Today's reading: Judges 11; Acts 23
I have heard a lot of people struggle with Jephthah before, and I certainly get why; he starts out so strong and faithful to the Lord, but then his story ends tragically with him actively sacrificing his daughter to God... How could God choose someone like THAT to raise up as a judge??? What kind of example is he??
There is an important distinction we need to make though between someone being a good example of faith and someone being a good example morally.
Jephthah is honestly a great example of faith in Yahweh. He knows and recognizes how God has acted for Israel. He directly calls out the possession of the land of the Amorites as being the result of God's work rather than the might of Israel, and he directly challenges the king of the Ammonites on this score, telling him to take what his God can give him while Israel takes what Yahweh has given them. Jephthah is a mighty warrior, but his confidence and his boast before the king of the Ammonites is not on his might or on the strength of his army, but is on Yahweh. So legitimately, Jephthah shows a very real, very practical, and very imitable faith here in Judges 11, and I'm betting that is a large part of why God chose him for this role.
I think the sticking point for a lot of people though is how someone who gets the faith part so right can get the practice part so wrong. Obviously Jephthah didn't know it would be his daughter that he would be sacrificing when he made his vow, but it was a member of his household he was intending. His vow is to sacrifice whatever first comes out to greet him when he returns in victory. Jephthah isn't thinking a sheep or goat is coming out of his house excited to see him. He is probably expecting it to be a servant or a concubine, not his daughter, but either way, he is intending human sacrifice to the Lord! And even if he was thinking his dog would come bounding out to see him when he got home, when it is his daughter, he doesn't stop and say, "I know I made this vow to you, Lord, but I also know you wouldn't want this, so I'm renouncing my vow. Please forgive my thoughtless words!"
On the one hand, I don't know how much we should really expect Jephthah to know God would not be into this sacrifice. While he knows what God has done in the past to give Israel the land, we have also already seen that the specific teachings of Moses have not been broadly propagated in Israel. More than that, while the teachings of Moses have not been passed on properly, the practices of the peoples Israel failed to drive out have taken root. So if Jephthah has never really known the teachings of Yahweh, and just recognizes Yahweh as the God of gods, it actually makes complete sense that he would conflate practices like human sacrifice, which were very common in the worship of various gods of Canaan, with the worship of Yahweh, and think that this would be a vow Yahweh would be very impressed by.
But on the other hand, every great person of faith in bible has similar sins and flaws. Take David, for example: Despite being called a man after God's own heart, and someone whose faith is commended over and over again, among other things he murders a man to cover up his adultery, and he ignores the fact that his son rapes his daughter... For all that David was a great example of faith, he was a terrible example as a husband and as a father. I think it's easier to overlook these though, partly because child sacrifice is so incredibly heinous, but probably also because we have so much more to read about David, so the negative kind of falls to the side a bit whereas with Jephthah, since we only have a single chapter, this major flaw can't hide in the rest of the narrative.
All that to say that I don't think Jephthah is really all that unique in Scripture. He was a man who had great faith, but also awful sin. God was working with real people who had real struggles and real flaws, and He continues to work with flawed and struggling people to accomplish His work today, and that should be incredibly encouraging and comforting to us. And as we realize that, we should feel the freedom to recognize and follow the example of Jephthah's faith while recognizing his sin as the cautionary tale that it is.
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