"God the Judge Be Judge, II”
Judges 11
June 11, 2006
by C.W. Powell
“1 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he [was] the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jeph-thah.
2 And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou [art] the son of a strange woman.
3 Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.”
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1. Gilead in the tribe of Manasseh and Reuben was to the east of the Jordan River, belonging to the land that the 2 ½ tribe inherited in what is now the nation of Jordan. Gilead was a great man mentioned in the book of Numbers who gave his name to the region. The father of Jephthah was perhaps a descendant of the original Gilead.
2. It was a mountainous region rich is spices, especially an ointment made from the sap of an evergreen tree, much treasured for its soothing and healing properties.
3. It was more than three hundred years since Israel had conquered the land from Og, the king of the Amorites. Og had conquered half of Gilead from the Ammonites; the other half was possessed by Balak, the king of Moab who had tried to pay Balaam to curse the children of Israel. You remember the Balaam had blessed Is-rael, for God would not let him curse Israel. Balak was left in possession of his land, the land of Moab. You also may remember the Moab and Ammon were brothers, the children of Lot the nephew of Abraham who were born after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
4. Jephthah was the oldest of his father’s sons, but he was the son of a harlot, or more properly a concubine. His brothers hated him and cast him out illegitimate. What they did was certainly unjust, but a great many in-justices are done by those who impose their own ideas on the Bible. The law in Deut. 23 said that the Am-monite and bastards could not enter into the congregation of the Lord until the ten generation. There are two ways that Jephthah’s family might have erred in this regard.
a. (1) The law spoke only of worship, not inheritance. Jephthah ascribes their action as coming from hatred, not from zeal toward the law or piety toward God. More probably from hatred missed with greed.
b. (2) The word translated “bastard” might mean a child of incest in , and if that is the case then the law would not have applied to Jephthah. But careful bible exposition was lacking then even as now, and all sorts of stupid and wicked things are done in the name of the Bible.
c. But the brothers, in order to keep God’s blessings to themselves, cast out Jephthah, though he was more worthy than they, and a man of true faith, as Hebrews 11 includes him among the heroes of faith, which means that he looked for the coming of Christ, because that is what faith means in Hebrews 11.
d. Laws such as the ones in Deut. 23 were for the purpose of isolating Israel from the rest of the world to preserve the nation until the coming of promised seed. All these laws and prescriptions are done away in Christ and the church is not supposed to huddle together with one another in order to pre-serve the treasure of the Gospel, but are commanded to go into all the world and preach to every crea-ture. The Gospel doesn’t need to be preserved, Jesus has already declared that it is a rock upon which He will build the church and his word will never pass away. You and I are not be be disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and community, but to be leaven in the loaf, the light of the world, and the salt of the earth.
5. Jephthah fled south-east from Gilead into the Land of Tob and became renowned as a man of valor, just as David was to do later when he fled from Saul. Jephthah, like David, became the leader of a band of impover-ished men, for that is the meaning of “vain” or empty. They traveled with Jephthah, probably living by their swords, which was legal to do to the lawless, outlaw peoples who inhabited those wild regions. They honed their skills as warriors, and Jephthah became famous as a mighty and brave man.
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1. Jephthah was a good and godly man. He realized that he could win the victory only if God enabled him. Jephthah had the words of the Moses and probably the book of Joshua, and there was great literacy among the Jews even then. Jephthah in his speech to the Ammonites displays a solid knowledge of the book of Joshua—he wasn’t some savage out of the hills; he also knew the sacred nature of a vow.
2. So the deal is made, and Jephthah is made ruler and took his oath of office before the Lord in Mizpah. I don’t know if the ark and the priests were there; I suspect that the ark was never at Mizpah, but perhaps some priest of the Lord were there to here the vows of Jephthah. There is no notice of a sacrifice.
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1. Then we have a long account of the negotiations between Jephthah and the king of the Ammonites. I will not go into the details, but Jephthah had the better of the discussion, showing that the Ammonites had not real claim to the land. They had lost it to Og and the Amorites three hundred hears before and then Israel had taken it from Og. Even the king of Moab had not contested Israel’s claim in all those years.
2. The clincher was this: “The Lord the Judge be judge.” This was the same argument that God had used against Israel in chapter 10. It is God who will make the decision, and Jephthah was content with that.
3. When Israel had departed from God, they put their inheritance in jeopardy, for it was God who had given them the land. If there is no God then every man’s claim is equal to every other man’s claim Every man be-comes judge in his own case. His own ideas and interpretations become the measure by which he assaults his friends as well as his enemies. He will constantly be at war defending his cause.
4. Very few men are content to have God judge his cause. They battle and war and contend because they feel that their cause will fail because they don’t really believe that their inheritance comes from God.
5. Jephthah knows that he will have to go to war and he will willing to do that, but he also knows that the issue of the war is in the hands of God.
6. Gideon knew this too, and that is the reason he was so careful to be sure of the mind of God before he went to war with Amalek. This was the reason for the fleeces—He wanted to be absolutely certain that it was God who was guiding him. He knew that the LORD the Judge is Judge, and you cannot make straight what he has made crooked, and you cannot make up that which He has made lacking. The kingdom of God is not built upon the labor and contentions of men, but on the activity of God in the world.
