Reflections on Judges 11

Judges 11 (Contemporary English Version)

1. The leaders of the Gilead clan decided to ask a brave warrior named Jephthah son of Gilead to lead the attack against the Ammonites. Even though Jephthah belonged to the Gilead clan, he had earlier been forced to leave the region where they had lived. Jephthah was the son of a prostitute, but his half-brothers were the sons of his father's wife. One day his half-brothers told him, "You don't really belong to our family, so you can't have any of the family property." Then they forced Jephthah to leave home. Jephthah went to the country of Tob, where he was joined by a number of men who would do anything for money. So the leaders of Gilead went to Jephthah and said,
   
2. (SEE 11:1)
   
3. (SEE 11:1)
   
4. (SEE 11:1)
   
5. (SEE 11:1)
   
6. "Please come back to Gilead! If you lead our army, we will be able to fight off the Ammonites."
   
7. "Didn't you hate me?" Jephthah replied. "Weren't you the ones who forced me to leave my family? You're coming to me now, just because you're in trouble."
   
8. "But we do want you to come back," the leaders said. "And if you lead us in battle against the Ammonites, we will make you the ruler of Gilead."
   
9. "All right," Jephthah said. "If I go back with you and the LORD lets me defeat the Ammonites, will you really make me your ruler?"
   
10. "You have our word," the leaders answered. "And the LORD is a witness to what we have said."
    
11. So Jephthah went back to Mizpah with the leaders of Gilead. The people of Gilead gathered at the place of worship and made Jephthah their ruler. Jephthah also made promises to them.
    
12. After the ceremony, Jephthah sent messengers to say to the king of Ammon, "Are you trying to start a war? You have invaded my country, and I want to know why!"
    
13. The king of Ammon replied, "Tell Jephthah that the land really belongs to me, all the way from the Arnon River in the south, to the Jabbok River in the north, and west to the Jordan River. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they stole it. Tell Jephthah to return it to me, and there won't be any war."
    
14. Jephthah sent the messengers back to the king of Ammon,
    
15. and they told him that Jephthah had said: Israel hasn't taken any territory from Moab or Ammon.
    
16. When the Israelites came from Egypt, they traveled in the desert to the Red Sea and then to Kadesh.
    
17. They sent messengers to the king of Edom and said, "Please, let us go through your country." But the king of Edom refused. They also sent messengers to the king of Moab, but he wouldn't let them cross his country either. And so the Israelites stayed at Kadesh.
    
18. A little later, the Israelites set out into the desert, going east of Edom and Moab, and camping on the eastern side of the Arnon River gorge. The Arnon is the eastern border of Moab, and since the Israelites didn't cross it, they didn't even set foot in Moab.
    
19. The Israelites sent messengers to the Amorite King Sihon of Heshbon. "Please," they said, "let our people go through your country to get to our own land."
    
20. Sihon didn't think the Israelites could be trusted, so he called his army together. They set up camp at Jahaz, then they attacked the Israelite camp.
    
21. But the LORD God helped Israel defeat Sihon and his army. Israel took over all of the Amorite land where Sihon's people had lived,
    
22. from the Arnon River in the south to the Jabbok River in the north, and from the desert in the east to the Jordan River in the west.
    
23. The messengers also told the king of Ammon that Jephthah had said: The LORD God of Israel helped his nation get rid of the Amorites and take their land. Now do you think you're going to take over that same territory?
    
24. If Chemosh your god takes over a country and gives it to you, don't you have a right to it? And if the LORD takes over a country and gives it to us, the land is ours!
    
25. Are you better than Balak the son of Zippor? He was the king of Moab, but he didn't quarrel with Israel or start a war with us.
    
26. For three hundred years, Israelites have been living in Heshbon and Aroer and the nearby villages, and in the towns along the Arnon River gorge. If the land really belonged to you Ammonites, you wouldn't have waited until now to try to get it back.
    
27. I haven't done anything to you, but it's certainly wrong of you to start a war. I pray that the LORD will show whether Israel or Ammon is in the right.
    
