Scripture: Judges 11: 1-40

Sermon: Jephthah’s Words: His Pride, His Fall.

Topics: Jephthah, pride, oaths, terror, reconciliation, cross

Preached: February 11, 2001.

Rev. Mike Abma

Judges 11: 1-40

Now Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute, was a mighty warrior. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. ²Gilead’s wife also bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah away, saying to him, ‘You shall not inherit anything in our father’s house; for you are the son of another woman.’ ³Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Outlaws collected around Jephthah and went raiding with him.

4 After a time the Ammonites made war against Israel. ⁵And when the Ammonites made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob. ⁶They said to Jephthah, ‘Come and be our commander, so that we may fight with the Ammonites.’ ⁷But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, ‘Are you not the very ones who rejected me and drove me out of my father’s house? So why do you come to me now when you are in trouble?’ ⁸The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ‘Nevertheless, we have now turned back to you, so that you may go with us and fight with the Ammonites, and become head over us, over all the inhabitants of Gilead.’ ⁹Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, ‘If you bring me home again to fight with the Ammonites, and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head.’ ¹⁰And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ‘The Lord will be witness between us; we will surely do as you say.’ ¹¹So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and commander over them; and Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah.

12 Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, ‘What is there between you and me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?’ ¹³The king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, ‘Because Israel, on coming from Egypt, took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan; now therefore restore it peaceably.’ ¹⁴Once again Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites ¹⁵and said to him: ‘Thus says Jephthah: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites,¹⁶but when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh. ¹⁷Israel then sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, “Let us pass through your land”; but the king of Edom would not listen. They also sent to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh. ¹⁸Then they journeyed through the wilderness, went around the land of Edom and the land of Moab, arrived on the eastern side of the land of Moab, and camped on the other side of the Arnon. They did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab. ¹⁹Israel then sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, “Let us pass through your land to our country.” ²⁰But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory; so Sihon gathered all his people together, and encamped at Jahaz, and fought with Israel. ²¹Then the Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they defeated them; so Israel occupied all the land of the Amorites, who inhabited that country. ²²They occupied all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan. ²³So now the Lord, the God of Israel, has conquered the Amorites for the benefit of his people Israel. Do you intend to take their place? ²⁴Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess? And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the Lord our God has conquered for our benefit? ²⁵Now are you any better than King Balak son of Zippor of Moab? Did he ever enter into conflict with Israel, or did he ever go to war with them? ²⁶While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages, and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the towns that are along the Arnon, for three hundred years, why did you not recover them within that time? ²⁷It is not I who have sinned against you, but you are the one who does me wrong by making war on me. Let the Lord, who is judge, decide today for the Israelites or for the Ammonites.’ ²⁸But the king of the Ammonites did not heed the message that Jephthah sent him.

Jephthah’s Vow

29 Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. ³⁰And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, ³¹then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’ ³²So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. ³³He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighbourhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.

Jephthah’s Daughter

34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. ³⁵When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.’³⁶She said to him, ‘My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.’ ³⁷And she said to her father, ‘Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.’ ³⁸‘Go,’ he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. ³⁹At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that ⁴⁰for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

A number of years ago my brother, his wife, and their three children went to China to teach English. They were part of a tiny minority of Anglo-phones in a sea of ethnic Chinese. My brother has red hair. His youngest daughter also has flaming red hair. The other two children have very white-blond hair. Everyone in the family has blue eyes. They stuck out as foreigners. They found themselves often being followed because of their strange looks. People would try touch their youngest daughter’s hair – feeling if it was in fact real.

They also found they also needed to adjust to the rhythm of life.

If they wanted chicken for dinner, they had to go to the market and buy a live chicken. Then they had to butcher it and de-feather it themselves before cooking it. If they wanted soap to use, they didn’t go to a store and buy some bars of Dove. Instead, they had to make the soap themselves.

I can hardly imagine what they had to live through and the adjustments they had to make in living in a rather remote part of China.^[1]

TEXT OF TERROR

In a very real sense, we enter an equally strange and foreign place every time we open the Bible.

