Hardly a Pure Example

            We’re often looking for pure examples.  Aside from Jesus, we won’t find one—especially in Judges.  There are aspects of Jephthah’s story that inspire.  Here is an outcast, a man of shameful birth, surrounded by “worthless fellows” (11:3), and he is called to a high and noble task.  That’s inspiring.  It’s is comforting to think that the Lord can redeem us of the ash heap.  “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” (NIV; Psalm 113:7).  We gain hope for our own lives in the way that God uses the most ignoble tools for His purposes.

            Jephthah makes a principled and faithful appeal to the king of Ammon:  “The Lord gave us the land of Gilead 300 years ago.  If your god (Chemosh) was going to give it to you, he would have done it.”  That’s inspiring.  I think we’d all like to have the clarity to see God’s hand in our lives and the courage to say so out loud.

            But Jephthah makes a ridiculous vow to the Lord.  I mean, it’s not as if God needed Jephthah’s bargain to do what he had intended to do anyway.  Before he makes the vow, Judges has already told us that the Spirit of the Lord was on him.  There’s a tragic lack of necessity here.  Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy that we too often participate in.  It might not be quite so blunt as Jephthah, but most of us have said to the Lord, “If you . . ., then I . . .”  Somehow we miss that the logic of our dealings with the Lord is just opposite of that.  (Check out Ps. 50, about the fact that the Lord doesn’t need our sacrifices.)  The Lord says to us, “I have . . ., therefore, you will . . .”  The initiative is always His.

            There’s more to see here:  the tragedy is compounded by the fact that Jephthah has only the one child.  (Note how many of the judges have truckloads of children.)  She laments her virginity, that is, that she has borne no heirs to carry on the family name.  There’s the tragedy that Jephthah followed through on his ill-considered vow and killed his daughter—an affront to the Lord (Lev. 18:21).  There’s the battle with Ephraim, who tries to horn in on the credit for beating Ammon.  There’s the original “litmus test,” that is, the Shibboleth.

            There’s more to see, but let’s focus on Jephthah’s redemption and his faithful claim that the Lord had given Gilead to Israel, and let’s avoid his rash vows.  That will be task enough.