Walk in Wisdom

Wednesday, March 19
Rough Waters
Judges 11:29-30a
Then the Spirit of the LORD was upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD …

I encourage you to brace your heart and mind, friend, as I’ve had to do, for a heavy impact, for our study through Judges is leading us on a collision course to some of the most difficult and most excruciatingly bleak episodes in divine Scripture. These are rough, impassable waters on the Sea of Providence. The way forward is covered in the dense fog of darkness that Moses entered at Sinai. The distinguished linguist, the renowned philosopher, the systematic theologian, and the ordinary saint are all in the same boat here, with the same crude oars of faith and reason, crying out in the eye of the storm for the LORD to come to our rescue. The word of God cuts deep, but His silence cuts even deeper, and we’ll feel that silence in the next scene of Jephthah’s biography, as Jephthah speaks a foolish, irretrievable word to the LORD, yet God doesn’t send an angel to stop his tongue. But before I attempt a reflection on that lack of intervention, let me first offer a prayer for guidance: “O LORD, in Your light do we see light! Shine down now through the darkness that we may catch a glimpse of the glory Heaven is making of this dark episode. Amen.”

Jephthah’s vow, like the Book of Judges on the whole, shows us the harder side of man’s God-given free will. See, we love having power and authority, but we don’t like the accountability that comes with it, do we? Consider that all throughout the human story, God could’ve guided all man’s actions away from evil. He could’ve taken Eve’s hand before she ate that fruit, and stopped Cain from murdering Abel, and told Jacob not to lie to his father, and kept Aaron from fashioning the golden calf, and prevented Moses from striking the boulder, and told Jephthah to be quiet, but He didn’t. Because our choosing to do what is right, and the consequences we face when we don’t, is an essential aspect of redemption’s drama.

Jephthah needs a rude awakening of the damage a little, irretrievable word can do, and maybe we do, too.