UG 11-12{S. Did the Lord send the children of Israel a Deliverer?
M. Yes. There was a man named Jephthah, who was sent away from his home, and his brothers were very unkind to him; but he was a mighty man, and a good soldier; so they sent to ask him to come and be their captain. And he said, Do you not hate me? You have sent me away from my father's house, and why do you come to me now, when you are in distress? And Jephthah made them promise that if the Lord delivered their enemies into his hand, they would make him their ruler. And they promised him at Mizpeh.
S. Mizpeh was the name that Jacob called his pillar, where he made a covenant with Laban.
M. Yes, it meant that the Lord was Judge between them. The first thing Jephthah did was to send messengers to the children of Ammon. And they said, Why do you come to fight against me in my land? And the king sent a message back to him, and said, Because Israel took away my land, when they came out of Egypt: now give me back those lands. Then Jephthah reminded him, that the Lord would not let Israel take their lands, nor the land of the children of Moab; and how they had asked Sihon king of the Amorites to let them pass through his land, but he would not; and how he came, and fought against Israel; and how the Lord delivered Sihon king of the Amorites and all his people into the hands of the children of Israel, as we read in the Book of Numbers. (Num. 21) And Jephthah said, You may go and possess the lands that your god Chemosh gives you, but what the Lord our God gives us we will possess.
S. Was Chemosh the name of an idol?
M. Yes. This was a famous idol; the people of Moab also worshipped Chemosh. And Jephthah said, The Lord shall be judge to-day between us; and he reminded them of how Balak king of Moab tried to conquer Israel, and how the Lord took care of them. But they did not mind what Jephthah said.
Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over to the children of Ammon. Then Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, for he said, Whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I come back in peace, I will offer it a sacrifice to the Lord. So he went on to the battle, and the Lord gave him a great victory. Now he had one daughter, and she was his only child, when she saw her father coming she went to meet him, in great delight, with timbrels and with dances. And when her father saw her, he said Alas! my daughter, you have brought me very low to-day, for I have made a vow to the Lord, and I cannot change it.
Her answer is beautiful: she said, My father, if you have promised anything to the Lord, do to me as you have promised, because the Lord has taken vengeance on your enemies. Poor Jephthah, he did not know the blessed nature of God, that He delights in giving. God did not want Jephthah to make a vow. And his daughter asked him to let her go up to the mountains for two months, that she might mourn about it. And he said, Go. So she went with her companions and they mourned with her.
S. Was it right of Jephthah to make that vow?
M. No, God had not told him to offer anything. It would have been better to be like Abraham, who trusted God's goodness and was ready to offer up his only son when God told him to do so. It became a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel used to go there every year to mourn for the daughter of Jephthah.
S. Was Jephthah a good ruler?
M. He was not so gentle as Gideon; for the men of Ephraim were very angry with him for not calling them to the battle, and Jephthah did not treat them as gently as Gideon did; for he said, You saw that there was great fighting between us and the children of Ammon, and you did not come to help us; and he called all his people together to fight against Ephraim, and they took all the fords of Jordan, so that the Ephraimites could not pass over; and when any of them asked to be let go over they said, Say Shibboleth; but they could only say Sibboleth; and if they did not say it right, they killed them.
Jephthah judged Israel six years. After him Ibzan judged Israel for seven years; he had thirty sons and thirty daughters. After him Elon judged Israel for ten years. After him Abdon was judge for eight years; he had forty sons, and thirty nephews, and they had seventy asses to ride.
S. The story of the Judges is not like the story of Abraham, or of Isaac and Jacob, or of Moses and Joshua: I liked them much better.
M. You are right, it is quite different. The stories you liked so much were about God's people getting into all the good things that God promised to give them; but the story of the Judges tells us of Israel's sin, and of how they lost God's presence among them, because they, forgot God and worshipped idols. They went with the people of the land, and learned their ways.
S. But why does God tell us about it?
M. For two reasons. One reason is, that God wishes to teach us what is in our own hearts, because our hearts are just like the children of Israel's; their hearts were deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and so are ours. God wrote down all about their wickedness in His Book, on purpose to prove to them how bad they were, that not even His good gifts kept them faithful to Him. They took His mercies and forgot, the God who gave them, because their hearts cared for other things more than they cared for God.
S. Is caring for other things more than God, as bad as worshipping idols?
M. Yes, because an idol is only something put instead of God: even a toy might be an idol, if it made you content to do without God.
S. But God is greater than a toy and greater than an idol!
M. Happy is the child who knows how much greater He is; and how much better it is to have the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, than all the beautiful things of this world.
S. What is the other reason why God wishes us to know about the children of Israel's sin?
M. That we may know Him, and His holiness. It would be a dreadful thing only to know how wicked we are, if we did not also know how good and holy God is. God wishes us to know ourselves and to know Him. The book of Judges teaches us how God loved His people: He was grieved at their forgetfulness of Him, but He did ' not forget them, and He never turned away from the poorest child who cried to Him. It teaches us how little we are, but it shows how great and how holy God is.