A Judge Trusted by the People

1The men of Ephraim were gathered together, and passed northward; and they said to Jephthah, “Why did you pass over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didn’t call us to go with you? We will burn your house around you with fire!” 2Jephthah said to them, “I and my people were at great strife with the children of Ammon; and when I called you, you didn’t save me out of their hand. 3When I saw that you didn’t save me, I put my life in my hand, and passed over against the children of Ammon, and Yahweh delivered them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me today, to fight against me?” 4Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim. The men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, “You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the middle of Ephraim, and in the middle of Manasseh.” 5The Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. When the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead said to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he said, “No”; 6then they said to him, “Now say ‘Shibboleth;’” and he said “Sibboleth”; for he couldn’t manage to pronounce it right: then they seized him, and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time, forty-two thousand of Ephraim fell. 7Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died, and was buried in the cities of Gilead.

To trust others and to be trusted is never easy. Keeping trust is hard, because winning people’s confidence in every circumstance demands that we keep driving ourselves on. Human selfishness trusts while there is something to gain, then moves that trust elsewhere at the first hurt feeling. Trust from people like that can be kept only by a faith that stands unshaken in God.

For the judges, entrusted with God’s work, winning the people’s trust was harder still. The one way a judge could gain the people’s complete trust was first to have their faith approved by God. Since the Israelites leaned on a judge to meet their needs, a judge would have had to face a great many people in a lonely fight. Even so, the judges whom God approved lived successful lives.

Do you think there is real trust in the relationships you form in the world? Have you found people truly worthy of trust and come to rely on them, and are you working together so as not to break that trust? To judge another person rightly, you must first have wisdom in God. Being trusted by others is hard. Yet we still need to be trusted, because that effort is a way of keeping far from sin. People like this are not easily shaken when sin tempts them, and they can help others make sound judgments.

Judges 12:1

1The men of Ephraim were gathered together, and passed northward; and they said to Jephthah, “Why did you pass over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didn’t call us to go with you? We will burn your house around you with fire!”

Ephraim is breaking faith with its brothers. Earlier, when Gideon was judge and won the victory with his three hundred men, Ephraim complained that it had not been called. Rather than rebuke them, Gideon soothed them by saying that Ephraim’s strength was far greater than his own, and they went home satisfied. Had Gideon sharply rebuked Ephraim’s unreasonable demands then, they would not have done the same thing to Jephthah now, and they would not have died so terribly.

When Jephthah won his great victory over Ammon, the men of Ephraim came looking for him and picked a quarrel because he had not called them to the battle. Jephthah answered in fury: he had put his life in his hand to strike Ammon, and were they now complaining that he had not given them the lead? It was a response nothing like Gideon’s.

Judges 12:4

4Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim. The men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, “You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the middle of Ephraim, and in the middle of Manasseh.”

Ephraim mocked Jephthah’s standing, insulting him as a fugitive who had lived on the run, driven from place to place. Having once seen Gideon bow his head to their complaints, the Ephraimites expected that if they insulted Jephthah and pushed him hard, he too would give them the honor they wanted. But Jephthah was not Gideon. In his anger he killed 42,000 men of Ephraim.

Jephthah and the men of Gilead held the fords of the Jordan, and anyone who came to the crossing to escape was told to say “Shibboleth.” The Ephraimites said “Sibboleth,” so even when a man denied that he was from Ephraim, they knew him by his speech and killed him. At the first census after the Exodus, Ephraim counted 40,500 fighting men; at the second, 32,500. Now, some three hundred years later, 42,000 of its men died at a single stroke. It must have been a crushing blow.

Ephraim sinned again and again, and lost Israel’s trust. Once threatening a judge had won them what they wanted, they repeated the sin. But God judged Ephraim, a tribe that sought its own gain rather than helping its brothers. Ephraim wanted to stand at the center of Israel without sacrificing anything of its own. Unable to bear another tribe’s success, it threatened to burn the house of the leader who had staked his life to save Israel — and instead lost 42,000 of its men.

Jealousy and envy like this live in every human heart. Envy, jealousy, and greed grow little by little until at last they become sin and lead to death. Look at the cases making headlines today. People who began with a fearful heart discover pleasure, then turn to drugs and commit sexual assault, leading their own lives into ruin. Sin cannot be cut off by human strength, since it is Satan who is at work in it. And because sinful feelings never stay in the mind but always find their way into the body, they end in ruin unless the Spirit of God rules them. As a balloon swells and swells until it bursts, Satan makes a small sin grow larger and larger until it brings a whole life down.

