JEPHTHAH - THE NEGOTIATOR - PART 1 (Judges 10:17-12:7)
INTRODUCTION:
When we speak of negotiation it is usually spoken of as a good thing, it is even hard to imagine what our world would be like without it. What might have been the outcome of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine if they would have sat down and negotiated before a declaration of war was made. Negotiation can be defined as a formal discussion between peoples or parties or nations who are trying to reach an agreement. Successful negotiations require accommodation, compromise, some give and take, and even the making of concessions. Negotiation is seen in very level of human relationship, from haggling over the price of an item in some countries’ open markets to international relations at the very highest levels. Most wars end in peace negotiations of some kind, making us wonder why war cannot be avoided entirely. The reason is those involved in the conflict believe that too much is at stake and the war that breaks out is most often about establishing the strongest bargaining position so that when you do sit down to negotiate the winner has the power to extract the needed concessions from the loser. Which is the cause in many cases of the breakdown of negotiations. And while negotiations may be necessary, it is not perfect and has some very severe limitations. If both parties are unwilling to budge or compromise the negotiations will fail. The basic problem is the sinful human heart with its instinct for self-protection and self-promotion rather than love and trust. Negotiation may be essential for a fallen world, but it is far from ideal.
Where does negotiation fit in when you acknowledge God as your rightful ruler and understand that your life in relation to Him is meant to reflect His character in all areas and all relationships. Does negotiation truly have a place in the way we relate to our neighbors or to those outside our circle? What place does negotiation have in our relationship with God? Can we negotiate with Him? Is it a good idea? Of all the judges that we have looked at so far, Jephthah has the most when it comes to dialogue. We will find that his history unfolds in several episodes of negotiation. He does a lot of talking. As we look at his life, we will learn some important lessons about this issue in particular. Let’s pray and then get into our passage.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
I am going to do something a little different this morning and with this passage as a whole. Because it is so long, I am only going to read each episode before we look at it in detail. We will see how far we get this morning, and what we do not finish up this morning we will pick up and finish in the next few weeks. With that said, please turn in your Bibles to Judges 10:17-11:11, the first episode in the life of Jephthah. Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word and follow along as I read.
Judges 10:17-11:11,
“Then the sons of Ammon were summoned and they camped in Gilead. And the sons of Israel gathered together and camped in Mizpah. The people, the leaders of Gilead, said to one another, ‘Who is the man who will begin to fight against the sons of Ammon? He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.’ Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, but he was the son of a harlot. And Gilead was the father of Jephthah. Gilead’s wife bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, ‘You shall not have an inheritance in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.’ So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob; and worthless fellows gathered themselves about Jephthah, and they went out with him. It came about after a while that the sons of Ammon fought against Israel. When the sons of Ammon fought against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob; and they said to Jephthah, ‘Come and be our chief that we may fight against the sons of Ammon.’ Then Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, ‘Did you not hate me and drive me from my father’s house? So why have you come to me now when you are in trouble?’ The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ‘For this reason we have now returned to you, that you may go with us and fight with the sons of Ammon and become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.’ So Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, ‘If you take me back to fight against the sons of Ammon and the Lord gives them up to me, will I become your head?’ The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ‘The Lord is witness between us; surely we will do as you have said.’ Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and chief over them; and Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah.” (Judges 10:17–11:11, NASB95)[1]
BEFORE NEGOTIATIONS (Judges 10:17-18)
If you remember from last week, at the death of Jair, the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD and it was bad, they were not only worshipping and serving the Baals and the Ashtaroth of the Canaanites among whom they lived, but they were going after any and every god they could find, serving the gods of all the nations around them. They completely turned away from the LORD, the one and only true and living God, to serve worthless, dead idols of wood and stone because they seemed more attractive to them, because they lusted after the religious practices of the nations around them. The LORD in His anger over their wickedness turned them over to two nations to afflict and crush them; and afflict them they did for 18 years so that they were severely distressed. When they could bear it no longer, they cried out to the LORD to deliver them, but the LORD told them He would deliver them no more. They confessed their sin, they put away their foreign gods and began to serve the LORD. Was their repentance sincere, or had they only turned from their foreign gods so the God would give them relief from their oppressors? The LORD did not forgive them, He did not raise up a deliverer for them, but there came a glimmer of hope when He could bear their misery no longer, but He was silent about what He would do.
