Readings for today: Judges 10-13
The other night I had a conversation with my kids about sacrifice. We talked about how the greatest sacrifice one can make in our culture is to lay one’s life down for someone else. This ethic, of course, comes from Jesus who Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Now, we tend to read this individually. We celebrate the individual hero who makes the sacrifice play. It is the basis of every great movie. The basis of every great story. I think of the narrative arc of the recent Avengers series in which a completely self-centered, self-absorbed person (Tony Stark) becomes the hero in the end who gives his life to save the world. It’s the same narrative that underlies the Matrix trilogy. The Lord of the Rings. Star Wars. You name it.
However, Jesus would have understood this differently. Jesus lived in an “honor/shame” society. As such, He didn’t think in individualistic terms. He thought more in terms of community. Nation. Covenant people. When Jesus talks about laying one’s life down for his friends, He’s talking about sacrificing for the sake of the whole. Preserving the honor - not just the life - of the community. Not only that but Jesus’ own sacrifice preserves the honor of God Himself who promised to lay down His life for the sake of His covenant with His people way back in Genesis 15! One simply cannot overstate how important honor would have been in first century culture. And as we rewind back through the centuries. Back to the time of the Judges. Back to the time when Jephthah led Israel, the “honor/shame” dynamic would have been even stronger. This is critically important context to know if we are to understand the story.
Here’s a second piece of context as well. When we travel to Ethiopia, we often head into the rural areas to visit village churches. As we walk along the dirt paths, we pass home after home. Most of them are mud huts surrounded by a little brush fence. In the evenings, we see children driving whatever livestock (donkeys, chickens, goats, etc.) the family owns into the enclosure. This keeps the animals safe and the house warm. It’s a common custom all over the Middle East even to this day. So when Jephthah made his rash vow, he fully expected the first thing to greet him when he returned home to be a goat or a sheep or some other animal. He most certainly did NOT expect it to be his daughter! So when she comes dancing out of the home with her tambourine, he tears his clothes. He instantly regrets the vow he made. But he feels trapped. After all, his honor is now on the line. The honor of his family. And in his own limited understanding, the honor of his God. His daughter understands this as well which is why she willingly lays down her life to preserve her family’s honor! She willingly gives her life to help her father save face! She willingly accepts her fate and believes her family’s reputation - and her God’s reputation - is worth her sacrifice.
It’s a story that baffles us on a lot of levels. How could Jephthah go through with it? How could he sacrifice his own flesh and blood? How could Jephthah’s daughter willingly lay down her life? And where is God in all of this? Is He pleased? The cultural distance between this world and our own is almost insurmountable. However, a key to understanding is provided from the letter Jephthah sends the king of the Ammonites in Judges 11:23-24, “So then the Lord, the God of Israel, dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel; and are you to take possession of them? Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And all that the Lord our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess.” You see, everyone in the ancient near east believed in the gods. Dagon for the Philistines. Chemosh for the Amorites. Molech for the Ammonites. Every tribe had their own deity. And every deity demanded honor. Demanded worship. Demanded sacrifice. If you made the right sacrifices, you were rewarded with great wealth, military might, and political power. If you honored your god, he would, in turn, honor you. However, make the wrong sacrifices or bring dishonor to your god in some way and you would face judgment. Defeat. Plague. Famine. Drought. Death. Sadly, as Jephthah’s letter suggests, Israel had begun to buy into this way of thinking. They began to adopt the ways of the Canaanites - just as Yahweh said they would - and so Yahweh ceased, in their eyes, to be the One True God and became just another petty tribal deity. Thus, Jepthah’s tragic choice to sacrifice his daughter and her tragic choice to accept her fate.
The most important takeaway for me today is God’s silence. Nowhere does the Bible say God is pleased with Jephthah’s decision. And just because something appears in the Bible doesn’t make it good or godly or honoring. In fact, one of the things I love most about the Scriptures is its raw honesty about the character of the people God chooses to love. Gives me hope for myself! So how then should we respond to this text? What does it mean to give God…the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…the God revealed fully and completely in Jesus Christ…the honor He deserves and demands? Does it require human sacrifice? Not in the way Jephthah believed. Instead, it requires us to become “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is our spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1) We honor God with the lives we lead. We honor God with the words we say. We honor God by how we treat others. Particularly those who are lost or struggling or lonely or afraid. In this particular cultural moment, we bring honor to God by the loving our neighbor. Remaining indoors. Submitting to the governing authorities. Praying for God to make Himself known in the midst of our national and international pain and suffering.
Readings for tomorrow: Judges 14-17