If you cannot hold back your resentment or quiet an anxious heart, you will find yourself talking to yourself, over and over. Keep that conversation going, and before you know it the thought takes shape and becomes action. Thoughts like these, planted by Satan, end only when someone’s life is harmed or your own life falls apart. So before such misfortune comes, you must cut off the evil thought the moment it begins.

Had Ephraim gone to war to defend the land God had given, Jephthah would have been sincerely grateful, and Ephraim would have won Israel’s trust. But Ephraim could not break its bad habit, and it died for it. Friends, I hope you will become people whom God approves. Then people will trust you, with the Spirit of God at your side.

Judges 12:7

7Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died, and was buried in the cities of Gilead.

Jephthah, who had striven so hard to rise into the upper class, died. His life and death teach us that we must live today well and strive for a life without regret, because life is a road we walk as pilgrims toward our true home.

When my father went home to the Lord, I saw my mother shaking so hard she could not hold herself up, wailing aloud. Watching her, I thought how hard and how sorrowful this must be for her. Sadly, seven years after my father passed away, my mother died too. As I touched her feet after she was gone, I suddenly remembered how she had wept for him. She had outlived my father by seven years. Had she known that she would? The thought made life seem utterly empty, and I sank into wondering what life really is. What had those seven years after my father’s death meant to her? Had her life — she who had now gone, leaving only her body behind — been a time without regret? And what faces did my father and mother wear when they met God? Near the end I had fasted for their salvation and brought them the word, and they had promised to receive Jesus. When they put off the body and saw that God truly is there, how astonished they must have been, I wondered.

Watching the death of Jephthah, who had struggled so hard to make something of himself in the world, I thought of my parents and sat for a long while, lost in thought. Loved or hated, a hero who saved the nation, someone honored by all — everyone departs one day. That is life. For his wealth and glory, Jephthah chose to become head over people rather than to follow God, yet he served as judge for only six years. To live those six years among the elite, he struck a bargain with the elders; to raise himself up, he made a vow that offered his daughter. He would be here for so short a time, and still he wiped out Ephraim. It was this human greed — the longing for the upper class, the craving for success — that cost Jephthah everything.

If he had grasped that life truly is vanity of vanities, and had known he had only six years left, what would he have chosen? He sent his precious daughter ahead of him for the sake of his ambition. When, six years later, he came face to face with death, what did he think? He probably looked back over the past and wept tears of regret. Was he happy, living six years as head of Gilead in a world without his daughter? What do you think? I hope you will put yourself in Jephthah’s place and think it through.

Ecclesiastes 12:7-8

7and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 8“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher. “All is vanity!”

Now let us look at it from God’s side. God was beside Jephthah when his brothers drove him out in disgrace, and when he lived among the weak. The God who had given Jephthah his valor knew that the Ammonites would attack, and knew that the elders would come to him and bow their heads. God, who rules every life, must have hoped that when the elders came with their request, Jephthah would fight for Israel without greed. Since the time allotted him in this world was fixed, God would have wanted him to decide in faith when the elders came. That Jephthah had only six years to live was a secret known to God alone, the one who rules over life. So we must not lean on our own lives, but on the almighty God, the master of life.

But Jephthah wanted to be head over the people. Hungry for their approval, he vowed to offer a human being as a burnt offering. Of course, he would have done it because he did not know how much time he had left. Perhaps if God had told him directly, “Jephthah, you have little time left, so live well,” he would not have made the foolish choice of offering a person as a burnt offering, nor suffered the grief of killing his daughter because of it.

Jephthah probably imagined the wealth and glory that lay ahead, and was glad to think that he could give his daughter a life of plenty too. Watching him make one greedy, human choice after another, sinking ever deeper into sin, God would have grieved. I have wondered whether, to God, Jephthah did not look like an ant. Ants carry leaves in their mouths, working hard. Never resting for a moment, they give their all to hauling leaves — but when an anteater comes and swallows them in an instant, they die still holding their leaves. The ant does not know that the anteater is coming, or that it will die. That is an empty life. We do not know what will happen in the next moment, or when God will call us. That is why we must live well, by faith, now.

If God called you, could you tell him that you had lived well, preparing to meet him? The apostle Paul knew the time of his going to God and waited for that moment, yet in the time he was given he gave his all to preaching the gospel. So Paul could say boldly that he longed to go to God, but that he remained alive now in order to preach the gospel to the church. Set Paul’s life — never ashamed and without regret, whenever death might come — beside Jephthah, who, not knowing when he would die, could not let go of his greed and desires. Then you will know how you ought to live.

