The Bribe, Pt. 1
Thursday, March 20 -
The Bribe, Pt. 1
Judges 11:30b
“If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
We’ve all been in Jephthah’s shoes here, haven’t we? Maybe for you it was cancer or the threat of divorce or the rebellion of a child that thrust you to your knees in abject bewilderment. And all you could do in your anguish was pray something like, “Please LORD, please bring my daughter back home—please deliver my husband—please let the test come back benign—please, I’ll do anything!” I just got a call last week from a fellow helper in our special needs class at church who went to the hospital with what he thought was a nasty stomach bug, but the CT-scan showed signs of tumors, and he told me how he’d been weeping for three days over the thought that he’d never be able to explain to his autistic son why daddy was gone. He humbly vowed, “LORD, get me through this for the sake of my wife and son who rely on me—please! I’ll stop being so lazy and depressed and disinterested; I’ll never take my family for granted again—how could I? Just please heal me!” That’s the sort of selfless vow that gets past the ceiling without bringing the whole house down.
The problem isn’t that Jephthah makes a vow in this moment of desperation, but that his vow is actually a bribe. Did you catch the order of the wording here? “If you do A, then I’ll do B.” See, Jephthah thinks he’s got something God wants. He thinks he’s got a bit of leverage in this deal. Which begs the question: if Jephthah’s got some special creature in mind here, maybe a little lamb or goat or lapdog that always comes out to greet him at the door after long trips, why doesn’t he just do his part up front and sacrifice the animal now—before the battle? Because in bribes like these, you don’t want to give your bargaining chips away before the payout.
Friend, before you ask anything of the LORD today, first offer yourself. And don’t bring anyone else with you to the altar.