength and success out of the difficulties that threatened to crush him. And he did it not through his own strength but through the grace of God. As we shall see, Jephthah was a man of deep devotion and intense fidelity to God. His life resembles another eccentric one—Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Jabez’s name signified “sorrow.” That is because he was such a tiny, wizened baby at birth that his mother called him “Jabez,” expressive of the sorrow that he had caused her. And so Jabez was thrown into life as a little miserable good-for-nothing, but when he grew old enough to think and pray, he turned from his distressing circumstances to his God. We read of him this glorious chapter: “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request” (1 Chronicles 4:10). So it was with Jephthah. When all else forsook him then the Lord took him up and, trusting in Jehovah, he lived to have a glorious revenge upon his unkind people by bringing them a blessing instead of the curse that they had given him. We see a bit of Jephthah’s character in the name he gave his new home. He called it Tob, which means “good.” We read of another man later in Hebrew history who called a certain land that Solomon gave him, “Cabul,” which means disagreeable. Poor Hiram looked at his country through the green glasses of discontent, and everything was dark; while Jephthah looked at his land in the golden light of faith and hope, and all was bright. Likewise, God wants His people today to be delivered from sorrow just as much as from sin. Israel’s long and sad failure in the wilderness all began in the spirit of discontent and murmuring. From this point they went on to rebellion and judgment—the loss of Canaan and the curse of God. There is in the spirit of discontent a morbid and unwholesome touch, which is just as defiling as if a person actually had committed a sin. It chills the temperature of the spiritual life and hurts every plant of faith and love. It only takes one frost to destroy the orange crop in Florida; likewise, one touch of morbidness and selfish, sentimental sorrow will not only chill our own spirit, but it will depress everyone with whom we come in contact. It will lower the temperature of a whole community of happy Christians. Let us live in the “land of Tob,” and let us accept the fullness of His atonement. Christ not only bore our sins and sicknesses but our sorrows, too. His Name Jephthah’s name is significant. It means “God opens,” and it expresses the kind of trust that looks to Jehovah to open his way and to clear the path of all difficulties and trials. The valley of Achor became the door of hope and the thorns and thistles of sorrow became the myrtles and the palms of victory. As we continue in our passage, we read that “a group of adventurers gathered around [Jephthah] and followed him” (Judges 11:3). Because Scripture calls these men “adventurers,” we can be sure that they were not the “cream” of society. They were the outcasts of society, and men who had been thrown as waifs upon the current of life and left to sink or swim. And they naturally gravitated to a stronger center like Jephthah. Such companions are not usually conducive to the development of high, moral character. How often do we hear people complaining that others have led them astray? But in the Bible we read that the lives of many of God’s noblest people were molded through the very influence of uncongenial associations. Joseph grew to honor and obey the Lord despite the godless people around him. David, in his exile years, was surrounded by the outlaws and outcasts of Israel. But through the power of their own personality and the grace of God, these men became transformed into his noblest followers and friends and, afterward, were made the princes of his kingdom. That is how the Lord Jesus takes us. We were a company of poor, worthless sinners, and things that were despised; but by the transforming power of His grace, He lifts us into His own likeness and crowns us with His own glory. But we have to go back into the world, into a society of evil men. Instead of letting them draw us down, it is our task to lift them up to the mounts of blessing, where God has set us, in order that we may be the lights of a dark world and shine the brighter through the very darkness that surrounds us. I once heard a story of a Methodist preacher in England who was arrested and put in jail because of his street preaching. He prayed so loudly that the authorities were glad to get him out. There is no place, and there is no society where we cannot live the life of Christ and receive the glory of His indwelling. There is no depth of sin and misery so great but that He can lift us up, and turn our sorrow into joy and our curse into a blessing. Still, He uses “the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). And so the day came when Jephthah’s brothers were glad to send for him to be their deliverer, and Jephthah had the high honor of returning good for evil, and saving the people that once despised him. This is the way that God loves to vindicate us—by making us a blessing to those who hated and wronged us. His promise is, “I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you” (Revelation 3:9). His Faith When Jephthah responded to their appeal and came to their aid, we see in his very words and acts the spirit of godliness and a lofty faith. We are told explicitly that all his words to the people were “repeated… before the Lord” (Judges 11:11). He spoke as if he were in Jehovah’s presence. And when he sent his challenge to the enemy, it was couched in the language of the loftiest faith. He repelled their claim to some of the land Israel possessed by reminding them how they had treated Israel in the wilderness and had forced a conflict. Then God had taken their land and given it to His own people and destroyed the power of Og and Sihon, their giant kings. “What right have you to take it over?” (Judges 11:23) he finally asked them. “Whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess” (Judges 11:24). Jephthah refers the impending conflict once more to Jehovah