Judges 12
RileyJudges 12:1-15
—TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPHJudges 11, 12.AS before suggested, we cannot afford to pass over in silence the man to whom the finger of inspiration points with pride, as in Hebrews 11:32. Any name that is righteously associated with Gideon David and Samuel, not to speak of Barak and of Samson, is thereby made immortal; and any study of the Book of Judges that did not linger thoughtfully upon the eleventh and twelfth chapters would be necessarily superficial and unsatisfactory.The introductory sentence of the eleventh chapter arrests the attention of the reader, “Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor”. Such men make history, and over their names intelligent readers, through the centuries, linger; and of their deeds such readers think long and deeply.The life history of Jeph thah as recorded in these two chapters may be expressed in four suggestions—Vice and Jephthah; The Vow of Jephthah; The Victory of Jephthah, and The Virtues of Jephthah.VICE AND Life is a series of paradoxes. The opening sentence of this chapter, “Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor” delights the reader, excites expectation, and prepares him for a feast of high exploits; but when the sentence is complete one stands in amazement and is prepared to expect little of heroism and even to anticipate much of ignobility, for the sentence is thus completed, “and he was the son of a harlot”. Is human life different from water? one of the two essentials to its existence; can it rise above its source? Can the man who is born in sin and of sin be less than a sinner? These are all questions that the full study of these chapters will illumine if it does not adequately answer.But, in their contemplation, let us face all the facts. When we have read three verses we will have compassed the following certainties: He was the child of vice; he was the victim of vice; and he was a leader of the vicious.He was a child of vice! “He was the son of a harlot”, “and Gilead begat Jephthah”. What greater blow can strike the life of a lad than to begin it as a bastard? Such is this handicap that thousands of women have destroyed their own, rather than subject them to the natural indignities, handicaps and hardships that such a birth effects.It is a truth that no matter how one comes into the world he may live gloriously and leave behind him both an honorable and an imperishable name.
The laws of God and the grace of God are both adapted to that possibility. But it is also true that Society is the harsh enemy of the unrighteously born, and in consequence of that fact, of all the burdens that men bear few are so crushing as the burden of an illegitimate birth.
This is the infliction that Society visits upon the harlot; and it is not content to treat the mother as an outcast, it insists upon visiting the same judgment upon the child.Society refuses to look for possible points of approval or conceivable virtues in the woman who has loved out of wedlock. She may have the keenest intellect, the tenderest and most compassionate spirit and even entertain the noblest ambitions, but, it compels her, like Hester in Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” to stand forever in both mock and mark of shame; and her child to endure with her the same. Such then, was Jephthah’s evil heritage.He was the victim of vice. “Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman” (Judges 11:2).He was another Ishmael in experience; he was another Joseph in suffering; he was another David in fraternal contempt. This is another instance of social injustice. Jephthah had no guilt. The fact that his mother was not their mother was not Jephthah’s fault.
Since his was not the sin neither should his have been the shame. Gilead was the culprit, but here that social law, expressed in the Decalogue itself, is wrought into experience and the “iniquity of the father” is “visited upon the children”.The world is filled with such tragedies.
Years ago I knew one of the greatest of America’s ministers. In my student days he was a man of advanced age, but extensive and profound influence. Yet it was told me by those who knew his secret that he had come to his place of power in spite of the circumstance that he was the illegitimate child of one of America’s great but godless statesmen; and that the heaviest burden of his life had been the bearing of that knowledge. He had not been permitted to share the honors to which his own father attained; nor to have any part in the estate left at his dying; nor even to call “brother” and “sister” those who belonged to him by blood. Such was Jephthah’s estate!He became a leader of the vicious. “Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him” (Judges 11:3).It is not an unusual thing for the man that Society has unjustly judged and unrighteously condemned, to turn rebel against the same. So did David (1 Samuel 22:2); and Rezon (1 Kings 11:24); and Adonijah (1 Kings 1:5); and Jereboam (2 Chronicles 13:7); and also Absalom (2 Samuel 15:1).
Few of these had so unjustly suffered as had Jephthah, but each one of them became a leader of a bandit band; and David, at least, like Jephthah, led successfully and became a nation builder.It is thus that successful revolutions have commonly been wrought. The time was when George Washington was looked upon in England as a mere “free-booter”, and “unrighteous rebel”; yet the time came when even England was compelled to yield to his prowess and unite in his praise.
