The Living Bible (82 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Now Jephthah was a great warrior from the land of Gilead, but his mother was a prostitute. His father (whose name was Gilead) had several other sons by his legitimate wife, and when these half brothers grew up, they chased Jephthah out of the country.
“You son of a whore!” they said. “You’ll not get any of our father’s estate.”
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So Jephthah fled from his father’s home and lived in the land of Tob. Soon he had quite a band of malcontents as his followers, living off the land as bandits.
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It was about this time that the Ammonites began their war against Israel.
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The leaders of Gilead sent for Jephthah,
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begging him to come and lead their army against the Ammonites.
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But Jephthah said to them, “Why do you come to me when you hate me and have driven me out of my father’s house? Why come now when you’re in trouble?”
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“Because we need you,” they replied. “If you will be our commander-in-chief against the Ammonites, we will make you the king of Gilead.”
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“Sure!” Jephthah exclaimed. “Do you expect me to believe that?”
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“We swear it,” they replied. “We promise with a solemn oath.”
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So Jephthah accepted the commission and was made commander-in-chief and king. The contract was ratified before the Lord in Mizpah at a general assembly of all the people.
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Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of Ammon, demanding to know why Israel was being attacked.
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The king of Ammon replied that the land belonged to the people of Ammon; it had been stolen from them, he said, when the Israelis came from Egypt; the whole territory from the Arnon River to the Jabbok and the Jordan was his, he claimed.
“Give us back our land peaceably,” he demanded.
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Jephthah replied, “Israel did not steal the land.
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What happened was this: When the people of Israel arrived at Kadesh, on their journey from Egypt after crossing the Red Sea,
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they sent a message to the king of Edom asking permission to pass through his land. But their petition was denied. Then they asked the king of Moab for similar permission. It was the same story there, so the people of Israel stayed in Kadesh.
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“Finally they went around Edom and Moab through the wilderness, and traveled along the eastern border until at last they arrived beyond the boundary of Moab at the Arnon River; but they never once crossed into Moab.
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Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and asked permission to cross through his land to get to their destination.
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“But King Sihon didn’t trust Israel, so he mobilized an army at Jahaz and attacked them.
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But the Lord our God helped Israel defeat King Sihon and all your people, so Israel took over all of your land from the Arnon River to the Jabbok, and from the wilderness to the Jordan River.
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“So you see, it was the Lord God of Israel who took away the land from the Amorites and gave it to Israel. Why, then, should we return it to you?
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You keep whatever your god Chemosh gives you, and we will keep whatever Jehovah our God gives us!
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And besides, just who do you think you are? Are you better than King Balak, the king of Moab? Did he try to recover his land after Israel defeated him? No, of course not.
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But now after three hundred years you make an issue of this! Israel has been living here for all that time, spread across the land from Heshbon to Aroer, and all along the Arnon River. Why have you made no effort to recover it before now?
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No, I have not sinned against you; rather, you have wronged me by coming to war against me; but Jehovah the Judge will soon show which of us is right—Israel or Ammon.”
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But the king of Ammon paid no attention to Jephthah’s message.
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At that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he led his army across the land of Gilead and Manasseh, past Mizpah in Gilead, and attacked the army of Ammon.
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Meanwhile Jephthah had vowed to the Lord that if God would help Israel conquer the Ammonites, then when he returned home in peace, the first person coming out of his house to meet him would be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord!
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So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the Lord gave him the victory.
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He destroyed the Ammonites with a terrible slaughter all the way from Aroer to Minnith, including twenty cities, and as far away as Vineyard Meadow. Thus the Ammonites were subdued by the people of Israel.
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When Jephthah returned home his daughter—his only child—ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy.
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When he saw her, he tore his clothes in anguish.
“Alas, my daughter!” he cried out. “You have brought me to the dust. For I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot take it back.”
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And she said, “Father, you must do whatever you promised the Lord, for he has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites.
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But first let me go up into the hills and roam with my girlfriends for two months, weeping because I’ll never marry.”
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“Yes,” he said. “Go.”
And so she did, bewailing her fate with her friends for two months.
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Then she returned to her father, who did as he had vowed. So she was never married.
*
And after that it became a custom in Israel
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that the young girls went away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter.
