Judges 11:1-12:15
John 1:1-28
Psalm 101:1-8
Proverbs 14:13-14
Judges 11:30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Jephthah makes a rash and unnecessary vow to God. He is expecting that the first thing that will come out of the house will be an animal. God's fulfilment of His promise to Jephthah had nothing to do with the vow. We do not need to make deals with God. If God requires something from us He can make it known to us.
Judges 11:34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.”
A vow should not be made rashly. God has given us free will and Jephthah of his own free will made an impulsive one. Today people break their vows all the time. Look at the divorce rates. Could it be that Jephthah broke his vow to offer her as a burnt offering and instead sacrificed her future to God and she remained a virgin. It doesn't look that way to me.
Judges 11:36 “My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites.
They both understood the importance of a vow. His daughter was a willing sacrifice because she knew that breaking a vow was a sin. In Deuteronomy 23 it says..."21 “When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not be slack to pay it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin in you. 22 But if you refrain from vowing, it shall be no sin in you." Jephthah should have known not to make a vow like that. I asked myself why didn't God stop him? After all, He stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. But that was a completely different story. God had told him to make that sacrifice and Abraham was being obedient. It was not Abraham who initiated the sacrifice. The bible is full of instructions from God about what we should and should not do and God does not stop us from doing them. It say's don't make vows but God isn't going to stop you from making them. Jesus tells us that hate of our brothers and sisters is the same as murder but He doesn't stop us from being angry and hating. We are free to make our own decisions. We are not robots at His command. I am sure that if you struggle with this story and fact that God did not stop him, you would also be upset if instead the bible was a story of God controlling the thoughts words and actions of everyone He created. We can't have free will and perfection. Our imperfection means that we will do bad and even terrible things, but God can use even our bad decisions for the good of the kingdom. This is a lesson to the Israelites about making vows to God. And all the difficult and painful stories in the bible show us the depth of our imperfection that we might better value the perfect gift of Jesus.
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