But with Washington it required a lifetime for the first and a century for the second.Jephthah, however, revealed such valor and wisdom that whilst he was yet in youth Israel acknowledged both and proffered him a captaincy; in fact a supreme rulership for the time. In accepting the same Jephthah dictated his own terms. If he went to their aid he should become their head (Judges 11:5-11). He was, nevertheless, an astute statesman. When once he had agreed to lead Israel he immediately laid the foundations for righteous procedure. He prepared a way of peace and proffered the same to Ammon (Judges 11:12-29).
This course on Jephthah’s part is a tribute to his character; a presentation also of his quick discernment of the right; and a basal occasion of the Spirit’s descent upon him and enduement of him.It is not always true that the rebel is the Government’s enemy; he may easily be the Government’s friend. His rebellion may be justified by existing conditions, and even required for their correction.
If his cause is wrong it ends, to be named a “rebellion”; if right, it commonly eventuates in what is later known as “a revolution”.There has always been the impression that still abides, that the man who does not back the national or ecclesiastical program is an undeserving rebel; but history is not more replete with illustrations of any truth than with the absolute certainty that the man who espouses an unpopular cause and in its incipiency accepts the support of the poor and oppressed and outcast crowd, and continues his advocacy of the same until a majority of men have been convinced and join themselves to his colors, is in the end known as the true statesmen. Great causes are seldom born full-blown. The right rarely ever gathers to itself quickly a majority. The valorous man in the initial stages of his plans and opinions is seldom justly judged by Society; time has ever been the friend of truth, and vicissitudes the opportunity of the valorous.THE VOW OF The preceding history has been but preparatory to the real conflict. It found a sort of counterpart in Germany’s request to be permitted to pass peacefully through the territory of Belgium. They knew that the great conflict was to come when France and England and Russia and finally, even America should be faced.
It was, therefore, with this mighty enterprise at hand that Jephthah realized his full dependence upon God.“And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If Thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,“Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31).This vow was suddenly made, but it may not have been suddenly conceived. Such vows were common in Jephthah’s day; common with the heathen nations, and even well-known to Israel’s customs.
It revealed a sense of dependence upon the Divine One.In the further discussion of these chapters, we shall find that Jephthah was rather poorly instructed in the law and ways of the Lord, but as a Gileadite he knew Him and worshiped Him and trusted His power.It is a great thing to know God, even though the knowledge is utterly incomplete. It is a great thing to depend upon Him in the fateful hours of life. It is a great thing to bind ourselves to Him by vows, and it is a great thing to put our trust in His power. It may be a truth, as W. J. Dawson said, “War under the best circumstances is a gigantic gamble, in which the stakes are not only human lives, but national destinies.
No great general, however brave and sagacious he may be, can ever be absolutely sure of success. In all warfare what seems chance plays a great part, often so unexpected a part that all the calculations of the wisest strategy are upset by the event.
Hence the greatest soldier, surest of himself and of his cause, can scarcely meet the dawn of battle without solemn thoughts and noble fears.”But the gambling element is taken out when God is taken in. The element of uncertainty is removed when the cause is truly committed to Him. Chance plays no part when Providence appears, and the humbled captain may be sure of himself and his cause if God go with him to battle.This Jephthah seems to have believed and so based his vow.This vow was seriously made. The language, “If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31), is language remote from flippancy.Beasts do not dwell in houses, with the exception of that domestic favorite, the dog; and he, being an unclean animal, could not have been involved in this vow. It would seem fairly certain that Jephthah knew that some member of his family would become this sacrifice, and there is nothing in this entire story to indicate that Jephthah was a brutal man who could offer a wife, or child, without regret. On the contrary, his rent clothes, his stricken cry, his broken spirit, as recorded in the thirty-fifth verse, all go to indicate his parental tenderness and paternal affection.What, then, is the meaning of this strange procedure?
Necessarily this, that Jephthah knew the significance of the hour to which he had come, and understood what it would mean for the Children of Israel to go down before the face of Ammon. Every war demands domestic sacrifices.
The wife lays her young husband on the altar in the interest of the homeland. The most affectionate fathers, the most tender mothers, contribute their sons to be slain that their people and nation may live. If, in such an hour as that of the late war, a father or mother draw back and try to keep the son at home and alive, when the safety of the country demands his sacrifice, they are hotly condemned, and he must wear that most contemptuous of epithets—“a shirker”. Taking, then, the most serious view of this subject conceivable, that Jephthah’s daughter was actually sacrificed on the altar to God, are you ready to condemn the man who, to save his country, contributed his child? You answer me, “Nay, but we condemn the God that demanded it, or that would even accept it”. But do you?
