Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The One Year Bible TLB (97 page)
Shout with joy before the Lord, O earth!
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Obey him gladly; come before him, singing with joy.
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Try to realize what this means—the Lord is God! He made us—we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
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Go through his open gates with great thanksgiving; enter his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name.
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For the Lord is always good. He is always loving and kind, and his faithfulness goes on and on to each succeeding generation.
The work of the wicked will perish; the work of the godly will flourish.
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Before every man there lies a wide and pleasant road that seems right but ends in death.
April 30Now 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.
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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.
12:
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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
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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.
Before anything else existed,
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there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God.
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He created everything there is—nothing exists that he didn’t make.
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Eternal life is in him, and this life gives light to all mankind.
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His life is the light that shines through the darkness—and the darkness can never extinguish it.
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God sent John the Baptist as a witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is the true Light.
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John himself was not the Light; he was only a witness to identify it.
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Later on, the one who is the true Light arrived to shine on everyone coming into the world.
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But although he made the world, the world didn’t recognize him when he came.
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Even in his own land and among his own people, the Jews, he was not accepted. Only a few would welcome and receive him. But to all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them.
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All those who believe this are reborn!—not a physical rebirth
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resulting from human passion or plan—but from the will of God.
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And Christ
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became a human being and lived here on earth among us and was full of loving forgiveness and truth. And some of us have seen his glory—the glory of the only Son of the heavenly Father!
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John pointed him out to the people, telling the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming who is greater by far than I am—for he existed long before I did!’”
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We have all benefited from the rich blessings he brought to us—blessing upon blessing heaped upon us!
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For Moses gave us only the Law with its rigid demands and merciless justice, while Jesus Christ brought us loving forgiveness as well.
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No one has ever actually seen God, but, of course, his only Son has, for he is the companion of the Father and has told us all about him.
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The Jewish leaders
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sent priests and assistant priests from Jerusalem to ask John whether he claimed to be the Messiah.
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He denied it flatly. “I am not the Christ,” he said.
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“Well then, who are you?” they asked. “Are you Elijah?”
“No,” he replied.
“Are you the Prophet?”
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“No.”
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“Then who are you? Tell us, so we can give an answer to those who sent us. What do you have to say for yourself?”
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He replied, “I am a voice from the barren wilderness, shouting as Isaiah prophesied, ‘Get ready for the coming of the Lord!’”
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Then those who were sent by the Pharisees asked him, “If you aren’t the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet, what right do you have to baptize?”
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John told them, “I merely baptize with
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water, but right here in the crowd is someone you have never met,
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who will soon begin his ministry among you, and I am not even fit to be his slave.”
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This incident took place at Bethany, a village on the other side of the Jordan River where John was baptizing.
I will sing about your loving-kindness and your justice, Lord. I will sing your praises!
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I will try to walk a blameless path, but how I need your help, especially in my own home, where I long to act as I should.
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Help me to refuse the low and vulgar things; help me to abhor all crooked deals of every kind, to have no part in them.
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I will reject all selfishness and stay away from every evil.
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I will not tolerate anyone who secretly slanders his neighbors; I will not permit conceit and pride.
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I will make the godly of the land my heroes and invite them to my home. Only those who are truly good shall be my servants.
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But I will not allow those who deceive and lie to stay in my house.
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My daily task will be to ferret out criminals and free the city of God from their grip.
Laughter cannot mask a heavy heart. When the laughter ends, the grief remains.
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The backslider gets bored with himself; the godly man’s life is exciting.