Readings for today: Judges 10-13
Next week, I am traveling to Ethiopia. One of the things we often do when we are over there is head into the rural areas to visit village churches. As we walk along the dirt paths, we pass home after home. Most of them are mud huts surrounded by a little brush fence. In the evenings, we see children driving whatever livestock (donkeys, chickens, goats, etc.) the family owns into the enclosure. This keeps the animals safe and the house warm. It’s a common custom all over the Middle East even to this day.
Hopefully, this places Jephthah’s tragic vow in context. He fully expected the first thing to greet him when he returned home to be a goat or a sheep or some other animal. He most certainly did not expect it to be his daughter! So when she comes dancing out of the home with her tambourine, he tears his clothes. He instantly regrets the vow he made. He feels trapped. And how does his daughter respond? Her reaction is perhaps the most surprising part of this story. She willingly lays down her life for her father! She faces her fate with courage and faith. Taking two full months to say goodbye and grieve with her friends. Two full months to weep over what could have been.
It’s a story that baffles us on a lot of levels. How could Jephthah sacrifice his own flesh and blood? How could Jephthah’s daughter willingly lay down her life? And where is God in all of this? Is He pleased? The cultural distance between this world and our own is almost insurmountable. However, the key to understanding comes in Judges 11:23-24, “Since the Lord God of Israel has driven out the Amorites before his people Israel, do you think you can just take it from them? You have the right to take what Chemosh your god gives you, but we will take the land of all whom the Lord our God has driven out before us.” You see, everyone in the ancient near east believed in the gods. Dagon for the Philistines. Chemosh for the Amorites. Molech for the Ammonites. Every tribe had their own deity. Make the right sacrifices and you were awarded with great wealth, military might, and political power. Make the wrong sacrifices and your deity would turn his face from you, resulting in defeat. One some level, the same held true for Israel. The further they got from Moses and Joshua, the more they adopted the ways of the Canaanites. Yahweh ceased, on some level, to be the One True God and became just another tribal deity to be appeased. Thus, Jepthah’s tragic choice to sacrifice his daughter and her tragic choice to accept her fate. And the most important takeaway from the whole account is God’s silence. Nowhere does the Bible say God is pleased with Jephthah’s decision.
What about us? We claim to worship the supreme God of the universe. We claim to know the King of kings and Lord of lords. We claim to be heirs of His eternal Kingdom. But do our lives reflect this truth? How much have we accommodated to the ways of this world? Brought God down to our level? Limited Him to our tribe? Reduced Him to our personal deity?
Readings for tomorrow: Judges 14-18