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Jephthah’s Parachute: Covenant and Judges
11:29-40
by
Captain Michael Ramsay
When I was in my first year of studies at university, a friend
of mine and I decided that we were going to have the time of
our lives that summer or die trying. That is the year we took
up SCUBA diving. I went white-water rafting for the first
time, did a lot of ocean kayaking and we went parachuting…
As
neither of us had ever been parachuting before we needed to be
trained. We spent the day at the airport studying wind
trajectories, physics, the speed of acceleration of a free
falling object, as well as what to do if your parachute fails
to open. I did not understand it at all and even when we
practiced with a mock parachute, I didn’t get it.
We
went to the plane. Flipping a coin to see who would go first,
I lost and was supposed to jump first. Discovering, however,
at about 850 ft in the air that I was afraid of heights, I
convinced my companion to jump first.
We
were jumping from 3000 ft. As this was our first jump, cords
were tied to our parachutes so that they would open
automatically upon exiting the plane. My friend climbed out on
the wing (as he was supposed to) jumped, counted to five (as
we practiced), looked up saw that the parachute had opened
beautifully and enjoyed one of the most peaceful experiences
of his life noticing the miracles of God’s creation while
drifting to the ground on this perfectly windless day.
Emboldened, I do the same: climb onto the wing, jump, count,
and look to see my parachute; I reach to grab the steering
toggles on my parachute…they aren’t there. My parachute isn’t
there (most of it anyway). It isn’t working. I have to take it
off my back and pull the emergency chute all the while falling
faster and faster towards the ground. As I pull the cord, I
pray: “Lord, please save me.” I pull the cord, look, and the
emergency chute didn’t open properly either. It isn’t catching
any wind. It isn’t slowing me down. I fall beneath the trees
towards the power lines and highway below.
It
is at this time that the Lord’s hand reaches out and actually
lifts me up in the air, opens my parachute and gently sets me
on the ground without a scratch. This is a true story. It was
indeed a miracle and an answer to sincere prayer.
When I was without a parachute and about to pull the emergency
cord, I prayed. Now, I was a smoker back then and when I
pulled my emergency cord, I remember praying, “Dear God, if
you save me I’ll quit smm… - never mind just please save me!”
And He did. And I knew that as He did the first thing that I
would want after I landed would be a cigarette. And it was, so
it was a good thing that I didn’t make the vow. (I did
eventually quit smoking; but that’s an unrelated story.) I
know that God takes covenants, oaths, and vows very seriously
and I didn’t make one then that I wouldn’t keep.
Jephthah, who we read about in the book of Judges, might have
been better never to make his vow.
Jephthah, as recorded in Judges 11, made a vow that he may
wish that he could take back but like we know through
examining Judges 2, Joshua 9, and 2 Samuel 21 (Cf. JAC Iss.56;
www.sheepspeak.com), the Lord holds us accountable to our
vows, our covenants, our promises, and in the case of the
earlier Israelite-Gibeonite vow (Josh 9), even when we are
lied to, even when we are tricked, even when we make a vow
that is against the expressed command of YHWH, when we make a
vow to God, He holds us to it. Through Joshua 9 and 2 Samuel
21 we see that
Israel
is responsible to fulfill both competing vows it made. One, a
covenant that God commanded and another, that He forbade.
Jephthah knows this, as he is well aware of the scriptures
(cf. Chapter 11:1ff); Jephthah knows this and he immediately
regrets his vow to the LORD (11:35).
His vow to the LORD:
“If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out
of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph
from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it
as a burnt offering.” Then Jephthah went over to fight the
Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands (11:30ff).
“When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come
out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of
tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had
neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes
and cried, “Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and
wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot
break”’ (11:34ff).
Jephthah made this vow and it may or may not have been illicit
or illegal even.
Human sacrifice after all is forbidden by the Law
(cf.
