Hebrews Chapter Eleven, The Folly Of Vowing

 

Sixty-six years and several Judges after Gideon, Jephthah was chosen to deliver Israel. Jephthah was the child of a harlot, and though he apparently grew up under his father Gilead’s roof his half-brothers rejected and exiled him, Judges 11:2, 3.

He would return by the general consent of Gilead’s leaders or eldership to contest a land dispute with Ammon over the region the Amorites formerly held, Judges 11:22, 23. Recall that it was the Amorites in particular that God told Abraham He would dispossess through Abraham’s heirs, Genesis 15:16. Thus the Holy Spirit came upon Jephthah, and he fought Ammon.

 

Jephthah’s rash vow, which he needn’t have uttered because God was already with him, cost him much following the ordeal. “Whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering,” Judges 11:31. Jephthah didn’t lack confidence in God; he clearly stated that when he returned in peace, he would offer up a burnt offering to honor the Lord. He knew the battle was the Lord’s, and God would use him to overthrow Ammon. But he learned a very sharp lesson about vowing rashly. “When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed—better not to vow than to vow and not pay,” Ecclesiastes 5:4, 5.

 

Jephthah’s virgin daughter became his offering to the Lord; a bitter conclusion to the great victory wrought by God’s Spirit, Judges 11:32, 33. Human sacrifice does not please the Lord; He makes that very clear in Scripture. “They have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into my mind,” Jeremiah 19:5. “And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God,” Leviticus 18:21. Those who lead carry much responsibility, like those that shepherd the church of God. James warns that teachers will mete a more severe judgment, because our words have power to enlighten or lead astray, James 3:1. Jephthah apparently deemed that obeying the parameters of his rash vow was better than reneging. Horrible as it was, Jephthah, with his daughter’s consent, fulfilled his vow, Judges 11:39. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it was to test Abraham’s fidelity before the eyes of the watching world. Here Abraham met with mercy as Isaac was spared and a ram another took his place on the altar, dying in his stead. Here, the Law (from which the vow is taken) is not a merciful instrument, but an exacting tool, impartially enforcing its demands. Though Jephthah erred with his vow, his due diligence to obey reveals incredible fortitude, to say nothing of his virgin daughter, who died unwed and without heirs.

 

After Jepthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon ruled as Judges, before Samson. Samson, whose narrative is given primacy in the book (chapters 13 through 16), hailed from the tribe of Dan, Judges 13:2. The general degeneracy of Dan’s tribe is detailed further in Judges chapter 18. While the tribe was making ready to take their appointed land by force, they invaded the household of Micah, stole his teraphim, or household idols, and absconded with the Levite living with him. Granted, Micah’s religious practices were highly heretical. But so too did the tribe of Dan gravely err by taking them for their own, Judges 18:24. It was like a religious salad bar; take a little of this belief, some of that belief, sprinkle it with a general Judaic belief and voila! All of your spiritual bases are covered. Modernity is no worse with the rise of ecumenism being the umbrella under which all manner of deplorable apostasy is practiced in Jesus’ name. Not only certain cults, such as Roman Catholicism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormonism, are considered Christian, but practices and beliefs within the proper confessing church are tolerated and encouraged. Scripture is denigrated and experience and feeling, or felt needs, become the accepted measure of what is good for God’s people.

 

We do not know where Judges chapters 17 through 21 fit in chronologically in Israel’s history, but they are good to study to demonstrate the rampant degeneracy that naturally occurs when one excludes God’s objective truth and incorporates every religious practice as being equally valid and good to partake in. Truly, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” Judges 17:6. This commentary is not a simple observation, but a subtle and shrewd denouncement of much of what the book of Judges records as being normative during this era.