God longs for you to leave behind the fruit of the gospel and come home to heaven. He wants you to be his children, ready whenever he calls, rejoicing that you have been waiting for the day you would meet him.

Judges 12:8-9

8After him Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. 9He had thirty sons; and thirty daughters he sent outside his clan, and thirty daughters he brought in from outside his clan for his sons. He judged Israel seven years.

After Jephthah died, Ibzan of Bethlehem became judge. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters, and what deserves our attention is that he sent his daughters outside and brought in thirty women from outside for his sons. Marrying all his children to people of other nations looks like a string of political marriages, so it would have been deliberate. To prevent unrest in Israel, he married his children to foreigners, and in doing so strengthened his power. It seems, then, that rather than serving God wholeheartedly, Ibzan worked to secure his place as judge through human alliances.

After him, Elon the Zebulunite became judge and governed for ten years, followed by Abdon. These men, too, made no effort to rule the nation according to God’s will; their interest lay only in their family affairs. Abdon had his forty sons and thirty grandsons ride on seventy donkeys. From Jephthah on, the judges served only short terms, and every one of them lived for his own life rather than for God. They did not work to exalt God’s name; they lived merely human lives in pursuit of their wealth and glory.

Once the judges were corrupted, the people began to do evil in Yahweh’s sight. God could no longer look on their sin. He gave Israel into the hands of the Philistines and made them pass through the fire for forty years. Judges kept being raised up, but because not one of them taught the people the word, the nation’s faith went bad. A single judge’s failure could bring a fall, but here all the Israelites worshiped idols, and so they did evil before God.

The corrupted faith that began with Gideon flowed on. With fallen judges ruling over them — Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon — the people, fallen through all those long years, had no strength left to turn back to God. Politics is no different. Presidents and those who govern must lead the nation with all they have for the time they are given. But if, instead of governing better to make the country strong, they make a habit of exploitation and wrongdoing for themselves, the nation will steadily decline. Then, whoever takes power, recovery will take as long as the corruption did. So wise and discerning leaders must keep being raised up, and they must sacrifice themselves for the nation and its people and lead them in the right way. If good leaders win the citizens’ trust and work for the nation, this country will one day grow strong. In other words, neither Israel nor our own country fell into corruption overnight.

The same is true of the family. Children who grow up under parents with right faith, sound thinking, and love have already heard, seen, and learned a great deal, so living a healthy life is no great struggle for them. But children raised by parents with a corrupted faith and distorted thinking must first throw off the bad habits and poor character they have learned, and so it takes them that much longer to live a normal life. Parents, then, must hold a right faith and be an example that teaches their children what it means to live in God.

Many were raised up as judges, but because they lived just as they had seen and learned, they came in the end under God’s judgment. In his wrath, God had to waste forty years calling Israel back to be his people.

As we watch Ephraim sin again and again, and Israel sin again and again, we must not forget that we are walking the same road. To save sinners like these, God sent his only Son, Jesus, into this world and made him bear the contempt and scorn of those who craved the world. He made known to us what a great blessing it is to become citizens of heaven, and he showed in his own body that salvation is never easy.

We have the chance now to make the choice of faith. God can raise you up as an evangelist who preaches the gospel, as a leader, a teacher, one who shows mercy, or one who holds authority. Every choice and decision is always yours, and if you choose what is good, God will work to make that choice bear good fruit.

Friends, life is not forever. Whatever our lives look like now, our time is appointed, and it will surely come to an end. Knowing that, may you be people of honest faith. Whether your wealth is great or small, whether you have power or not, none of it is yours. You only borrow it for a while as you live in the body, and then you leave it behind.

If you fill your heart with goodness and give your best to exalting God’s name in the place he has given you, God will help you win people’s approval and trust. I hope you will not live the foolish life of Gideon, nor live like Jephthah, who made a senseless vow, nor like Abdon, who set seventy children on donkeys, but will be people of faith who take up the calling God has given you.

However vast this world may look, it runs according to God’s plan and providence. However strong people may seem, when God is with you, the world can never overcome you, his children. Trust God, keep his word, go the way he leads, and you will without doubt live a holy life. If you plant the seed of the gospel in faith and labor so that more people are saved, God will give you eternal life.

May you always keep asking what you are truly living for, and where your life after death will begin.