Lev. 18:21, 20:1-5; Deut 12:31;
Jer. 7:31-32, 19:5-6; Ezek. 16:20-21, 20:31)
so some people – atheist, agnostic and even some Christian
writers – have argued that Jephthah would not need to fulfill
this vow.
We, of course,
know that he did need to fulfill this vow for a couple of
reasons. One, even though God explicitly generally forbids
human sacrifice (Lev. 18:21, 20:1-5;
Deut 12:31; 2 Ki 23:10;
Jer. 7:31-32, 19:5-6; Ezek. 16:20-21, 20:31), there are
exceptional circumstances when He has asked for it. Abraham
was commanded to offer up his son as a sacrifice (Gen 22:2)
and indeed our Heavenly Father offered up His only begotten
son. And we remember from the Exodus that God has a claim on
every firstborn child in Israel – be it a person or animal –
(Exodus 13:2, 22:29) after the Angel of Death collected that
same sacrifice from the Egyptians (Exodus 4:22-23, 12:12).
In the New Testament, we are also told that if we lose our
life for the Lord we will gain it (Matt 10:39, Lk 17:33).
Jephthah made this promise to God and even if this vow was
taken against the expressed wishes of God (which it may or may
not have been, cf. 11:29-30) he is still obligated to fulfill
it and he did.
Such as is
recorded in Judges 2:1-5, Joshua 9, and 2 Samuel 21, where it
is recorded that the Israelites were lied to and they broke
their promise to God by making a competing one with the
Canaanites.
They were tricked by the Gibeonites and then they broke their
promise to YHWH by making a treaty with the Canaanites. They
broke the agreement by making a competing treaty with the
Gibeonites who lied to Joshua and the leaders of Israel.
Israel was tricked into making the second treaty and Israel,
when they were making the second covenant, did not realize
that they were breaking their first promise to God and yet
they were still responsible to both covenants that they made
in the presence of God and now Jephthah, in Judges 11, has
made a promise to God and now he is responsible to keep it.
Covenants are good and covenants are important and because of
this the Lord warns us (Mt 5:34) while discussing the
prohibition against divorce: “But I tell you, Do not swear at
all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the
earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the
city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you
cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your
‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this
comes from the evil one.” We should not take our oaths, our
promises, our covenants, lightly at all. We are obligated to
them (cf.
Exodus
20:7; Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:2-3, and Deuteronomy 5:11;
6:3; 23:21-23).
In the Old Testament it records that, “If a man
makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with
a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall
do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth” (Numbers
30:2; see also: Deut. 23:21-23). Jephthah knows this.
Do
we know this? How well do we do at keeping our vows? In a May
sermon on Judges 2,
we explored the number of divorces in Canada and the drastic
results that disregarding these covenantal vows have on future
generations as well.
What about our other promises? Have you ever made a rash vow?
I remember once in grade five promising that if so and so won
this or that I would fight someone else and I assure that my
friends held me to that vow. I know that as an adult a friend
of mine promised the Lord that he would quit smoking: this was
10 years or so ago and around the same time another friend
promised that she would clean her room – we’re still waiting
for them to fulfill their vows but I have faith that their
delay is just like the delay of Jephthah’s daughter as she
goes to cry with her friends in the mountains (Judges
11:37-40). I have faith that these people of faith (my dear
friends) will fulfill their vows and experience the full
covenantal blessing as indeed Jepthath did.
How do we know that Jepthath fulfilled his vow? There are many
ways and I assure you that scholars have spared no ink in
exploring this topic but one of the most convincing arguments
is that Jepthath is mentioned in the Hebrews 11’s Walk of
Fame. He is one of only four in the book of Judges mentioned
as a Hero of the Faith. He is mentioned alongside King David
and the prophet Samuel (Hebrews 11:32) and for what is he
remembered? He is remembered for his faith (or faithfulness).
Jepthath, like Abraham, like Hanna, and like God did not even
withhold his one and only child.
Do
you remember the story of Hanna (1 Samuel 1)? This actually
has some bearing on our text here today (Judges 11) and
Jephthah’s vow. 1 Samuel 1: Hanna didn’t have any children.