Of all the foreign, and frightening stories in the Bible, the story of Jephthah and his daughter must be one of the most strange and scary of all. It is a story that Phyllis Trible calls a text of terror. She also notes it is one of the least preached stories of the Bible. This evening we are going to look at it and struggle with it. Like Jacob wrestling the angel in the dark of night, we will wrestle with this text tonight. Because it is such a shocking story, we will no doubt be wounded. And yet, when we leave this text of terror to limp home, perhaps there may be a blessing buried deep within its horrifying details.

Things do not start out horrifying.

Things start out within the rhythm of the book of Judges.

Again the people of Israel do evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And again the Lord provides a rescuer, a judge.

But in this story the evil seems to have grown in intensity.

And the way the Lord provides a rescuer, a judge, is also very different.

First, the evil. The evil of Israel seems to be of a deeper, more savage kind. The rottenness seems to have gotten into the very core of life. The list of gods the Israelites are chasing after is longer than any previous list. There is also more violence. The enemies not only subdue Israel. They crush her. The word for fight occurs more times in the story of Jephthah than anywhere else in the book of Judges.

Second, the way Jephthah is raised as a judge is peculiar. He is not summoned by God or raised by God as previous judges were. Rather, he is coerced by popular demand. After the Gileadites run Jephthah out of town, they beg him to come back to help protect them from the Ammonites. A strange way for God to raise a judge.

JEPHTHAH

So who is this Jephthah?

I first thought that Clint Eastwood would be the right type-cast for Jephthah. But in reading the story through again and again, I couldn’t help but notice how much Jephthah speaks. In all those Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, Clint never had more than a few lines. But Jephthah is no steely-eyed, cigar-smoking, man-of-few-words outlaw. Jephthah has risen to the top of his band of desperadoes not only because he knows how to handle a sword. He also knows how to wield his tongue. In fact, his keen negotiating skills are one of the first things we notice about Jephthah. Through tough bargaining, he goes from being the outcast son of a prostitute to being the de facto permanent military ruler of the region of Gilead.

Jephthah then goes on to tackle the dispute with the Ammonites. It is one the middle east knows a lot about. The conflict is about land. Who controls it? Who has the rightful claim to rule it?

The Ammonites claimed the Israelites stole the land years earlier.

Jephthah, again showing his skill at negotiating, outlines the Israelite position.

First, the land isn’t historically Ammonite land.

Second, we won it fair and square.

Third, we’ve been living here for 300 years. Why are you causing trouble now?

Fourth, if you still have a problem, let the Lord, the Judge, decide between us – those last words were of course fighting words.

In the words of the Star Wars movie, Phantom Menace, “the negotiations were short.”

The Ammonite king, in fact, refuses to even begin negotiating. Obviously he believed he was in the position of power. Better to conquer and subdue the Israelites by force, then try win it by negotiation.

Jephthah has proved his worth as a diplomat.

Now that war is inevitable, he must prove his worth as a warrior.

And it is here that he begins to stumble, badly.

JEPHTHAH’S STUMBLE

That he was scared before the conflict, that would be okay. Previous judges were scared.

That he wanted some kind of assurance that the Lord was with him, that also had precedent.

But what Jephthah does before going into battle is open his mouth for the third time – it is one time too many. Negotiating with the elders of Gilead and negotiating with the Ammonite king is one thing. But trying to use some of those same negotiating skills as leverage with God is something altogether different.

We live in a world in which words are often taken quite lightly, too lightly.

In Scripture, words are never taken lightly.

Proverbs 18:21 poignantly reminds us, words have the power of life and death.

The tongue has the power of life and death,

Those who love it will eat its fruit.

There is a reason Jesus speaks so straightforwardly about not making oaths in his sermon on the Mount. Making oaths, promises, is serious business.

Who we are is in many ways defined by the promises we make and the promises we keep.

Jephthah was foolhardy in making such a rash vow.

He was also bordering on total unfaithfulness and idolatry in the type of vow he made.

Why didn’t he promise to offer a bull, like Gideon, or a young goat, like Samson’s father would later on?

The very words of the vow allowed for the possibility of a person to be offered.

The very words of his vow reflect how deeply the rot of idolatry had gotten into the bones of the Israelites. The Baals, the Ashtoreths, the gods of the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Philistines, they all worked on a quid pro quo basis. Give something of great value to the gods and you will get something of greater value in return.

Jephthah thought in making such a great promise, God would be obligated to give him a great victory.

