A Different Story

Simply let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No.”

A command, yes.

Even a loud call to integrity.

But I find it also to be a word of caution.

When Jesus spoke on a hillside to thousands of rumbling stomachs but even hungrier ears, He urged caution with these oaths and vows and even bargains. Reaching beyond a simple “Yes” or “No,” simply put, “comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)

And if Jesus had delivered the inaugural address of His public ministry in the days of flannelgraphs or PowerPoint, I wonder if He would have trotted out some colorful pictures of Jephthah standing in the street outside his home celebrating his sweet victory against the Ammonites. With a click of the remote or a quick change-up of the cut-out 2D Jephthah on the flannel board, we would watch his cheering, jubilant expression turn to sheer horror as his daughter burst out the front door to join him in celebration.

I believe Jephthah could well have been on Jesus’ mind when He taught us about vows and bargains and just saying it straight.

To the masses hanging on His every word — freshly spoken for the very first time on that hillside — and also to me, He says the very same thing:

Don’t be like this guy.

Just say “Yes” or just say “No.”

And mean it.

And I wonder. Oh, I wonder.

At the end of the day, is making a deal with God any different than making a deal with the devil?

You read it right. I just went there. So lets get on with it. I have harder questions than that to ask.

(If you haven’t read Judges 11 lately, might take a deep breath right now and open it up. And if you’re just joining, it might help to read here and here to get a little background on all the fuss. Hang in here with me on a long post; I don’t know how to do it any shorter.)

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Jephthah’s story is not one we learn in Sunday School. At least not in the church where I grew up.

To get to this story, you have to swim past the ropes and floating detergent bottles that mark off the safe swimming area of the beach from the shark infested deep waters.

Oh boy.

Most of us who even knew this story was there have found a way to pretend we didn’t really read it or to wave if off as just some of your good ol’ Old Testament weirdness.

Or if we think hard enough, we might even find a way to convince ourselves we read it wrong.

But what if it just says what it says?

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Right before he marched off with his troops, Jephthah spoke to the Lord about the upcoming battle.

He made a vow. He struck his bargain.

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. (Judges 11:30b-31)

God did give him the victory. And when he returned as the mighty conqueror of Ammon, he stood in the street aghast that when the door of his home flew open, it was his one and only daughter — his one and only child — who tore out of the house with her tambourine, dancing and rejoicing in the victory.

As she emerged, he remembered his vow. Whatever comes out of the door of my house. He collapsed there on the road, tore his clothes and cried out in anguish. The joy of his victory poured out through the wound just now opened in his heart and flooded the street with his grief.

Beautiful, sweet daughter. She would be his sacrifice to complete his vow. He would hold up his end of the bargain.

Nancy asks the question: What was he thinking?

What was he thinking, indeed.

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The vow Jephthah made was tragic.

Tragic because it was rash. He made it without thinking it through. The women always rushed out to the streets when the soldiers returned victorious, dancing and singing in jubilant celebration. He knew this. Odds were great his daughter would be first out the door.

Tragic because it was unnecessary. God was in this thing with Jephthah. His Spirit was already on him. And Judges 10 ends with the declaration that the Lord could no longer bear the suffering of His people. I believe with everything in me that God already meant to give the victory. To make such vow would have no bearing on the outcome.

And tragic because Jephthah just made the Lord into a quid pro quo kind of God, One Who performs only when we do and only because of a return favor.

Nevertheless, he made a vow that cost the life of his beloved. When the time came to keep it, though it tore his heart in two, he kept it in faithfulness to God. And his daughter, in an unmatched show of courage, humbly accepted her fate.

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I’ve been sitting with this for a while.

Pondering. Praying. Reading. Grappling. Debating.

It’s entirely possible that the text doesn’t say what it looks like it does. Some scholars suggest that the original Hebrew has Jephthah making a vow to consecrate whatever first came out the door and also make a burnt offering, believing that he then committed his daughter to a lifetime of service in the temple. Thus, she would never marry, and his heartbreak would be the absence of any future generations.

Other scholars believe this translation to be correct and hold that Jephthah did indeed present his daughter as a burnt offering, a human sacrifice to the Lord.

If scholars who know the original language can’t come to a common understanding, I sure can’t say with any certainty what happened to Jephthah’s daughter.

I’d like to be able to say he consecrated her for temple service. I still find it rash, unnecessary and reflective of a failure to grasp Who God is. But I’m much more comfortable with the picture.

But . . .

. . . a lack of scholarly agreement leaves open the very real possibility that he really did it.

And at that, my stomach clenches.

What if he really did it?

If he sacrificed his daughter on an altar made for the fattened calf, the questions come so fast, so furious, I become dizzy and must sit down.

Was God pleased with the sacrifice?

Did He give the victory in accordance with Jephthah’s vow?

Couldn’t Jephthah have redeemed his daughter for a handful of silver at the temple? There were provisions for that. Why didn’t he?

Which part of Mosaic law was Jephthah right to follow: that which required that he complete a vow made voluntarily to the Lord, or that which reflected God’s hatred of human sacrifice?

Why did God not provide an alternative, as He did for Abraham when He asked him to sacrifice his son? (If God truly abhors human sacrifice, why did He ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in the first place, even knowing He would not require it in the end? It was still His idea.)

Did He want Jephthah to follow through? Or would He have released him from the vow if he had only asked?

God said nothing in response to the oath. Not a word. Why was He silent?

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One question beats out all the others for me. The one that drops me to my face each time I consider it.

Assume the worst case scenario: Jephthah placed his daughter on the altar, raised the knife and lit the flame. And God accepted the sacrifice as fulfillment of Jephthah’s vow.

Can I live with this kind of God?

If this were really Who God is, could I live with that?

Can I serve that God?

Can I love that God?

Can I worship that God?

Or am I compelled to conform Him to an image with which I can be comfortable?

Because frankly, I don’t like that image.

I don’t like that He was silent. I don’t like that He didn’t reject the offer outright. I don’t like that He didn’t intervene.

But it’s entirely possible that the God that I love, and the God that I serve, did accept a most dreadful sacrifice, one that flies in the face of all I want to believe about Him.

And so I must decide.

Will I take Him as He is, bigger than I can comprehend, more complex than I’ll ever get my hands around?

Or will I make Him into something small, manageable, moldable in my frail and broken hands?

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