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Who were they: Jephthah
(jef'thuh) Hebrew: YITAH "opened" or "opener"
As the child of a harlot, Jephthah was scorned by his father's legitimate sons, who drove him from the family home in Israelite Gilead when they reached maturity. With no personal resources or hope of an inheritance, he fled to the land of Tob, a border region far east of the Jordan, where he gathered about him a group of "worthless fellows" (Jg. 11:3). Small roving bands of disenfranchised youths like Jephthah were common from the early settlement period up to Roman times.
While making alliances with local inhabitants who felt overtaxed or mistreated by their nominal rulers, these lawless frontiersmen sustained themselves by plundering merchant caravans and raiding other settled communities. Jephthah, however, rose above these inauspicious beginnings to judge Israel for six years; he was the ninth in a series of primarily military heroes who led temporary armies summoned to defend Israelite villages under attack from enemy nations in the premonarchical period.
When their hostile neighbors the Ammonites sought to regain territory seized by the Israelites, the elders of Gilead turned to Jephthah -- obviously impressed with his martial skills despite their earlier disdain for him. But he responded angrily to their plea for help: "Did you not hate me, and drive me out of my father's house? Why have you come to me now when you are in trouble?" (Jg. 11:7). Nonetheless, he agreed to lead the fight after the elders promised to make him their ruler when "the Lord gives them [the Ammonites] over to me" (Jg. 11:9).
Upon taking command of the Israelite forces, Jephthah sent messengers to negotiate a settlement with the Ammonites. But the enemy demurred; they were determined to reappropriate territory that Israel had taken from them during their migration from Egypt to Canaan. In a lengthy speech Jephthah set forth Israel's right to the Transjordan region, pointing out that his people had been refused permission to pass peacefully through these foreign lands. Israel's possession of the territory, he argued, was sanctified by the Lord -- just as the earlier claim of the Ammonites had been endorsed by their deity.
With the collapse of these negotiations, Jephthah turned to God, vowing that he would sacrifice whoever first appeared at the door of his house if he were allowed to return in triumph from war. Jephthah may have expected to see an animal at the door, since the ground floor in dwellings of that period served to shelter livestock while people usually lived on the second floor of their houses. To Jephthah's horror, it was his only child, his daughter, who greeted his victorious return "with timbrels and with dances" ( Jg. 11:34). Although human sacrifice was repugnant and in violation of religious law, the warrior's oath apparently took precedence over the ban. In despair, Jephthah granted his daughter's request for two months in which to mourn her maidenhood, but subsequently fulfilled his vow to sacrifice her. The women of Israel later commemorated this tragic event with an annual four-day period of lamentation.
In the New Testament, Jephthah is remembered -- Along with Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, Samuel, and the prophets -- as one who "through faith conquered kingdoms" (Heb. 11:33). However, both Jews and Christians have expressed their ethical concerns about a story in which a father is willing to kill his own daughter in order to fulfill a vow.
Before his six years of judging Israel had ended, Jephthah had to put down an uprising by the men of Ephraim, fellow Israelites incensed by his failure to summon them to join the fight against the Ammonites. With apparent ease, he defeated the Ephraimite attack across the Jordan and cut off their retreat by stationing troops at the fords of the rover. Realizing that Ephraimite soldiers looked no different from his own, he told his men to demand that each person crossing the fords be asked to say "Shibbleth" (ear of grain). Ephraimites were unable to pronounce the sh sound, so the word came out "Sibboleth." Thus, the Gileadites were able to identify their enemy and, the Bible reports, slow 42,000 Ephraimites who failed to pass this simple verbal test. In modern English the word "shibboleth" has come to be a catchword devoid of an actual meaning but serving to identify a particular group of people.
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