Do you condemn the God that demanded our sons for the safety of England, and France, and America, in the horrible experience of 1914-18?And yet, further, when did God demand it? This vow, on the part of Jephthah, was a voluntary one.
It was not in response to a Divine speech. It was, rather, the prompting of a human heart in the hour of need. How like our own day, and even our own experiences now! Have you not made many and serious pledges to God when danger was nigh, when destruction was just at hand, when everything dear seemed to be in the balance? And have you not, in your deepest soul, believed that such pledges on your part were acceptable to Him and might secure fresh exhibitions of His favor and proofs of His love? And, then, have you not done the thing that is shamed by Jephthah’s conduct, namely, when God has heard you and has marvelously answered, and has brought you victoriously through, forgotten to pay your vow, and even broken the very covenant that you yourself thought and voiced, and trampled your own pledges under your feet as you turned again to sin?THE VICTORY OF It was a complete victory.“So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands.“And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plaint of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the Children of Israel” (Judges 11:32-33).The Lord does nothing incompletely, and the Lord delivered them into his hands. It was like the victories that had attended Jonathan and his armour-bearer. It was like the victories that had been with David in his best day. It was like the victory that He had given to Gideon. In other words, it was like God! “The children of Ammon were subdued before the Children of Israel”.The promise of your victory and mine is in Him.
We know whom we have believed, and are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him. Faith is the victory because faith brings God, before whose face all opposition flees, and by whose hand all enemies are overthrown.It was a costly victory.“And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dames: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.“And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me; for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back” (Judges 11:34-35).When was war ever waged without this very price?
It meant, then, it means now, and so long as war lasts, it will forever mean the sacrifice of our darlings, our sons, our daughters. Old men excite war and become, themselves, the directors of war; but young men and maidens are the sacrifices on its bloody altar.However, we cannot pass by this pathetic scene of a beautiful daughter, dancing into her father’s presence to the music of timbrels, to break his heart by her vision of beauty, to compel him to rend his clothes and cry, “Alas, thou hast brought me very low, for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back”, without grieving over Jephthah as we grieve over so many men, because like him they know not the ways of God, nor are yet acquainted with the Word of God.How many times we shut ourselves up to judgment when God has provided a path of mercy, because we knew it not? How many people harrow their souls with the sense of sin, and forget the promised salvation? How many people face constantly the final judgment, and even hell, and forget that they need not come into judgment nor endure hell? They know some Scripture, enough to fall under the condemnation of its sentences, and they do not know enough to find the way out. Such is the tragedy of ignorance itself!Jephthah’s vow could have been kept, and his daughter saved at the same time, had he but known the law of the Lord.
Far back in Leviticus 27:1-4, the Lord had revealed mercy’s way:“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,“Speak unto the Children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the Lord by thy estimation.“And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.“And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels”.Poor Jephthah! Anguished, heart-broken, wretched, and undone, because he knew not the Word of the Lord.
The knowledge of that single sentence would have saved him out of his sorrow, and at the same time kept his vow absolutely, for “if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels”. He was rich now! The wealth of Israel was at his command, for he was potentially their king, and all the spoils of the Amorites were his to dispose of as he would, and yet, in the ignorance of the Word of the Lord, his heart is broken, his life is blighted, his very soul within him is stricken, and he is a man who had saved his country by loyalty to the Lord, and knew not how to save himself, in his ignorance of His Word.It was a victory of the cross.“And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.“And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.“And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.“And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,“That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year” (Judges 11:36-40).Men have always condemned this vow of Jephthah, and enemies of the truth have used it again and again to prove that Jehovah was merely another Moloch—a god who delighted in sacrifice and sniffed the blood of the beautiful and virtuous, with pleasure. But all such interpretations are contortions.It is a singular thing that this Book, written millenniums ago, in the day when the ideas of God were supposed to be primitive and deficient, falls not into the mistake of making God responsible either for this vow or for its execution.
There is not a hint anywhere that God either demanded this sacrifice, or delighted in it. It was not because He had required it; it was because Jephthah’s uninstructed conscience suggested and executed.But there is here a true lesson.
