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Devotion Brought to You by Jephthah
At an apartment (flat) one block to the right of where we lived on the East side resided a family of five—a single mother, a son (Toni) and Toni’s three sisters. Toni’s mum was a whore. I cannot recall any of us ridiculing Toni in his face or even behind his back for his mother’s trade. We never gave him grief over the fact that he was an SOH (son of a harlot). But that does not mean that Toni did not walk around throughout his teenage years and probably beyond with this unshedable cloak of shame. After all, as kids, we interpreted the expression “mama yako ni Malaya,” not as a compliment, but as an insult.
Brother Toni would identify quite a bit with a character in the Scriptures who likewise was a resident of the East side. We know that Jephthah hailed from Gilead, the territory of Israel east of the Jordan, on the ground that the Gileadites of whom Jephthah was one traced their genealogy back to Mannaseh through the person of Gilead and his daddy Machir. Another reason why we know Jephthah was from the East Side is the gist of the back and forth dispatch between Jephthah and the King of Ammonites beginning in judges 11:12 all the way to verse 27,namely, a contested land mass that was located on the East side.
Bro Toni would identify with Jephthah in yet another way. Like Toni, Jepthah was an SOH (Judg. 11:1 ¶ Now Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute,). Talk of walking around cloaked in shame. Add on top of that being disinherited (Judg. 11:2).
I am impressed by Jephthah’s choice not to retaliate against his brothers especially because as the CEO of a company called “bad boys”( Judg. 11:3) he could easily have set the bad boys loose to chew up his brothers. One reason as to why Jephthah did not seek revenge was sooner than later the same people who flung the door shut behind Jepthah found themselves having to roll a red carpet for Jephthah (Judg. 11:4-10).The stone that the builders rejected as become the corner stone!!!
The real lesson that I draw out the Jephthah story is
(a) vow-making:
(Judg. 11:30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, Judg. 11:31 then 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.”)
(b) and vow-keeping
(Judg. 11:32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the LORD gave them into his hand. Judg. 11:33 He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. Judg. 11:34 ¶ 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. Judg. 11:35 When 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.”).
Every June 24th, I am reminded that, like Jephthah, I made a vow,yes to my wife, but ultimately to God.
Jepthah kept is vow:
(Judg. 11:39 At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made).
Will I keep my vow? Will you keep your vow
Robert B. Chisholm Jr. “The Ethical challenge of Jephthah’s Fulfilled Vow.” Bibliotheca Sacra 167 (October-December 2010): 404-422.
A REVIEW
Chisholm frames the discussion on the ethicalness or un-ethicalness of Jephthah’s fulfilled vow as a Q & A of sorts– he poses and then offers his response to five questions. The first question he puts forth is whether or not Jephthah actually offered his daughter as a human sacrifice. According to Chisholm the wording of the vow’s apodosis (Judges 11:31) may not be conclusive that human sacrifice was intended but it does allow for it. The substantive masculine singular participle (“the one going out”) refers elsewhere to persons (Num 22:11; Deut 2:23; Josh 5:4; 1 Sam 17:20; 1 kings 8:19; Jer 5:6; Jer 21:9) and inanimate objects (Num 21:13; 32:24; Deut 14:22). The infinitive “to meet” can refer to people (Gen 14:17; 19:1), animals (Job 39:21) or inanimate beings (Isa. 14:9). To the view that argues that the mention of the virginity of Jephthah’s daughter implies that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, but instead devoted her to a life of celibacy as a servant of the Lord, Chisholm counters that the syntax does not support the reading “He will belong to the Lord, or I will offer him up as a burn sacrifice.” When the verbal sequence used here (a conjunction plus a perfect verbal form followed by another conjunction plus a perfect verbal form) appears elsewhere in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, the second verb never gives an alternative to the first verb. This, according to Chisholm, strongly suggests that Jephthah’s daughter became the Lord’s by being sacrificed to Him as a whole burnt offering or that she was formally declared to be the Lord’s and then as a consequence was sacrificed to Him.
The second question is whether or not Jephthah’s vow can be attributed to divine prompting. Here Chisholm’s concurs with Webb’s conclusion, namely, in marking the vow (vv 30-31) as an interruption, the text’s structure indicates that while victory is casually related to Jephthah’s endowment with the Spirit it is only incidentally related to the vow.
The third question has to do with whether or not God really expected Jephthah to fulfill this grisly vow? In other words, having made his vow, did Jephthah have any option other than to fulfill it? Chisholm disagrees with Block about the applicability of Lev 27:1-8 to Jephthah’s situation. Leviticus 27:1-8 regulates cases in which one person vows another, that is, devotes a person to the sanctuary for sacred services and then for reasons unspecified finds it impossible or impractical to fulfill the vow. Chisholm also disagrees with Niditch about the applicability of the vow of herem (Num 21:2-3, cf Lev 27:28-29) because the word herem does not appear in Jepththah’s vow. Instead,Chisholm sides with Janzen’s explanation: the deuteronomistic history makes it clear that “obeying is better than sacrifice.” Against the background of the deuteronomistic law, the question of child sacrifice is hardly a borderline issue (cf Deut 12:29-31; 18:10)
The fourth question is: Does the narrator’s icy reportorial style, devoid of editorializing, suggest that he justified Jephthah or worse yet, placed the blame for this tragedy on Jephthah’s daughter? Chisholm’s response is that because of the narrator’s focus of interest is Jephthah, the seemingly objective perceptual perspective actually reflects a father’s perspective.
The final question is: If God did not demand this holocaust from Jephthah how then could He let such a thing happen in his name? Do not His inactivity and silence suggest complicity in the crime? According to Chisholm, God’s silence, while puzzling and even disturbing, need not be interpreted in some fatalistic manner to mean that He required fulfillment of the vow or approved of the sacrifice. The reality is that God grants humans the freedom to act against His antecedent or moral will.
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