Then the tribe of Ephraim mobilized its army at Zaphon and sent this message to Jephthah: “Why didn’t you call for us to help you fight against Ammon? We are going to burn down your house, with you in it!”
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“I summoned you, but you refused to come!” Jephthah retorted. “You failed to help us in our time of need,
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so I risked my life and went to battle without you, and the Lord helped me to conquer the enemy. Is that anything for you to fight us about?”
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Then Jephthah, furious at the taunt of Ephraim that the men of Gilead were mere outcasts
*
and the scum of the earth, mobilized his army and attacked the army of Ephraim.
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He captured the fords of the Jordan behind the army of Ephraim, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to cross the river, the Gilead guards challenged him.
“Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they asked. If the man replied that he was not,
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then they demanded, “Say ‘Shibboleth.’” But if he couldn’t pronounce the
H
and said, “Sibboleth” instead of “Shibboleth,” he was dragged away and killed. So forty-two thousand people of Ephraim died there at that time.
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Jephthah was Israel’s judge for six years. At his death he was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.
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The next judge was Ibzan, who lived in Bethlehem.
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He had thirty sons and thirty daughters. He married his daughters to men outside his clan and brought in thirty girls to marry his sons. He judged Israel for seven years before he died, and was buried at Bethlehem.
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The next judge was Elon from Zebulun. He judged Israel for ten years and was buried at Aijalon in Zebulun.
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Next was Abdon (son of Hillel) from Pirathon.
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He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys. He was Israel’s judge for eight years.
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Then he died and was buried in Pirathon, in Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.
Once again Israel sinned by worshiping other gods, so the Lord let them be conquered by the Philistines, who kept them in subjection for forty years.
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Then one day the Angel of the Lord appeared to the wife of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, who lived in the city of Zorah. She had no children, but the Angel said to her, “Even though you have been barren so long, you will soon conceive and have a son!
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Don’t drink any wine or beer and don’t eat any food that isn’t kosher.
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Your son’s hair must never be cut, for he shall be a Nazirite, a special servant of God from the time of his birth; and he will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.”
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The woman ran and told her husband, “A man from God appeared to me and I think he must be the Angel of the Lord, for he was almost too glorious to look at. I didn’t ask where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name,
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but he told me, ‘You are going to have a baby boy!’ And he told me not to drink any wine or beer and not to eat food that isn’t kosher, for the baby is going to be a Nazirite—he will be dedicated to God from the moment of his birth until the day of his death!”
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Then Manoah prayed, “O Lord, please let the man from God come back to us again and give us more instructions about the child you are going to give us.”
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The Lord answered his prayer, and the Angel of God appeared once again to his wife as she was sitting in the field. But again she was alone—Manoah was not with her—
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so she quickly ran and found her husband and told him, “The same man is here again!”
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Manoah ran back with his wife and asked, “Are you the man who talked to my wife the other day?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I am.”
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So Manoah asked him, “Can you give us any special instructions about how we should raise the baby after he is born?”
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And the Angel replied, “Be sure that your wife follows the instructions I gave her. She must not eat grapes or raisins, or drink any wine or beer, or eat anything that isn’t kosher.”
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Then Manoah said to the Angel, “Please stay here until we can get you something to eat.”
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“I’ll stay,” the Angel replied, “but I’ll not eat anything. However, if you wish to bring something, bring an offering to sacrifice to the Lord.” (Manoah didn’t yet realize that he was the Angel of the Lord.)
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Then Manoah asked him for his name. “When all this comes true and the baby is born,” he said to the Angel, “we will certainly want to tell everyone that you predicted it!”
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“Don’t even ask my name,” the Angel replied, “for it is a secret.”
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Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered it as a sacrifice to the Lord; and the Angel did a strange and wonderful thing,
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for as the flames from the altar were leaping up toward the sky, and as Manoah and his wife watched, the Angel ascended in the fire! Manoah and his wife fell face downward to the ground,
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and that was the last they ever saw of him. It was then that Manoah finally realized that it had been the Angel of the Lord.
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“We will die,” Manoah cried out to his wife, “for we have seen God!”
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But his wife said, “If the Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offerings and wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles.”
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When her son was born they named him Samson, and the Lord blessed him as he grew up.
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And the Spirit of the Lord began to excite him whenever he visited the parade grounds of the army of the tribe of Dan, located between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol.