Jephthah’s Tragic Vow. Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You will indeed give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites, it shall be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” Jdg 11:30-31
INTRODUCTION
This is a history of the chosen people during the 400 or 450 years which intervened between the death of Joshua and the time of Eli, Act_13:20. It is not a connected history, but a collection of outstanding incidents, which determined the fortunes of the chosen people, and gave special illustrations of the power of faith in God. The chief lesson of the book is the intimate connection between loyalty or disloyalty to God and the corresponding results in well-being or misery. This is distinctly stated in Jdg_2:11-23.
The judges were extraordinary agents of the divine pity and helpfulness, raised up as the urgency of the people’s need demanded, to deliver Israel from their oppressors, to reform religion, and to administer justice. Their administration was generally local, as Barak among the northern tribes, Samson in the extreme south, and Jephthah across the Jordan in Gilead.
It must not be supposed that Israel perpetrated an unbroken series of apostasies. Though these and their special deliverances occupy the major part of the book, there were evidently long interspaces of fidelity and prosperity. And in the darkest hours, there were probably large numbers who, amid the abominations, sighed and cried for a better day.
There are two appendices, relating events which took place not long after Joshua’s death, and therefore preceding the greater part of the history. We may almost consider the book of Ruth as the third. The touches of human characteristics are very vivid and instinctive, and the book deserves much more attention than it receives from the ordinary reader.
Israel’s Apostasies and Deliverances
INTRODUCTION, Jdg_1:1-36; Jdg_2:1-23; Jdg_3:1-432.
RULE OF THE JUDGES, Judges 3:5-16:31
Following repeated apostasy and oppression, the Israelites were successively delivered:
From the King of Ammon by Jephthah, Jdg_10:6-18; Jdg_11:1-40; Jdg_12:1-7
26. What was Jephthah’s mistaken vow?
THE LORD RAISES UP JUDGES
JEPHTHAH’S TRAGIC VOW
Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites.
Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You will indeed give the Ammonites into my hand,
then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites, it shall be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”
Then Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight with them; and the LORD gave them into his hand.
And from Aroer to the entrance of Minnith he struck them, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim (brook by the vineyard), with a very great defeat. So the Ammonites were subdued and humbled before the Israelites.
Then Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, and this is what he saw: his daughter coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. And she was his only child; except for her he had no son or daughter.
And when he saw her, he tore his clothes [in grief] and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me great disaster, and you are the cause of ruin to me; for I have made a vow to the LORD, and I cannot take it back.”
And she said to him, “My father, you have made a vow to the LORD; do to me as you have vowed, since the LORD has taken vengeance for you on your enemies, the Ammonites.”
And she said to her father, “Let this one thing be done for me; let me alone for two months, so that I may go to the mountains and weep over my virginity, I and my companions.”
And he said, “Go.” So he sent her away for two months; and she left with her companions, and wept over her virginity on the mountains.
At the end of two months she returned to her father, who did to her as he had vowed; and she had no relations with a man. It became a custom in Israel,
that the daughters of Israel went yearly to tell the story of the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.
Comments by
F.B.Meyer
OnJudges 11:29-40
A SHADOWED VICTORY
All the nations around were accustomed to offer those dearest to them in sacrifice to their cruel national deities. This was pre-eminently the case with the neighboring country of Moab, which the prophet Micah rebuked, Mic_6:6-8. But in all that wild border-country, there was then no prophetic voice to arrest Jephthah, who probably felt that Chemosh should not claim from the king of Ammon more than he would surrender to Jehovah. Out of this arose, not the rash but the deliberate though mistaken vow of Jdg_11:31. Before you judge him, ask whether you would be willing for your dearest to become a missionary in a heathen land. Have you ever yielded your all to the Man of Calvary? Do you love Him better than the best? You would not carry out your vow as probably Jephthah did, but are you as absolute in your dedication?
The reply of Jephthah’s daughter is one of the noblest on record. Compare it with Luk_1:38. Her heart was full of filial love and patriotic passion, as she stood there, timbrel in hand; but the love of God overmastered all else and made her willing to yield all. See 2Co_5:14.
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