Instead of embracing the gift of the Spirit God had given him, he was living in the spirit of the idols of his age.

JEPHTHAH’S FALL

The military victory over the Ammonites follows the pattern of the Judges.

But the victory is overshadowed by what happens when Jephthah returns home.

It is this part of the story that tempts every preacher to go to another text.

It is this part of the story that causes every children’s Bible editor to take out the scissors.

It is this part of the story that strikes us in the gut and makes us wonder what this story is doing in the Bible in the first place.

The end of Judges 11 causes questions to rage in our mind:

Did Jephthah have to carry through on his vow?

Why carry out a such a rash vow?

Isn’t the girl’s life worth more than fulfilling an idolatrous vow?

And did Jephthah actually kill his daughter?

Doesn’t the Hebrew leave it a little open-ended, that he may have given, or dedicated his daughter to the Lord the way Samuel was later given to the Lord?

Perhaps most poignant of all, we ask “Where is God?”

At least in the story of Abraham and Isaac, the Lord intervenes at the last moment and no one dies.

So where is the Lord here?

I wish I could sanitize this story, domesticate it, make it less frightening.

But I can’t.

It is strange, foreign, and violent.

ST CATHERINE MONASTERY

On Mt. Sinai there is a monastery called the St. Catharine Monastery. In this monastery there are two large portraits side by side of both Isaac about to be sacrificed by his father Abraham and the daughter of Jephthah. Why these two? Because they are both seen as Old Testament figures who anticipate Christ. They are seen as powerfully and profoundly pointing to the cross, to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

How can Jephthah’s daughter possibly point to Christ?

Jephthah’s daughter is an only child. The text emphasizes the fact that she is an only child, that Jephthah had no other son or daughter. In these words, can’t we hear echoes of John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son …?”

Jephthah’s daughter is also portrayed as completely innocent. Her father is the guilty one. She dies as the result of her father’s unfaithfulness.

So too, Jesus Christ was innocent. We are guilty. He died as the result of our sin.

It was also words, promises, vows that led to the death of both Jephthah’s daughter and Jesus. The vow of Jephthah rose out of his fear and his lack of trust.

His words of unfaithfulness led to death of his one and only child.

The vows, the promises, the words of the covenant of God,

repeated over and over again in Scripture

rose out of his steadfast love and everlasting mercy.

His words of faithfulness to us led him to send his one and only child

to suffer all his days here on earth,

and to finally die a cruel death on the cross.

That the daughter of Jephthah points to Jesus does not diminish the terror she faced.

Pointing to Jesus does not remove the horror, yet it does connect it in a mysterious way to the Holy.

One thing that still bothers me, that bothers many of us modern people, is the horror and violence of the Bible and the horror and the violence of the cross.

I hate violence. I get queezy at the very sight of blood.

The end of the Jephthah story has the power to make me physically ill.

But … so does the story of Christ being nailed to the cross.

The story of Jephthah’s daughter and the story of the Cross remind us

that the horror of human violence ….

the horror of the holocaust,

the horror of the Rwandan genocide,

the horror of a husband cruelly abusing his wife,

all these horrors can only be dealt with

by having our violence “taken up,’ absorbed into the life of the Triune

God,

to be transformed there into something redemptive,

transformed into reconciling love,

and returned to us as the gift of grace.

This too is a mystery deeper than we can plume.

CONCLUSION

So much of the book of Judges is so very foreign to us.

It is strange, disturbing, and stories like this are truly terrible.

The tragedy of the book is that things go from bad to worse.

But what the people then thirsted for, is what we continue to thirst for … shalom. Peace.

The price of peace is high.

The very nature of sacrifice is death – blood, a price being paid.

It is someone standing in our place.

The innocent one dying so that the guilty may live.

Jesus allowed himself to be ensnared by our violence,

But in his violent death alone we have hope for peace.

For…

He was wounded for our transgressions,

Crushed for our iniquities

Upon him was the punishment that made us whole.

Amen

Prayer:

Again, Lord, we are amazed at how you take the powerless to reveal your power;

Your take the weak to reveal your strength.

We grief for all the violence in the world, past and present.

Our hearts bleed for all the innocent lives that get crushed.

In your mercy, soak all the blood of this world into the cross,

So that it may returned in showers of grace. Amen

1. Note this was China in the mid 1990’s ↑