Expulsion from the Garden (Judges 8-9)
Adam grabs for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and in the Bible the knowledge of good and evil is especially associated with the sort of wisdom that kings need. David has it and Solomon asks for it. Adam is grabbing for kingship and ends up expelled from the Garden so that he doesn’t enter into God’s rest.
At the center of Judges, Israel asks Gideon to be their king, thereby rejecting Yahweh as king. They’re grabbing for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And even though Gideon himself rejects their request and calls them to acknowledge only Yahweh as their king, he adopts the trappings of (pagan) kingship and even names his son Abimelech (“My father is king”). He touches the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the land still has rest.
But what Gideon is tempted by and dabbles in, Abimelech adopts, killing his brothers to become king of Israel. He eats the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And from then on, we never hear again in Judges “the land had rest for X years.” God continues to raise up judges and they “rule” for X years, but Israel, like Adam, having rejected Yahweh as king, is expelled from God’s rest.
Head and Body in Judges
One way to view the book of Judges is as a series of relationships between the head and the body:
Othniel: The head wins the victory. The body is not mentioned.
Ehud: The head (Ehud) crushes the enemy’s head (Eglon). Then the head summons the body (Israel, and specifically Ephraim) and the body follows the head to conquer the enemy’s body.
Deborah & Barak: The head (Barak) is somewhat weak and loses glory but, when the head leads, the body willingly follows to win the victory. The glory goes to a woman (instead of to the woman’s seed), because she crushes the serpent’s head.
Gideon: The head (Gideon) is quite weak and the body still in rebellion at the outset of the story. But when the head grows in faith, the body is converted and follows the head, except at the end of the story, the body (Ephraim) responds negatively to the head until the head successfully resolves the tension. But then the head leads the body into sin.
Abimelech: A bramble becomes the head because that’s what the body wants. This head is crushed, again by a woman.
Jephthah: The body is in sin and there is no head. In fact, they’ve cast out the one who was qualified to be head. But then they decide to make him head and he wins the victory. But again, as with Gideon, there is tension with the body (Ephraim again) — so much so that Jephthah the head has to fight against part of the body and conquer them.
Samson: The body doesn’t want the head and even hands the head over to the enemy. But the head fights solo anyway. Toward the end of the story, the head replicates the body’s sin and ends up bearing (solo) the punishment the body deserves. At the very end, the head (solo) defeats the enemy.
Did Jephthah Bribe God (Judges 11)?
That’s certainly the impression you’d get from many commentaries. Barry Webb and K. Lawson Younger both say as much. In fact, in commentary after commentary, I hear that Jephthah’s vow in Judges 11 was manipulative, an attempt to bribe God into giving him victory.
But what’s the evidence for that claim? How is Jephthah’s vow any different from the similar vows (“If you do X, I will do Y”) we find elsewhere in Scripture (e.g., Gen 28:20-22; Num 21:2; 1 Sam 1:11)? Are all such vows manipulative? Are they all bribes?
Take just the last example. I’m 99% sure that there isn’t a single commentary out there that claims that Hannah was being manipulative and trying to bribe God when she said that if God gave her a son, she would give him to Yahweh. But if her vow isn’t manipulative — and it isn’t — then why say that Jephthah’s is?
I suspect that it’s because commentaries already think they know that Jephthah is a bad man. K. Lawson Younger, for instance, describes Jephthah this way:
Jephthah came from a dysfunctional background. He was an illegitimate son, born of a prostitute, rejected and disinherited by his family, leader of a gang. He became a man who was hurt, angry, bitter, ambition-driven, ready to fight, manipulative, ignorant of God’s Law, abusive of his daughter, lacking boundaries, contentious, emotionally reactionary, revengeful, and doing what is right in his own eyes for his own gain. He made his daughter responsible, blaming her for the disaster that he would inflict on her and making himself the victim of his rash vow.
It’s hard to see how Hebrews 11 could call such a man faithful, isn’t it? And yet it does. So how about starting with Hebrews 11 — starting with the conviction that Jephthah was, on the whole, a faithful man — and then reading the Jephthah story again in that light? If we think of Jephthah as faithful, just as we think of Hannah as faithful, then there’s no reason to think that his vow was any more manipulative than hers was. Unless, of course, you think that all vows are manipulative, all vows are lies. But that’s not what Scripture teaches.
What Did the Spirit Prompt (Judges 11)?
Judges 11 tells us that the Spirit of YHWH came upon Jephthah (11:29). In his commentary on Judges, Barry Webb says (rightly), that this statement “implies that Jephthah’s activity that immediately follows is a consequence of the Spirit coming upon him.”
But what is that activity? For Webb, it’s all the movement from place to place in v. 29: “And the Spirit of YHWH was upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and he passed through Mizpah of Gilead and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed through to the sons of Ammon.”
But notice that that string of ands continues, unbroken, into verse 30: “And Jephthah vowed a vow to YHWH, and he said….” and on into verse 32, “And Jephthah passed through to the sons of Ammon to fight against them….”
From the fact that verse 32 resumes what was said at the end of verse 29, Webb argues that Jephthah’s vow (vv. 30-31) is an “interruption to Jephthah’s progress from his endowment with the Spirit to his victory in battle.” Well, it’s certainly an interruption in the account of Jephthah’s movements. But it’s still part of the chain of “and this and that” that follows from the coming of the Spirit.
If the passing through this place and that place in verse 29 and the advancing to fight the Ammonites in verse 32 are “a consequence of the Spirit coming upon him,” then the vow sandwiched in between is too.
Irrelevant Vows?
According to Barry Webb (Judges) Jephthah’s vow was “an irrelevancy; he would have been victorious anyway.”
But then couldn’t you say that about any vow (at least, once you know the outcome)? Should we tell Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 that her vow (i.e., if you give me a male child, I will dedicate him to you) was irrelevant because God was going to give her a male child anyway?
In fact, couldn’t we say this about prayer of any kind (“You prayed for Bob’s healing, but your prayer was irrelevant because, as it turns out, God was going to heal Bob anyway”)? But that’s a dangerous form of unbelief. God tells us to pray and assures us that he responds to our prayers, and we aren’t allowed to think that they are irrelevant because “he was going to do it (or not) anyway.”
But if there’s nothing irrelevant about praying for Bob’s healing or for Hannah to make a vow in her prayer for a son — and there isn’t! — then there’s no basis for saying that Jephthah’s vow was irrelevant either. Jephthah prayed and God heard his prayer and granted his request.
Disregarding Jephthah’s Vow?
K. Lawson Younger (Judges, Ruth) compares the results of Jephthah’s three “negotiations” in Judges 11: “With the Gileadites he achieved all he wanted (11:4-11); with the Ammonites he received a verbal if negative response (11:12-28); with Yahweh there is only silence, indicating that God disregards Jephthah’s vow.”
Well, it’s true that Yahweh doesn’t speak here. But then he doesn’t speak to you out loud either when he answers your prayers. Jephthah says, “If you give the sons of Ammon into my hand,” and then we’re told “Yahweh gave them into his hand.”
Far from disregarding Jephthah’s vow, Yahweh actually responds to it word for word.