Today we begin Judges Chapter 11.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click HERE.
For the King James version, click HERE.
Chapter 11 is jam-packed with a tremendous amount of information that your average believer or Bible reader could care less about and would normally just gloss right over without giving it a second glance.
However, we’re not going to do that.
We’re gonna take our good ‘ole sweet time here and savor all the juicy facts and info contained in this chapter because by doing so it will help us greatly understand the motivations behind the main characters.
So the big and controversial topic of this chapter is of course what happened when Jephthah made a vow to God that resulted in him sacrificing his daughter.
The reason this is so controversial is because this matter is hotly debated in both Christian and Jewish circles.
Folks in one camp will say Jephthah didn’t really sacrifice his daughter while folks in the other camp will insist he did.
Personally, I fall into the latter camp that Jephthah did indeed kill his own daughter who he dearly loved and then offered her up to the Lord as a burnt sacrifice.
We’re not gonna debate this here but rest assured we’ll get into it soon enough.
Before that, you should know this chapter contains a far more important theme than Jephthah sacrificing his daughter that we shouldn’t overlook.
In fact, so important is this issue that it directly impacts Israel today and its surrounding nations.
What am I talking about?
I’m talking about the promise of land that God gave to Israel through their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
That’s the other hot topic of this chapter most folks overlook because they don’t want to be bothered with what they consider to be dry and boring facts.
Anyways, let’s kick things off by introducing the main character Jephthah or Yiftach in Hebrew.
Right off the bat verse 1 lets us know Jephthah was a courageous soldier but that he was also the son of a prostitute.
His father, whose name was Gilead, was a Hebrew who fathered other sons through his legal wife (also a Hebrew).
However, when these other sons grew older, they decided to drive Yiftach out of the family.
As far as they were concerned, there was no way in hell they wanted a half-brother born from a whore sharing their family inheritance.
This seems to be an unfortunate family dynamic that often occurs in mixed marriages.
For example, look what happened when Ishmael was born to Hagar.
At the end of the day, Sarah wanted that child out of her house because he wasn’t born from her own womb.
Sarah said…
“Get rid of that slave woman! Get rid of her son! That woman’s son will never have a share of the family’s property. All of it belongs to my son Isaac.”-Genesis 21:10
I find this interesting because it was Sarah herself who told her husband Abraham to bed down with Hagar in order that they might have a son.
Anyways, I don’t wanna get off on a tangent here.
My point is this type of family conflict is not an uncommon occurrence.
We’ll continue on with this discussion about Yiftach (Jephthah) the next time we meet…because it’s getting late here in Tokyo and I’m tired.
Shalom.
Shalom