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1. How wonderful are these words: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah.” He was a good and godly man. The conventional wisdom is that the vow he made was a rash and intemperate one, but I am not so sure. Do these words mean that Jephthah made his vow under the power of the Holy Spirit? It seems to mean that.
2. But what was his vow? There are two parts to his vow: “It shall surely be the Lords” and “I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” The commentaries interpret it two ways; the two parts mean the same thing, he will give what ever comes out the door to the Lord in a burnt offering. The words can be interpreted that way, and Matthew Henry takes them that was and it is certainly logical then to say that Jephthan actually offered his daughter as a sacrifice on a bloody altar.
3. The other way is also grammatically possible: “It shall be the Lord’s” and “I will offer it up for a burnt offer-ing [if appropriate], an elliptical clause where something is understood. In favor of the last interpretation I would very cautiously say that the arguments are stronger. I say cautiously because for 1500 first years of the church, the consensus was that she was offered as a bloody sacrifice. But….
2. It is implied that the vow was made under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
3. Jephthah’s grief that she was his only daughter and he would be without children without a lineage.
4. She went into the mountains to bewail the fact that she would never know love or children. If she was to be sacrificed, it would seem that she might want to spend those days with her family.
5. Ex. 13 speaks of the redemption of the firstborn, who was holy and offered as a sacrifice to the Lord, but a substitute was offered for the human firstborn. Even the firstborn of the unclean animals were redeemed, for they could not be offered as sacrifices. “ So the principle was that things that could not be offered as sacri-fices could be dedicated to the Lord by the offering of a substitute.
6. The Bible speaks of women who served God night and day in the tabernacle and in the temple. And she [was] a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served [God] with fast-ings and prayers night and day.” (Luke 2:37 AV) This is perhaps the weakest part of the argument because the Bible says very little about women who were dedicated to fasting and prayer. But Anna is one. Jeph-thah’s daughter could have well have been another one. Women could be Nazarites as well as men, so women could be dedicated to God.
7. This best fits the character of Jephthah, who was not a rash man or an impetuous man. He was careful in his negotiations; he took time to go to Mizpeh and make his vows. He was a man of God.
8. It best fits the character of God, and no greater contrast can be made than the one between the worshippers of Moloch who made their children pass through the first, and the worship of God who rejected all human sacri-fices.
9. No priest would have dared to have offered such a sacrifice, and all of Israel would have arisen in horror at such an act.
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1. We have seen that God does not always work in the same way and use the same type of instrument. He would abase the pride and arrogance of men. The vessels that He uses are of his own choosing, and we are to humbly follow the working of His Spirit. Jephthah was moved by the Holy Spirit to the deliverance of Israel.
2. There is much of grace and faith in the Old Testament, but faith in the Old Testament is the same as what is in the New: It is in terms of the promise of Jesus Christ. It says in Hebrews 11 that these Old Testament saints, of whom Jephthah was one, “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:” (Hebrews 11:39 AV). What promise did they not receive: the promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus, that be-ing reserved for the church, the better thing
3. Calvin says: I know that Chrysostom and others have given a different explanation, but the context clearly shows, that what is intended here is the difference in the grace which God bestowed on the faithful under the Law, and that which he bestows on us now. For since a more abundant grace is poured on us, it would be very strange that we should have less faith in us. He then says that those fathers who were endued with so remarkable a faith, had not yet so strong reasons for believing as we have. Immediately after he states the reason, because God intended to unite us all into one body, and that he distributed a small portion of grace to them, that he might defer its full perfection to our time, even to the coming of Christ. … Let us then know that we are doubly and treble ungrateful to God, if less faith appears in us under the kingdom of Christ than the fathers had under the Law, as proved by so many remarkable examples of patience. By the words, that they received not the promise, is to be understood its ultimate fulfillment, which took place in Christ,
4. A vow is a very serious thing and is not to be taken lightly. God has no pleasure in fools, and the sacrifice of fools is to vow and not pay the vow, according to Ecclesiastes. Vow bring a heavy responsibility upon us to ful-fill the vow. This is the reason for the solemn warning in the Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.” To take God’s name in vain is to swear to do something and then not to do it. This is the very heart of impiety and blas-phemy, to act if God does not hear you or observe what you do; to think that you can pretend something before men, and your heart be very far away from God. Your marriage vows, your baptismal vows, your ordination vows, your obligations are sacred before the Lord and God will not hold you guiltless for a light and careless atti-tude toward them.
5. It is no excuse if fulfilling your vow cost you a great deal, even to the sacrifice of your only daughter. However you read this passage, Jephthah gave up his only child in order to fulfill the vow that he made to the Lord, even though it brought great suffering and heartache to him. The service of the Lord may cost you very dearly. The gift of grace and mercy is completely free to you, but being a Christian will cost you everything, for this is the meaning of taking up your cross and following Christ.
6. You can do nothing to earn your salvation, but following Christ will cost you everything. God the Judge Is Judge. I think that Jephthah’s vow was a supreme act of trust in God, for he left it up to the Lord to decide what his offering would be. I think Jephthah was a very great man of faith. So was his daughter, who yielded herself to her father’s will. There are things more important than life and happiness.
May God bless you.