GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 11:34-35
34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no other son or daughter besides her. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Oh! My daughter! You have brought me to my knees! You have brought great trouble to me! I gave my word to the LORD and I cannot take it back.”
Jephthah’s daughter was his only child. We instantly understand his grief and his pain. He hid it by substituting second person feminine singular pronoun in all of his outbursts: “You (daughter) have brought me down! You (daughter) have brought me great trouble!” He really meant “me” and “I” when he said these things. He suddenly understood what he had done.
Jephthah was now aware of a number of problems with his vow.
1, He had promised a burnt offering (עֹלָה, ‘olah). God required first and foremost that a burnt offering be a male victim (Lev. 1:3), and had to be an animal from the herd or flock (an ox, a goat or a ram). Yet his vow tied his daughter to the promise.
2, The Law of Moses strongly forbids human sacrifice (Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5; Deut. 12:31; 18:10). Anyone who did this would be “detestable to the LORD” (Deut. 18:12), and “anyone who does any of these detestable things must be cut off from their people” (Lev. 18:24). If he carried out his vow, he would be condemned by God for doing it.
3, Whatever was about to happen to his daughter, Jephthah’s vow meant that his family and his name would come to an end with him. He would, in effect, die childless. From his point of view, he was ruined.
Jephthah also shows that although he had faith in God and was a judge of Israel, he was ignorant of some of the Law of Moses. If he had not been driven into exile by his half-brothers, he might have been aware that a person dedicated to the LORD could be redeemed by a substitute. In fact, since Jephthah’s daughter was a virgin girl and “between the ages of five and twenty,” she could have been redeemed for a mere ten shekels (Leviticus 27:6). Had Jephthah known about this, he and a priest could have worked out the price of his vow, and along with an acceptable animal burnt offering (a goat or an ox) he could have avoided the conundrum in which he had so rashly placed himself. Every painter knows that there are at least three of four solutions to painting yourself into a corner. You can just wait it out and let the paint dry, you can look up and find a window to climb through, you can wait a little while and call for help and have your partner or anyone set out a couple of 2x4s to walk out on, or you can be rash and impatient and walk out on the wet paint and ruin the job (best to do that one with bare feet so that you don’t ruin your shoes, too). Jephthah was a rash and impatient man.
Because he couldn’t think of a way out, he assumed that there was no way at all. That was the heart of his sin. Just because a solution wasn’t obvious to him, that meant that there could be no solution at all. Where would we be if we treated Christ like that? Grace means that when we are helpless, God helps. It’s not as if we deserve or even understand the love of God, but he give it. That’s how we were saved through Jesus. He must become greater, as John said (John 3:30); I must become less.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota