Did it surprise you that Jephthah kept his vow to God?
“At that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon
Jephthah, and he went throughout the land
of Gilead and Manasseh, including
Mizpah in Gilead, and from there he led an
army against the Ammonites. And
Jephthah made a vow to the Lord.
He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the Lord whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I return
in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” Judges 11: 29-31
What, or who did he expect to
come out of his house to greet him after his victory? An animal, a servant? Surely
not his daughter! Only, "When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his
daughter came out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. She
was his one and only child; he had no other sons or daughters. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in
anguish. “Oh, my daughter!” he cried out. “You have completely destroyed me!
You’ve brought disaster on me! For I have made a vow to the Lord, and I cannot take it back.” Judges 11:34-35
Surely Jephthah hadn’t expected
his daughter to be the first one to greet him, but God knew! He could see that
day as clearly as he saw into Jephthah’s heart and knew him to be a great man of
honor and integrity. He knew Jephthah would keep his vow even if it meant
giving God his most prized procession.
We all know the Lord’s enemy well
enough to believe he had to have come and whispered in Japhthah ear, “What if
your wife comes first? What if it’s your daughter? What if…? We can be
confident he was doing all he could to keep Jephthah from keeping him from
being the honorable man he was and keeping his vow to God during those days on
the battle field and even after the victory.
The writer of Judges is careful
to let us know that this was his only child.
He also allowed us to see Jephthah anguish when he sees his daughter come
out celebrating, but he doesn’t permit us to see further into all Japhthah
endured fulfilling his promise to God. We can only speculate what Jephthah felt
that fateful day as he had to sacrifice his daughter and how he felt everyday
afterwards until this life was over for him.
All
parents have gained a bit of a glimpse of how that day must have been every
time,
- We have to hand our infant or toddler over to a caregiver to go back to work outside our home
- We’ve had to entrust them to a doctor or surgeon in hopes they will return them to us whole and healed
- We send them off to school for the first time. It gets easier over time until we hear of another school shooting.
- We wave and watch our child drive away in a car, on their own, for the first time.
- We sit them on a plane to visit relatives and pray the plane reaches its destination safely.
- We send them off to college or the military when there are always threats of war.
Some of us may know exactly how
Japhthah felt to have to bury his child and try to figure out how he’ll manage to
live life without her, for that’s just not suppose to happen. All of these are
known as release points, and I’m sure you can probably think of others you’ve
had to live through.
When my children were little, I prayed for them each day; I’d pray for their day, their health, walk,
etc. I even prayed for their future spouses and children! And often The Lord
would come as I was praying for “my" children, and whisper, “Whose children, Sue?”
and I’d answer back, “Mine”. He knew my heart; therefore I figured there was no
point in compounding my sin by lying. Sure, I was very thankful to Him for
giving them to me, but for now they were mine!
I even discovered a cleaver way
to get around having these constant discussions with Him. I decided I could
avoid saying, “mine” or “yours”, by simply praying for them by name. I honestly
thought I had cleverly outsmarted God! (Can you imagine?)
That was until one day, I had to
board a plane that would take me thousands of miles away from “my
children” to live. They were both adults according to the law, but they were still my
babies and children were supposed to leave home, not the other way around. The
walk to the plane was the longest, hardest steps I’ve ever had to take. It
felt like I had cinder-blocks tied to my feet and I was walking through at least
a foot of wet cement! The Lord was right there, “Keep going, don’t look back,
one more step and then another.” I managed to keep it all together until we
walked into our new home; where I no longer had to try to be strong and the
tears just burst forth, and kept coming.
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| Last photo taken before our move to TN in '99 |
I went through about a nine month
period of mourning. Every day I’d put on my happy face and tried my best to
make it through each day without letting on that my heart was broken on the
inside. That was, until finally one day, the revelation hit me that an entire
year would go by before we could all be under one roof as a family once more,
and then for only one week.
I sank down to the floor in my
sitting room and the "Martha" in me came out! “Lord, don’t you care!?” (Luke
10:40) How could He make me suffer so? Wasn’t He supposed to be a loving God?
(It was NOT one of my proudest moments) BUT, The Lord answered back immediately,
“This is why I was asking you to give your children back to Me all those times, so many years
ago. I knew this day was coming, and I was trying to spare you this pain.”
I learned two very important
lessons that day, actually three:
1.)
Our children are His!
In truth everything we’ve been given is simply on loan for a time. We would do
well to constantly be mindful of this fact, and be good stewards of all we’ve
been given.
2.)
He truly loves us and
always has our very best interests at heart, even when things don’t make any
sense at the moment. He can be trusted.
3.)
He can walk with us
through hardships because He knows the blessings that lie ahead. Both of my
children are married to their best friends today! The Lord has given us seven grandchildren (#8 arrives in August) and
all of us now live only 10 minutes from one another in the same county! Our home is our grand’s second
home!
That day, I realized that I had
trusted God for my salvation, but I had never made Him Lord of my life, for I
was still trying to be in charge. That day I trusted Him not only with the
children He had given me, but with my life as well.
I’m sure The Lord helped Japhthah
walk through those days and years afterwards. And I’m sure both he and his
daughter are worshiping The Lord together today. I loved how the author
mentions that a custom came about because of the two of them, (This became a custom in Israel—That the daughters of Israel went yearly to mourn the
daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.) for I’ll bet as the daughters remembered the daughter of Jephthah, their fathers
were remembering his integrity.
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| God's faithfulness 19 years later! |