Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. 2 And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons. And when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not have an inheritance in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.” 3 Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob, and worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and went out with him.
The first three verses of Judges 11 sum up succinctly yet thoroughly the tragic beginning of Jepthah’s life and establish the tragic trajectory of his story – a story that is all too familiar and that is shared by far too many. We first learn that he was a mighty warrior, full of strength, passion, and potential if only it could be harnessed. Unfortunately, his scandalous origins haunt him and are thrown back in his face by his half brothers as their excuse for excluding him from the family and the inheritance. Even though the text refuses to psychologize Jephthah and says nothing explicitly about his emotional response, I cannot help but feel the pain of rejection that shot through him. What the text does reveal is his physical response – he flees the painful parentage and brutal brotherhood of home in search of an alternative community, one that will accept him as he is, one that will not shame him for a parentage that he did not choose and has no choice but to live with.
Ironically, the place where he finally settles is named Tov, the Hebrew word for “good, beautiful.” What happens there, however, seems anything but good. An anti-community of “worthless fellows” forms around Jephthah and a street gang is born. Of course, this is the way all street gangs are born. Wounded, angry, and rejected young people find each other and form surrogate “anti-families” that appear to meet our deep-seated need for community and acceptance but at a terribly high price. It is a price, however, that we are all too ready to pay if only we can find a place to belong. I cannot bring myself to judge Jephthah nor any other member of a street gang when I pause to consider how they got there and how easily I could have joined their ranks had the circumstances of my birth and early childhood been other than it was.
The story only goes from bad to worse as Jephthah’s half-brothers ask him to return, but only because they are in trouble and need someone who’s been trained in the school of hard knocks to lead them in war against the Ammonites. Jephthah’s response to his relatives echoes the implicit pain of his earlier flight from them: “Did you not hate me and drive me out of my father’s house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?” Why indeed! Jephthah suffered so much at the hands of his own family, as many of us do. Is it any wonder that we turn to idle distractions and spew bitterness and hostility onto everyone we encounter? How does anyone heal from such heartache? How can Jephthah’s story end in anything but tragedy?
The one bright spot in the story is that, despite his painful past and his violent exploits, YHWH endows Jephthah with his Spirit. Unfortunately, Jephthah does not recognize the sufficiency of YHWH’s Spirit (after all he has learned to be distrustful) and foolishly seeks to secure victory with an unsolicited, unnecessary, and exceedingly unwise vow. YHWH does indeed secure victory for Jephthah, but the victory comes at the price of his daughter. The text is utterly silent as to YHWH’s feelings about or response to Jephthah’s vow and his sense of obligation to carry it out. One surmises that this silence indicates that YHWH neither requested the vow nor required its fulfillment, but one certainly would have hoped for something more than silence. One would hope for YHWH’s intervention. One would hope that YHWH would prevent the senseless sacrifice as he did the near sacrifice of Isaac. No such intervention occurs. Jephthah’s daughter courageously resigns herself to her death and Jephthah is left childless. One tragedy after another, one loss, after another, with no satisfactory resolution at the end of the story.
What are we to do with stories like Jephthah’s? I do not know for sure, but what occurred to me this evening is that it could be a powerful lesson to God’s people about the tragic results that occur when we reject the misfits and refuse to be a safe and accepting place for those with painful parentage, checkered pasts, and a questionable present. We do not know what to do with such people and so we drive them away. Jephthah joins the ranks of others like Hagar who have been used and then discarded by God’s people, even by the best of God’s people like Abraham and Sarah. I remain bothered by YHWH’s silence in this story. Knowing God as I do through the revelation of Jesus Christ, I am certain that God will do right by Jephthah and his daughter. Perhaps the brief mention of him in Hebrews 11:32 is a hint of this. The question is whether we will do right by Jephthah and all of those like him in the church or whether we will allow this tragic cycle to continue in the lives of the illegitimate, rejected, and displaced.
Father,
I am deeply disturbed by Jephthah’s story. It disturbs me in part because it overlaps with my own story in some particularly painful ways – the sacrifice of a daughter. It also disturbs me, however, because I fear I have played the role of his half brothers who drove Jephthah away because of his scandalous parentage, his mixed blood, and therefore, his inability to perfectly conform to my rules and expectations – rules and expectations which I often confuse with yours. I thank you, Holy Spirit, that even in such a bizarre and disturbing story you have managed to convict me and show me the Father’s heart for misfits and rejects. I could have so easily been one myself. Indeed, I am one. I, like Jephthah, have been rejected by members of my family, I have been rejected by churches where I did not quite fit in, didn’t know the “secret handshake” did not say “Shibboleth” the way they did. On the other hand, I have also rejected others because they did not know my secret handshake or say “Shibboleth” the way I do. Christ forgive me! You who have never turned me or anyone else away, how can I call myself your disciple while engaging in such exclusion and judgment! Holy Spirit, heal me of my self-righteousness and heal me of the pain of my own rejection. Open my heart as wide as the Father’s, my arms as wide as the Son’s that I might never reject Jephthah again.
AMEN!