A Judge the People Trusted

The men of Ephraim came to Jephthah and picked a quarrel with him for not calling them to the battle, threatening to burn him and his house down. Jephthah rebuked them, the two sides clashed, and forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed.

Ephraim had raised the same complaint in Gideon’s day, and because the matter had been settled then with soft words, they expected the same approach to work again. What repeated itself was an old ambition: to stand at the center of Israel while sacrificing nothing of their own. Envy and jealousy, unless they are held in check, grow until they end in harming others. Jephthah, too, wanted to live among the upper class for the six years he was set up as judge; that desire drove him to vow his daughter as a burnt offering, and it cost him what was most precious to him.

No one knows how much time remains to them, which is why it matters to live today without regret. The judges pursued their own households, riches and glory rather than God, and did not teach the people the word; as a result Israel lost its faith and came under the oppression of the Philistines for forty years. Whether a leader or one of the congregation, only a life that is first approved by God will earn true trust from people as well.