In the end of chapter 10 we read that the sons of Ammon were called out and they came up into the land of Israel and camped in Gilead in preparation to launch a new offensive against the Israelites living on the east side of the Jordan. The Israelites gather in Mizpah, this is the Mizpah in Gilead, possibly the place where Laban and Jacob agreed to no longer harm one another, not far from the Jabbok River. Since it is Gilead that is most threatened at this point, it is Gilead’s leaders that call out for a volunteer from among them to lead the people in their fight against Ammon. They even give an incentive to their call, the one who will command and lead the forces will become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. No one volunteers, it has been too many years of oppression. There are leaders or elders in Gilead, but they are more administrative and not military leaders, because during the rule of Jair they did not prepare for war, they had been lulled into a false sense of security and did not look to the future and now there was no one to lead them into battle. The scene is set for the entrance of Jephthah.
NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ELDERS OF GILEAD (Judges 11:1-11)
Verse one of chapter eleven tells us that Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, he was a man’s man, he knew how to fight, he had experience in combat. This was just the man they needed to command their forces and lead them into battle. The only problem was, actually there were several problems, but the main one at the moment was Jephthah was not in Gilead. Jephthah was a Gileadite through and through, but he had not had an easy life. He was the son of a prostitute, his father had been Gilead and he had a legitimate wife that provided him with sons also, and Jephthah’s brothers or half-brothers had driven him out when they had grown so that he could not share in their father’s inheritance. So, Jephthah went north to the land of Tob near the border of Syria. Here he gathered a group of worthless men around him and he led them. This is understood to mean that they did what was necessary to survive whether that was raiding or hiring themselves out a mercenaries. In this life that Jephthah had been driven into he became a hardened and valiant warrior, though he was an outcast among his people.
With no volunteers and the sons of Ammon beginning their raiding and pillaging again, the elders of Gilead were desperate for someone to lead them against the Ammonites. They decide to send a delegation to go to Tob and ask Jephthah to help them. Upon their arrival they make their request, but they do not add the incentive of becoming head over all the inhabitants of Gilead they just request that he be their chief in their fight against the Ammonites. Jephthah is not about to come with them unless he gets everything he wants and recognizes that now he is the one with all the bargaining power. He uses this power to its full potential. The elders of Gilead must have sided with his brothers when they drove him away because he accuses them of hating him and of participating in driving him from his father’s house. After all they were the leaders of the community and were responsible for managing the affairs of the region. With this accusation leveled at the elders he asks why they are coming to him now for help when they find themselves in trouble. The elders realize that they are going to need to offer Jephthah more than just the command of their fighting forces. They tell Jephthah that they want him to come and fight for them, and if he does this for them, he will become head over all the people of Gilead. This is a huge incentive for one who has been an outcast. This is huge, more than he could have ever hoped for, he will have status, power, and a complete reversal of the wrongs that have been done to him. But he is cautious, these people have betrayed him before. Now he has them just where he wants them, they are completely at his mercy, and he presses them to make sure that they will deliver on what they have promised him. He spells out the terms of their promise very precisely for them, “If you take me back to fight against the sons of Ammon and the Lord gives them up to me, will I become your head?” (Judges 11:9b, NASB95)[2] He wants some assurance from them that they are not just making an empty promise to get him to come and fight for them. By invoking the name of the LORD, he was basically putting the elders under oath, they understand this, but what alternative do they have? They give Jephthah the assurance that he is looking for by swearing by the LORD to fulfill the terms of their promise to him. “The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, ‘The Lord is witness between us; surely we will do as you have said.’” (Judges 11:10, NASB95)[3]
Satisfied with their oath that the LORD is the witness between them, Jephthah returns, and he is immediately made both chief and head over the people of Gilead and this is ratified in a solemn ceremony in which Jephthah, like them, vows before the LORD to keep his part of the bargain struck between the elders of Gilead and himself. Everything now depends on how Jephthah does in the coming conflict with the Ammonites. A great deal hangs in the balance, and the stakes are high, not just for the people Jephthah leads, but for Jephthah himself.
