THE chiefs of Gilead turned Jephthah out of their city with a great deal less reason than the Athenians had for ostracizing Alcibiades, or the Romans for banishing Cicero. Those who would serve their fellow men must be prepared for that kind of treatment occasionally; was not even David expelled from Jerusalem, and a Greater than David driven outside its walls to be crucified?
But in Jephthah’s case there was some reason after all. It is true that he was a good man, and a brave and patriotic soldier, but there was a stain upon his birth; the public sense of morality had to be vindicated, and it is much easier to vindicate it at the expense of a man like Jephthah, than by irritating restraints on one’s own conduct.
However, when the people of Gideon presently found that they were on the verge of destruction by the Ammonites, they remembered with dismay that they had turned out the only man who could save them. So their elders wait on the outcast, and urge him to come back and help them, offering him the position of permanent ruler if he will do so. Jephthah answers them somewhat coldly, for he was proud and stern, like all strong but sensitive natures that have been unjustly dishonored, and who have not that courteous grace which characterized Gideon.
The elders, however, conduct themselves very humbly, and they are certainly to be commended, not blamed, for their patriotic endeavor to make amends for the former injustice. It was “inconsistent,” but there is an honorable as well as a dishonorable inconsistency. Jephthah returns with them to the place of approaching disaster as a “man of opportunity,” a help in time of trouble.
There is a certain massive strength of simplicity and sagacity in the way in which he addresses himself to the dangers. He “uttered all his words before the Lord,” taking counsel from the source of all wisdom and strength. He then sends a firm, temperate dispatch to the Ammonites, requiring the reason of their warlike approach; and on their replying—in a much more civil tone than was usual with them, for they were a peculiarly coarse and brutal people, and foully insulted even David’s friendly ambassadors—he argues the merits of the case calmly with them, doing all he can to avert the horrors of war; for a man like this one does not carry a nation into war “with a light heart,” though he knows that an appearance of weakness in such cases will only increase its likelihood. The enemy, however, refuses to withdraw, and Jephthah heads the Hebrew army, joins battle, and defeats him with a prodigious slaughter.
But he is chiefly remembered for his dreadful misfortune. He had taken a vow that if he were successful in the battle, he would offer up for a burnt offering whatsoever came forth of the door of his house on his return.
When after the battle he approached his home, “behold, his daughter came out to meet him, with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child.... and it came to pass when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas! my daughter, thou hast brought me very low ... for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.” The conversation between them is infinitely pathetic. At the end of two months “he did with her according to his vow.” However this matter is viewed it seems a frightful misfortune, and more or less in keeping with the adversity which had awaited him in his birth, and apparently followed him in sorrow and banishment through life.
It is strange that some people seem to be born to a peculiar (outward) misfortune. The mystery is comfortably explained by many prosperous persons—whose bread never falls on the buttered side, and who preach the gospel of Success—by saying that such persons have only themselves to blame; that they are usually more or less shiftless and awkward. Even if that were true, it only pushes the misfortune a little farther back, for is it not an evil to be constructed with such a left-handed tendency? There are those, too, who are: born blind, or otherwise infirm; it cannot be said that they brought it on themselves.
It is a mystery, for instance, to think of a man like Carey translating the Bible for the Hindoos, whilst horrified by the shrieks of his poor mad wife in the adjoining room. And such mysteries admit of no easy and complaisant solution; we must wait; some day we shall know more of the reason why there can be such a paradox as an upright life persistently unfortunate.
But this much we can see even now; that only in such lives can the very highest phases of faith (and perhaps of love and hope too) be revealed. If Paul had not had that thorn in the flesh, there would not have been the same meaning in those words, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” If Milton had not gone blind, we could not have had that tranquil and serene expression of resignation and trust in his sonnet―
“When I consider how any light is spent
Ere half my clays in this dark world and wide—”
in which he draws this final consolation for all sorrowing and weakened souls—
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Can the celestial beings look clown on a more beautiful sight than on one like the ancient pilot lifting up his weather-beaten face in the tempest, and calling to the great God of the sea, “You may drown me if you will, or you may save me if you will, but whatever comes I shall keep my rudder true;” and this when he knows that a slight turn out of the course of truth will give him present peace and security. It is one thing to adhere to the course of Right against human opposition and natural obstacles, and quite another when, in addition to these, providential succor seems all on the side of the enemy, and God Himself seems adverse; when men and devils have done their worst, and the heart cries, “My God, my God, why hast THOU forsaken me!”
And here is where the high heroism of Jephthah was revealed. If he had been a less conscientious man he could have saved himself from this frightful disaster; or he could have saved himself if he had been a more enlightened man, for he would have known that such a sacrifice could not be pleasing to Jehovah.
But that is all beside the question. We must take the facts as they existed. His own hand loosed the tempests that destroyed his hopes, and that he did deliberately and because of his (misguided) sense of rectitude. Yet he still held on his course and kept his rudder true, saving and governing the nation.
But we must not be surprised if we find him somewhat hard and embittered by these untoward events. He never had the suavity and grace of Gideon, and when the Ephraimites came up as was their way, after the battle was over, and abused him for not waking them in time to take part in it, instead of giving them a soft answer, as Gideon did, to turn away their wrath, he struck them down with rough, heavy blows.
They certainly deserved a severe lesson, for their impudent vanity was astonishing; but it cannot be denied that it was hard treatment to slay so many of them for pronouncing Shibboleth Sibboleth, as the Sicilians slew the French for pronouncing the word Ciceri instead of Chicheri. But those were dark times, and we do not now approve of sticking swords in our brethren for dropping an H in a party Shibboleth; well, that is, unless it is our own particular Shibboleth, of course.