God. The battle was not the Israelites’ but the Lord’s and such faith can never be confounded. It was not long before Jephthah returned in triumph from the slaughter of his enemies. His country was delivered, his claims vindicated and his enemies destroyed. His Faithfulness But now we see in Jephthah another lesson, not only of the loftiest faith, but the sublimest faithfulness. Before he went into the conflict, he vowed to Jehovah that when he returned in victory, “whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me… will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:31). “When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter,… She was an only child” (Judges 11:34). Now came the test of faith. As Jephthah realized all that his vow meant, he was overwhelmed with grief. But he did not hesitate in his firm and high purpose, nor did his daughter shrink back from the sacrifice imposed upon her. Even she demanded that he fulfill his vow to the Lord. His Vow There have been several interpretations concerning the real meaning of Jephthah’s promise to God and the real fate of his daughter. There are several passages and constructions which can leave no doubt in the mind of a candid reader that it was not a literal human sacrifice that Jephthah offered. His dear child was not slain on the altar like the Ammonites sacrificed their children before their gods of fire. In Deuteronomy 18, Israel is warned against imitating the cruel and wicked rites of the Ammonites, especially in offering human sacrifices. The Ammonites were the very people against whom Jephthah had gone to war. As a godly follower of Jehovah, Jephthah must have been familiar with the commandments of the book of Deuteronomy. For him to directly disobey these solemn injunctions would have been to prove false his character and the meaning of his victory in the name of Jehovah. No, his vow was fulfilled by giving his daughter in all her purity as a living sacrifice of separation and service to Jehovah. In the 13th chapter of Exodus it is clearly taught that all of the firstborn of Israel were to be recognized as the Lord’s, and liable, therefore, to death like the Egyptian firstborn. But instead of their lives being literally required, they were redeemed by the blood of a lamb. The Paschal lamb was offered instead of the life of the Hebrew. But that life was still regarded as wholly the Lord’s, given to Him in living consecration, of which the whole tribe of Levi was regarded as the type. Therefore, the life of the lamb was separated unto the service of the Lord as a substitute for the lives of the firstborn. A Living Sacrifice The lesson we see here is that what God requires from His people is not a dead body, but a living sacrifice. It is much harder to live for God than to die for Him. It takes much less spiritual and moral power to leap into the conflict and fling a life away in the excitement of the battle than it does to live through 50 years of misunderstanding, pain and temptation. It would have been far easier for Jephthah’s daughter to die and be buried among the flowers of spring, the chants and songs of a religious ceremonial and the tears and tributes of the people who loved her, knowing that her name would be forever enshrined, than it would have been for her to go out from the bright circle of human society and all the charms of youth and beauty and domestic and social delight, and live as a recluse for God alone, giving up the dearest hope of every Hebrew woman, not only to be a wife and mother, but to be the mother of the promised Christ. She was also giving up, as was her father, the fond desire of a son to share his honor and his scepter, to prolong his name. All this it meant. This was the sacrifice she made. And so we read that she did not go aside to bewail her approaching death, but she went aside for two months to bewail her “virginity,” the loneliness of her own life. Then she gladly gave her life a living sacrifice to God. There are several other considerations that might be added if necessary to establish this construction of the passage. It is enough to refer briefly to the fact that the phrase in Judges 11:39 is in the future tense, and refers to her future virginity and not her past. Also, the translation of the 40th verse in some versions is that the daughters of Israel went yearly “to talk” with the daughter of Jephthah four times a year. It is not necessary to pursue the argument that the sacrifice was not literal any farther. It is enough for our present purpose that we catch the inspired lesson. That lesson is supreme, unqualified, unquestioning fidelity to God. Jephthah is the man that can depend upon God, but Jephthah is also the man upon whom God can depend. God is looking for people on whom He can depend. He will put the weight of His highest service and His eternal glory on such men. God help us to be people who, as the Psalmist says, “despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts” (Psalms 15:4). His Daughter How tender and beautiful the lesson which this passage gives to the young as well as the old! Just as Isaac stands out in the older story in a light as glorious as Abraham in the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, so Jephthah’s daughter’s sacrifice must not be forgotten in the honor we pay her father. Sweet child of single-hearted consecration! God help her sisters and her followers to be true. Don’t wait until desire will fail and age chill the pulses of ardent youth and the world will fall away from you itself. Rather, consecrate yourself when the flowers are blooming and the cup is brimming and the heart beats high with earthly love and joy and hope. Then it is so sweet, it is so wise, it is so rare, to pour all at His blessed feet, as Mary poured her ointment on His head. Some day you will receive it back amid the bloom and joys of heaven, where they that have forsaken friends and treasures, fond affections and brightest prospects for His dear sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will have the still richer joy of knowing that they have learned His Spirit and understood His love.