I would like to bring to your attention the similarity between the apparent reconciliation between Jephthah and the people of Gilead and what took place between the Israelites and the LORD at the end of last week’s message. In this passage today the Gileadites rejected Jephthah but turn to him for help when they are in trouble, just as the Israelites abandoned the LORD (Yahweh) but appeal to Him to deliver them when they are in trouble. Jephthah initially refuses the Gileadites’ appeal for help, as Yahweh refuses to deliver the Israelites anymore. The Gileadites indicate that they have changed their attitude toward Jephthah and offer to make him the leader over all Gilead, just as the Israelites apparently changed their attitude toward Yahweh and began to serve Him again. The difference is that Jephthah, in the end, does promise to rescue the Gileadites, on certain conditions, where in the case with Yahweh no such promise is made with the Israelites. Jephthah strikes a deal, God does not. Jephthah sees an opportunity to advance his own interests; God could bear Israel’s misery no more. All this leaves us wondering or asking two questions. First, was Israel’s repentance real, or was it (as we may have suspected) just an attempt to bargain with God as the elders now bargain with Jephthah? Second, what does the contrast between how Jephthah reacted, and how the LORD reacted tell us about how the relationship between them is likely to develop? So far, the LORD has been a silent witness of all that has taken place. What will God do? Will He choose Jephthah, as the Gileadites have done? Is this valiant warrior and hard-headed, self-interested negotiator going to be the next judge of Israel?
CONCLUSION:
I am going to stop here this morning. It was a bit short but if I get into the next section it is going to be long, so I will save that for next week and we can spend a bit more time this morning celebrating the Lord’s Supper. Before we do that though we need to take a moment to draw some conclusions from what we have already looked at in this passage.
We have already looked at the similarities and the differences in how Israel approached the LORD and how the elders of Gilead approached Jephthah. It is interesting to note that in each case they were looking for a Savior. In Jephthah they found a human savior who promised to rescue them from the oppression of the Ammonites. If they had sincerely repented when they put away their false gods and confessed their sin, then they would have found much more than a human savior to rescue them from a human oppressor. They would have found a Supernatural Savior who would have forgiven them and would have lavished His love and grace and mercy on them. I believe we can see their lack of sincerity in the words which they speak to the LORD back in chapter 10, their repentance and service to the LORD was them trying to negotiate with the LORD so that He would deliver them. Listen to the words of the Israelites when the hear that God is not going to send a deliverer. Judges 10:15 reads, “The sons of Israel said to the Lord, ‘We have sinned, do to us whatever seems good to You; only please deliver us this day.’” (Judges 10:15, NASB95)[4] They acknowledged that they had sinned but only so the LORD would deliver them on that day. I find it interesting that they said, “…do to us whatever seems good to You…” (Judges 10:15b, NASB95)[5] This is exactly what God was doing, the oppression of the Ammonites and the Philistines was what seemed good to God at that time. His people, those He had rescued over and over could not see that this oppression was God’s way of disciplining them for the evil which they had done in His sight. He had disciplined and delivered them to no avail, they continued to scorn their Savior and the covenant they had promised to keep. Did they deserve to be rescued, no, they had proven that over and over. An end is coming because the LORD could bear the misery of Israel no longer. What I love about this statement is the fact that even though Israel deserved what they were getting, the LORD never stopped loving them. We do not want those we love to suffer or to be miserable, and the LORD also does not want to see His people in misery because He loves them. It is because of that love, and because of the misery of sin that God sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. The apostle Peter expresses this so well in his first epistle, Timothy read this to us this morning, let me read it again. 1 Peter 1:3-9, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:3–9, NASB95)[6]
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.