28. But the king of Ammon paid no attention to Jephthah's message.
    
29. Then the LORD's Spirit took control of Jephthah, and Jephthah went through Gilead and Manasseh, raising an army. Finally, he arrived at Mizpah in Gilead, where
    
30. he promised the LORD, "If you will let me defeat the Ammonites
    
31. and come home safely, I will sacrifice to you whoever comes out to meet me first."
    
32. From Mizpah, Jephthah attacked the Ammonites, and the LORD helped him defeat them.
    
33. Jephthah and his army destroyed the twenty towns between Aroer and Minnith, and others as far as Abel-Keramim. After that, the Ammonites could not invade Israel any more.
    
34. When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, the first one to meet him was his daughter. She was playing a tambourine and dancing to celebrate his victory, and she was his only child.
    
35. "Oh!" Jephthah cried. Then he tore his clothes in sorrow and said to his daughter, "I made a sacred promise to the LORD, and I must keep it. Your coming out to meet me has broken my heart."
    
36. "Father," she said, "you made a sacred promise to the LORD, and he let you defeat the Ammonites. Now, you must do what you promised, even if it means I must die.
    
37. But first, please let me spend two months, wandering in the hill country with my friends. We will cry together, because I can never get married and have children."
    
38. "Yes, you may have two months," Jephthah said. She and some other girls left, and for two months they wandered in the hill country, crying because she could never get married and have children.
    
39. Then she went back to her father. He did what he had promised, and she never got married. That's why
    
40. every year, Israelite girls walk around for four days, weeping for Jephthah's daughter.
    

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    We cannot presume that all those who became Judges during this period in Israel's history and whom God used to deliver Israel from her enemies were godly, upright people. We certainly could not presume it with Jephthah. Turned away by his family, or at least his brothers, Jephthah left Israel to live on the border of  Syria and Ammon. He gathered around him "some lawless men" who traveled with him. Does this mean that Jephthah was also lawless and he led his men in lawless raids of the land? Whatever the case, he demonstrated leadership with his band of men and evidently established a reputation for military prowess prompting the elders of Gilead to go to him and ask him to be their leader against the Ammonites who were making war with them. He reminded them of their rejection of him, but they insisted on his help with the promise that he could be the leader of all Gilead if he would help them fight the Ammonites.  This seems a rather desperate plea for help, suggesting they would have made a similar agreement with the devil himself just to help them fight the Ammonites.
    
    Jephthah returned to Gilead with the elders and repeated his terms for helping them against the Ammonites in the presence of the people and the Lord. His first act as leader of the Gileadites was not to muster an army but rather to send messengers to the king of Ammon to seek a nonmilitary settlement of the situation.  "But the king of the Ammonites would not listen to Jephthah's message." (11:28) Having failed to negotiate peace, "the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah" to enable him to have victory over the Ammonites. Old Testament experiences of God's Spirit coming on a person was not the same as the indwelling of His Spirit in a believer of Jesus Christ since the coming of the Messiah. The indwelling of God's Spirit in a Christian believer is for the purpose of holy living, but in Old Testiment occurances it was for the purpose of accomplishing a service for the Lord. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, we cannot presume Jephthah to be a godly man.
    
    Before going to war Jephthah made a vow to the Lord that if He gave him victory Jephthah would devote to God the first thing to come out the door of his house when he returned home. Again, this cannot be presumed as a godly act as we might understand it. Even a pagan worshiper of idols might have done the same thing. God did give Israel victory through Jephthah and the first thing out the door of his house when he returned was his daughter. The account of chapter 11 is not clear as to what Jephthah did with his daughter in fulfillment of his vow but one possibility is that he sacrificed her as a burnt offering. This was not a practice authorized by the God of Israel and if this was what Jephthah did would most likely have come from pagan influence.
    
    Though we may shake our heads in bewilderment at some of the practices of Israel during this period, if we are honest we must acknowledge that they are really a mirror of our own thoughts and temptations and, at times, practices.