She didn’t have any children at all. Her husband wound up
taking another wife at the same time and had children with his
other wife but Hanna did not have any children and she was
suffering much because of it so she called upon the Lord, “And
she made a vow, saying, “O LORD Almighty, if you will only
look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not
forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him
to the LORD for all the days of his life... (2 Samuel 1:11).”
1
Samuel 1:20-28:
So
in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a
son. She named him Samuel, saying, "Because I asked the LORD
for him."
When the man Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the
annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow, Hannah
did not go. She said to her husband, "After the boy is weaned,
I will take him and present him before the LORD, and he will
live there always." [This is reminiscent of Jephthah’s
daughter’s time with her friends]
"Do what seems best to you," Elkanah her husband told her.
"Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the LORD make
good his word." So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son
until she had weaned him.
After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he
was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a
skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at
Shiloh. When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the
boy to Eli, and she said to him, "As surely as you live, my
lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the
LORD. I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me
what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his
whole life he will be given over to the LORD." And he
worshiped the LORD there.”
Notice that Hanna ‘gave Samuel over to the Lord’ (cf. Lev
27.28-29).
Now the language in the Hebrew text of the Jephthah’s vow is
certainly ambiguous.
While Luther argued that Jepthath was committed to executing
his daughter. Wesley and others have argued the opposite.
Indeed, there are some words and phrases in Jephthah’s oath
that do permit these different renderings of the text. It has
been noted, that the phrase in Judges 11 which is usually
translated as, “Whatever comes out of the doors of my house
... shall be the Lord's, AND I will offer it up
as a burnt offering” in Judges 11:31 can also be read as:
“Whatever comes out of the doors of my house ... shall be the
Lord's, OR I will offer it up as a burnt
offering.”
So, if this second reading is correct, which it might be – and
there are other things that lend itself to this idea as well
such as the fact that Jephthah’s daughter and her friends did
not mourn her loss of life but rather her loss of opportunity
to be a mother – if this reading is correct then Jephthah
could keep his vow and not execute his daughter. He would give
her up to live a (possibly celibate) life devoted to God: to a
life like that of a pre-Roman Catholic nun as it were.
The text is not clear though. Scholars are not in agreement
and either way this vow is a serious thing. Even if Jephthah
did not execute his daughter, the fact that she was his only
child, means that the leadership of his clan which he gained
from winning the battle, would not be passed down to his
descendents and even more important than that his family’s
inheritance in the promised land would actually pass to
another. Jephthah sacrificed his descendants’ claim to the
promise, to the land, to the promised land. This was very
important to ancient Israel. It would represent the ultimate
sacrifice (for Jephthah and for his daughter who willingly
submitted to this commitment that was made on her behalf.)
Whether she was committed to celibacy or to death: either way
– whether it was a reckless vow or a pious and an inspired one
- Jephthah’s family sacrificed their whole world for God and
God accepted that sacrifice and Jephthah is remembered as one
of the ‘Heroes of the Faith.’
So
we should not take our covenants, our vows, our promises,
lightly when they are made to (or before) the LORD because we
will be held accountable to them. God is faithful to his
promises (Romans 3:3,4). So when we rely on His covenant
promises we will be safe but when we ignore them we will be
lost.
Our covenants, our oaths, our promises then are like a
parachute. When we try to jump out of life’s plane without
them or when they aren’t properly applied, the consequences
can be frightening and even fatal but when we prayerfully pull
on the cord of our covenants, when we pull that cord, when we
put our faith in the faithfulness of the Lord and His covenant
promises, we will not be disappointed. When we fully rely on
the Lord. When we put our faith in Him and His covenant
promises, as God is faithful to his covenants, we will look up
and see the full parachute canopy of our salvation guiding
gently to where we are supposed to be and then we – like
Jephthah – through faith and faithfulness, may also be
remembered as one of the ‘Heroes of the Faith.’
Let it be.
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