Jephthah's Daughter

So I was going to put this really pretty picture of Jephthah's daughter at the top of the post, but for some reason Blogger won't let me, so no picture today.

Anyway, I was reading today in Judges about Jephthah--you know, the guy who judged Israel and, while chasing the Ammonites, says "God, if You let me defeat the Ammonites, I'll sacrifice whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I get home as a burnt offering", and then it turns out to be his daughter--and a couple of things struck me.

One was that the enemies of Israel aren't terribly creative; when Jephthah asks the king of Ammon why Ammon is fighting a war with Israel, the Ammonite king says, "Because you stole my land." Jephthah points out that Israel never did conquer any land that could be considered Ammonite, and that anyway it's been 300 years since the conquest, so why hasn't Ammon done anything in all that time? To which the Ammonite king replies, more or less, "Well, I'm still going to kick your butt."

The second thing I noticed was the whole notorious vow-to-sacrifice-the-daughter thing. This is usually cited as included in Scripture to point out "Don't make rash vows" which, indeed, the Lord Himself reinforces in the New Testament when He tells us not to swear oaths at all, but something else about it hit me today: Jephthah was ignoring a path of action that God laid out, and taking his own path.

You see, this wasn't happening back in the pre-Mosaic era when folks could be understood for not knowing the kinds of sacrifices that God wanted. The Lord had spent forty years in the wilderness, and who knows how many more in the land, hammering into the heads of the Israelites exactly what kinds of sacrifices He wanted for exactly which occasions, what they were supposed to be comprised of, and when and where they were supposed to be offered. There was already a "Wow, I'm grateful, God" sacrifice, and a "I just feel like praising God" sacrifice. That Jephthah was circumventing all this might be understandable (like the guy from my home town who promised God that he'd build a giant statue of the Virgin Mary if his wife didn't die of cancer) but it was not right.

The thing is, all the sacrifices that God ordered were so exact because they were a physical picture of a spiritual reality, a foreshadowing of the ultimate Sacrifice on the Cross. God wasn't interested in sacrifice per se; it's not as though He needs to eat. He just knows us well enough to know that only a picture as vivid as a lamb or bull getting its throat cut and then being totally consumed on an altar will teach us the seriousness and costliness of sin.

When we ignore the provision of God and make up our own way of doing things, we're being just as foolish as Jephthah was. Death may not result from our foolishness--but it's not out of the question. There's a reason why the Book of Proverbs over and over again condemns a fool. A fool behaves in ways that are not consistent with reality, and sooner or later reality (occasionally in the shape of the law of gravity or a hungry bear) will fall on the fool's pointy head.

Perhaps the death we're talking about is the death of a relationship, because I ignore God's commands to speak lovingly and forgive my friend, with the excuse "I'm just a blunt person." Maybe it's the death of a freedom, because I ignore God's commands to pray for those in authority, excusing it because "We've tried that and nobody comes to those meetings." (Who said there had to be meetings?) And just maybe I ignore God's commands to bring my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, because it's easier to let them sass me, have their own way, and throw fits about having to go to church--and the death is really the premature death of a disobedient child that is the flip side of the promise in the fifth commandment.

The encouraging thing? God is the Lord of Life, not death, and He honors repentence. Just because we may have engaged in foolish Jephthah-type behavior before doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. We can confess it to the Lord, Who says He will forgive us, and we can stop doing those crazy, foolish things, and start doing the simple things He asks of us.

Granted, having your pastor lay his hands on you and ask God to heal you isn't as impressive as putting up a fifty-foot statue of the Virgin Mary, but it has the advantage of actually being obedient.

Now if Icould just stop fussing at the kids long enough for this to sink in...

Cheers,

Breanna