Judges 11

“Gilead” was a common name for people or places. It seems to have referred to a stone monument. People built stone monuments to remember something important that happened there.

In this context, Jephthah may have heard these words as, “You’re the son of a bitch.” So, he left.

Tob was apparently a kind of hole in the wall Badlands town and a safe haven for robbers, killers, and people banished from their homes and towns.

This was their second offer. The first offer, as commander of the army, wasn’t enough.

Many Bibles say “Red Sea.” But the Hebrew words are yam suph, “sea reeds.” Later in the story, Moses and the Hebrew refugees will escape through a path God makes in this body of water. Scholars usually track Moses and the Hebrews escaping Egypt by walking southeast, out of the Nile Delta fields and toward the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. They would have passed through lake regions along what is now the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These lakes and ponds reportedly had reeds growing along the banks, like the ones the Bible says grew along the Nile River and helped anchor Baby Moses in a basket (Exodus 2:3).

Chemosh was Moab’s national god, and possibly the Ammonites as well. King Solomon later married into the religion and even built a sanctuary to Chemosh on the Mount of Olives. That legitimized this idolatry for about 400 years. Israel’s idolatry, the prophets said, would be why God would allow invaders to wipe the Jewish nation off the political map of the world. Babylonians from what is now Iraq did that in 586 BC. The god’s name shows up in a Canaanite inscription chiseled into a stone record known as the Mesha Stele or the Moabites Stone, from the 800’s BC. It’s on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

King Balak hired a sorcerer named Balaam to put a curse on Moses and the Israelites. Instead, Balaam blessed them on three occasions (Numbers 22:2-24:25). After that, King Balak went back home.

Earlier, the LORD’s Spirit came to Othniel (3:10) and Gideon (6:34). Like them, Jephthah received a unique Spirit of leadership and power, with perhaps the kind of charisma some people have today, which attracts fans and followers. The Christian movement started producing congregations after God’s Spirit came to Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem (Acts 2). Full of spirit, boldness, and courage, Peter preached a sermon in the city that five weeks earlier had executed his rabbi, Jesus Christ. The sermon produced more than 3,000 converts, forming the First Church of Jesus the Messiah. Not an official name. Just descriptive.

This sacrifice is a “burnt offering.” The entire creature is burned to ashes. How-to instructions are in Leviticus 1.

Did Jephthah think the family goat would be the first to welcome him home from a victorious war? Was he hoping it would be his wife? Was he a good warrior, but with a head for rational thought that only a woodpecker could appreciate? What was he thinking? Clearly, he had been anxious about the coming battle because he was trying to make a deal with the LORD, as if Jephthah had anything the LORD needed.

Location of the three cities mentioned here is uncertain. Educated guesses link Aroer with the city of Arnon or somewhere southwest of Amman. Abel-keramim has been linked to Naur, a few miles southwest of Amman, and to Abila, which Roman historian Eusebius said was six Roman leagues from Amman. A league was the distance a person could walk in an hour, roughly a mile and a half (2.4 km). Six leagues was about nine miles (14 km).

Jephthah certainly felt sorry for himself. But we’re left to wonder if he thought about how his daughter felt. He said he couldn’t take back the promise. Normally, that’s right. But the laws of Moses allow for promises that involve other people to be annulled (Numbers 30). A husband, for example, can cancel a promise his wife makes if he doesn’t approve of it (Numbers 30:13). It’s not an impossible stretch, even in this patriarchal age of men as Boss, to allow the daughter or her mother or her Uncle Willard of Gilead to object and cancel the vow. Especially since human sacrifice was not one of the accepted offerings in Israel. Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac was a test of faith. No one got chopped into pieces and burned to ashes. Not until Jephthah came home. (Uncle Willard of Gilead, by the way, is fictional.)

If Jephthah followed instructions for a burnt offering in Leviticus 1, he killed his daughter quickly, drained her blood, cut her into pieces and burned her to ashes “as an offering—a sweet smell to God” (Leviticus 1:9). But those instructions were for slaughtering and sacrificing animals, not children.