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Holy Week resources and reflections

Jephthah’s violent leadership (June 18, 2017)

UNIFORM LESSON FOR June 18, 2017
Scripture passage and lesson focus: Judges 11:4-11, 29-40

Commentators have pointed out that the book of Judges provides a sobering account of a fragmented and deteriorating society that turned to foolish and impulsive leaders. What makes these stories especially difficult to understand is that these leaders are often described as people who were filled with “the spirit of the Lord” (Judges 11:29). Having the spirit of the Lord did not always lead to godly results.

Our passage describes one of the worst of those leaders, Jephthah, an illegitimate son of Gilead and an unnamed prostitute. After being ostracized by his family, he became a powerful leader of a band of outlaws. In our story God calls this regional warlord to be a leader.

Judges 11:4-11 —Israelites turn to Jephthah
By now the pattern in the book of Judges is familiar. When Israel abandoned God, their saddened and angry God gave them into the hands of their enemies and years of oppression resulted. Hoping for deliverance from their desperate situation, the Israelites turned for help to the very outlaw they had rejected. They appealed to Jephthah for help. Clearly a crafty negotiator, Jephthah made a deal whereby he would be named the leader of the Gileadites if God enables him to defeat the Ammonites and thereby deliver the Israelites from oppression.

Judges 11:29-33 — Jephthah’s foolish vow
Eager for God’s help, Jephthah recklessly vows that if he is victorious, he will make a burnt offering to God of whoever would come to meet him after the battle. Making a vow to God was a very serious religious commitment in ancient Israel. Certainly Jephthah must have known that if he won the battle, he would be welcomed home as a hero by one of his own people. Nevertheless, he vowed to show his loyalty and gratitude to God if he won the victory.

With God’s help, Jephthah and his companions inflict a “massive defeat” on the Ammonites. The Gileadites are freed from oppression. This sets up a dramatic conflict. Will Jephthah carry out his foolish vow?

Judges 11:34-40 — A vow fulfilled
The victorious Israelite leader marched back into his hometown of Mizpah. There he was met by none other than his daughter, his only child, who came to greet him the way victors were traditionally celebrated with music and dance. Unable to forget his vow to sacrifice whomever welcomed him after his victory, Jephthah showed his grief by tearing his clothes. Then he blamed his daughter by saying, “You have become the cause of great trouble for me.” Evidently he was convinced that he must not fail to perform what he had vowed to do if he was victorious.

Seemingly without hesitation, the daughter urged her father to carry out his vow. All she asked was for an additional two months of life to wander in the hillsides with her companions to “bewail her virginity.“ This puzzling request may mean that she wanted to publicly lament her childlessness or her impending death. The author adds the explanation that this was the basis for an Israelite custom of an annual four-day lament in honor of Jephthah’s daughter. There is no record that such a custom was ever observed.

According to verse 39, Jephthah did carry out his foolish vow. Although it is stated obliquely, there is no doubt that Jephthah sacrificed his own daughter as an offering to God. In the words of scholar Phyllis Trible, this is indeed a “text of terror.” Trible points out that Jephthah’s vow is “an act of unfaithfulness. Jephthah desires to bind God rather than embrace the gift of the spirit.” Although some commentators have attempted to mitigate the heinousness of Jephthah’s crime (and he is even listed as a hero of the faith in Hebrews 11:32), his tragic sacrifice of his own daughter reflects the misogyny prevalent in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East.

Violent death continued to be part of Jephthah’s story. He led the Gileadites in battle against their fellow Israelites from Ephraim. Their distinctive speech pattern (their mispronunciation of “shibboleth” as “sibboleth”) enabled the Gileadites to identify them as they fled. According to Judges 12:6, Jephthah’s men slaughtered 42,000 of them.

For discussion: Do you think Jephthah’s story should be understood as a historical account, a legend or a cautionary folk tale about the folly of hasty vows (or perhaps none of the above)? Were Jephthah and his daughter right to believe that a vow to God must be carried out (see 1 Samuel 14:44-45)? Have you ever made a solemn promise to God if God would provide something you very much wanted? What would you respond to a person who said, “Because of terrible stories like this Jephthah episode, I hardly ever read the Old Testament”?

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