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27. Jephthah.
At another time the
Ammonites invaded Israel in the region of Gilead beyond the Jordan. The
Israelites camped against them, but there was no one who had the courage
to take the lead and attack the enemy. They agreed that the one who
would make the attack would be the leader of them all. But even so, no
one came forward who would have shown the courage to do so, and more
than one may have said to the other at the time, ‘If we had the outcast
Jephthah back with us, he would be the man to save us.’
Jephthah had been cast out of his father's house a year earlier by his
brothers out of selfishness and enmity. He was not their mother's son,
so they did not want him to share in their father's inheritance. No one
in Gilead took care of him. He fled from his homeland and from his
people to a foreign land and there, according to the custom of the time,
he supported himself as best he could through fine valour. That is why
they said: ‘If Jephthah came back, he could save us.’ Selfishness and
lack of judgement often cause their own remorse and shame. When they
could no longer help themselves, they sent messengers to the rejected
and abandoned Jephthah to come back to them and become their captain and
leader. If your brother has sinned against you and comes again and says,
‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.
Despite his fate, Jephthah was a fine man by nature and as generous and
peace-loving as he was brave. He began by saying to the messengers, as
befits a deeply offended man: ‘Is it not you who hate me and have driven
me out of my father's house? Why do you come to me now in your
affliction?’ But when he heard how distressed they were and that they
wanted to make amends, he no longer thought of the offence he had
suffered but of his fatherland and accepted their invitation. But a man
like the generous Jephthah was does not immediately want to take up arms
and shed blood. Willingness to make peace is the most beautiful
adornment and the surest sign of true-heartedness, which does not attack
sooner than it has to.
Jephthah twice sent messengers to the king of Ammon to recognise the
injustice of his subtle attack and to withdraw in peace. But when the
king did not recognise his injustice and did not listen to Jephthah's
speech, Jephthah decided to go into battle - he had no choice left. In
the battle he won with a mighty sword, defeated the enemy across the
border and liberated his unhappy fatherland and those who had first cast
him out of it into a foreign land. Oh, that the pious, noble hero had
never spoken a single careless word! Before the battle he had made a vow
that if he returned home victorious he would consecrate and sacrifice to
the Lord the first thing he met at his door, and in the movement of his
heart he did not think that he was the father of a single child.
At home they prepared for him an honourable arrival and a joyful welcome,
and when he was near his house, to his horror, his daughter, his only
child, met him first at the head of the women and maidens who came to
greet him. Even then it was considered a grave matter of conscience to
break a vow one had made to God, and it is also a matter of conscience
and the result of unnecessary audacity. God only wants to be honoured
with thanks and childlike trust, with love and obedience, not with gifts
and sacrifices. When Jephthah saw his daughter and thought of his vow,
he tore his robe in terror. He spoke to her with tender words: ‘Oh, my
daughter, how you grieve me! I have opened my mouth against the Lord and
can no longer take it back.’ The daughter, as tender-minded as her
father, understood his words and replied with childlike devotion: ‘My
father, if you have opened your mouth, do to me as it came out of your
mouth, after the Lord has avenged you against your enemies.’ -
Jephthah fulfilled his vow and then reigned over the Israelites in
Gilead for six years until his death. So the Lord raised up heroes and
saviours for the afflicted people from time to time. But the promised
one from the descendants of Abraham, in whom all nations are to be
blessed, is still a long way off. Although something is already
beginning to happen from afar.
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