The voluntary surrender of this daughter’s life as a sacrifice because her nation had been saved, is one of the greatest adumbrations of the cross known to Old Testament teaching. She died that Israel might live, and Christ died that we might be saved. Her voluntary offering of self was akin to His voluntary offering of self, and the great and eternal principle that the individual must suffer to secure society’s safety, has been so often illustrated that men who talk against atonement prove themselves ignorant of all moral and spiritual values.But we prefer to conclude this study by a consideration ofTHE VIRTUES OF Condemn his ignorance as you like; call as much attention as you will to his heathenish ideas of propitiation, certain great facts remain that give occasion to his name in the galaxy of the faithful found in Hebrews 11.First, he sought not to save himself. If ever a man was tempted to break his vow to God, Jephthah was that man; and if ever a man proved that he would rather die than do it, Jephthah is that illustration. There is no natural father living who would not yield up a dozen lives to save his darling daughter, and, in this instance, “his only child”. So when she died, Jephthah died a dozen times, yea, a hundred, a thousand deaths.
What a temptation to retract! The war is over, the victories are won, the channel of history is changed; even God Himself will not bring back to life the slaughtered hosts of the Amorites. “Why, then, keep my word?” So Jephthah might have reasoned; but be it forever said to his credit, that he did not so.
He had vowed, and he would pay his vow at all cost. What a lesson for the modern man!You were in trouble yesterday! Clouds hung above your head! Lightning flashes were before your eyes! It looked to you that at any moment everything that you held dear might be in ruin, and you promised God that if He would intervene, clear the clouds away, and save you out of impending judgment, you would prove your loyalty, illustrate your love, and never again be faithless, or even forgetful. He heard you; He answered you.
Are you keeping your pledge? Yesterday, I was at death’s door, and I said over and over, “Lord, if I can live, I will do this; I will do that; I will prove myself a servant of Thy will, and never again will I depart from the paths of Thine appointment!” He raised me up; where are the vows?
Am I keeping them at all cost? Am I able to say, as Jephthah said, “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back”? Oh, we men of this twentieth century; ye women of this very day! We; ye, need the history of Jephthah’s conduct—Steadfastness in keeping vows to God. Is that not a virtue?He made an unspeakable sacrifice. When adepts in figures sit down and calculate into the millions, and billions, what a war has cost a nation, how foolish and how utterly materialistic are all such reckonings! What matters it that England is in debt for one hundred years? What matters it that America must be taxed so heavily, and France to the point of continuous and oppressive extent?
Our losses are not our money. That’s a bagatelle, and I don’t care how big the amount was! Pile up your figures—billions on billions—what are they beside the sons that were slaughtered, and the daughters that died? That’s the loss! That’s the true sacrifice. Life, after all, is the gold of the world—its rubies, its diamonds. The world has but one precious possession, and that’s its sons and its daughters. No man, therefore, ever paid a greater price.
No patriotism ever voiced itself in a greater sacrifice than Jephthah made to save Israel. His was the supreme sacrifice!He was enrolled with God’s saints. “And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets” (Hebrews 11:32).Do you mean to tell me now that you don’t believe he belongs there? Then I mean to tell you that your opinion has little value since it sets itself in opposition to Divine revelation. This name, in spite of all the ruggedness associated with its carving, in spite of all the handicaps with which the life linked to it began and continued, is among the immortals, to abide!The Ephraimites may gather themselves together, if they will, and complain of Jephthah as they complained of Gideon. But Jephthah will answer them in words and in war. There are those who think that we should not war with men who do not speak our “shibboleth”, and they tell us that it is a minor matter.
Nay, verily! It is a distinction with a difference.
The man who does not speak the shibboleth of God’s revelation may profess kinship with us, but, as a matter of fact, he is not of us. He may claim that he wants to fight with us, but the truth is that he is ready to fight against us. Jephthah laid the ages under an additional tribute of obligation, when he held these apostate children of Benjamin to strict account for their course and conduct.The Ephraim of today is the enemy of the Church of God. He is known now as “the middle-of-the roader”. He will not take sides with Israel, the fundamentalist; nor will he fight with the Amorite, the modernist. But his chief complaints are against the former, and his chief assistance is unto the latter.
How, then, can it be otherwise than that he, too, should be judged an enemy and meet the fate of them that will not fight for God? Did not Christ say, “He that is not with Me is against me”.
If ever there was just claim, as in the apostolic line of them that are loyal to God, Jephthah holds it. His true successors are those who, like him, seek the salvation of the nation and look for the same through sacrifice, and are ready, if need be, to put themselves upon the altar, for it is still a truth, as Christ asserted, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12:25).