Judges 11 tells the tragic story of how one of Israel’s leaders, Jephthah, sacrificed his daughter.
Jephthah had sort of been taunting the Ammonites, exclaiming to them about how great Israel’s God was and how he could wipe them out, just as he wiped out the Amorites and defended against Balak, king of Moab.
But then, as Jephthah got ready to go up against the Ammonites, he seems to have been unsure of whether God would actually follow through on giving the Ammonites into his hands, as he had just taunted. So, as a way of getting Yahweh’s favor, Jephthah made a vow that if Yahweh gave the Ammonites into his hands, he would offer as a burnt offering whatever came out of his house first after he returned home from the battle (Jdgs. 11:30-31).
Jephthah defeated the Ammonites and returned home victorious.
Then his daughter ran out of the house to greet him after his great victory, and Jephthah was heartbroken.
Sacrificially, his daughter told him to follow through on his vow to the Lord, and after a time of mourning her virginity, Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt sacrifice.
Such a tragic story!
Here was one of the leaders of the people of Israel, supposed to be driving out the Canaanites as Yahweh had commanded them, but instead acting just like Canaanites. One of the reasons Yahweh wanted Canaanites driven out of the land was because they sacrificed their children (Duet. 12:31).
Now, the leader of Yahweh’s people is sacrificing his own.
This story is tragic on several levels. First of all, God’s people were doing things he hates—sacrificing children. Secondly, while at first glance the story seems like one of heroism and dedicated faithfulness to one’s word and his God, a deeper look exposes how this story reveals the entrenched depravity of the people of Israel and their leaders.
Leviticus 27 gives a provision for someone who makes a vow too difficult to keep—particularly, vows having to do with people. Jephthah did not have to sacrifice his daughter in order to keep his vow to God. In fact, it seems God knew humanity would get themselves into rash situations such as this and therefore provided all kinds of provisions within his Law.
The problem is, Jephthah had forgotten God’s Law. He clearly did not know the Torah.
He had neglected the responsibility as a leader of Israel to write out his own copy of the Law as Moses had commanded in Deuteronomy 17. It seems all Jephthah knew was what the nations around him did: made rash vows to their gods in order to gain favor in battle and sacrificed their children as a part of those vows.
Our God, the God of Israel—Yahweh—is creator of life.
He is creator of the universe and all that is created. And he has designed creation to function in beautiful harmony.
But in love and out of a desire for relationship with his creation, Yahweh has allowed creation to choose which way they function: according to his design or according to their own wishes.
To help them know what is best for them and what sets them up for the greatest success and fullest experience in this life, Yahweh gave humanity the law. It’s a law of wisdom, of moral direction and instruction for the best functioning of society.
Yahweh’s law is not oppressive; it’s empowering.
Yet, people do not realize the freedom and power it provides unless they know the law well.
Jephthah clearly did not know the law.
The question I have today is how many of us are walking in Jephthah’s shoes? How many of us are experiencing tragedy and pain in life, perhaps even developing resentment toward God, because we have stopped reading his law and forgotten just what he says and instead blame him for all the horrible things in life?
When you gain consciousness from your sleep each morning and thoughts begin to fill your head, and when you open your eyes, crawl out of bed, and walk out your front door to meet the world head-on, you interpret everything you think, everything you see—everything you experience—through a narrative that you have developed about life.
That narrative tells you whether you are loved or whether you are left alone.
It tells you whether you are a failure or whether you a conqueror.
The narrative we live life from tells us whether people are talking about us behind our backs or whether they care about us and are getting advice on how to come alongside us in love.
The question, what shapes our narratives?
Sometimes we literally feel put in impossible situations, as if God has set us up for pain as he seemingly set Jephthah up to sacrifice his daughter.
But sometimes that “impossible situation” is merely a figment of our imagination, as it also was with Jephthah.
Even when we face legitimate, challenging, and painful situations, do we know what God says about those times, about why they happen, and about where he is and what he’s doing in it all?
And does what he says shape the narrative we interpret all of life through?
This is why we have got to be embedded in the Word of God.
We don’t read God’s Word because it makes him fonder of us. We read his Word because it helps us get to know him and his design for life.
It helps us gain clarity on why things are the way they are today.
But there’s a lot of clutter surrounding the topic of God’s Word and Christians reading it that I think it’s important for us to sort through some of it so we can better understand the beauty and glory it is for creation to possess such a message.
First of all, what do I mean by “the Word of God”?
When I talk about knowing “the Word of God,” am I talking about reading and memorizing the Bible?
Is “the Word of God” only ever found inside the front and back covers of the Holy Bible?
Are their specific things said in the Bible that are “the Word of God,” or is all of the Bible “the Word of God”?
Throughout the Old Testament, the phrase “the Word of God” seems to be most often referring to revelatory words from the Lord. For instance, when God tells Nathan to go to David and say, “thus says the Lord….” Nathan is revealing direct words of Yahweh.
Throughout the New Testament, however, the phrase “the Word of God” seems to be most often referring to the Gospel message itself. Notice the usage in Acts 4:31, 6:7, 13:5, 18:11 or 1 Thessalonians 1:8 and 2:13 for some quick examples.
John tells us “the Word of God” became flesh through Jesus Christ, thereby indicating that this message which has existed from before the foundation of the earth is fully revealed to humanity in the person of the Messiah Jesus (Jn. 17:24, Eph. 1:4, 1Pet. 1:2).
I suggest that “the Word of God” is a greater over-arching message that includes direct words from Yahweh and culminates in Jesus Christ but spans beyond them both.
“The Word of God” is not only prophetic utterances given. Neither is it only Jesus.
“The Word of God” is a message from Yahweh to humanity about all of creation, his design, his relationship with humanity, and what he is doing throughout cosmic history. This message encompasses stories where he gave revelatory words to people. It also culminates in the incarnation of God himself dwelling physically with humanity. But most accurately, “the Word of God” is the message his revelatory words and the life of Jesus Christ make known to us.
Think of how David uses the phrase “your law” and “your statutes” in Psalms 119.
Is he talking about the specific parts of the law? Are those what he finds great delight in? Or is it the over-arching message the specific parts communicate that makes him delight in the Law of the Lord?
In verse 2, Is David saying, “Happy are those who (do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk) and seek Him with all their heart”?
Or verse 72, is he suggesting that “(the one to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe in water; then he shall be clean) is better than thousands of gold and silver pieces”?
No, David is pointing to the greater wisdom and instruction that all of God’s statutes and decrees make known to us.
That wisdom and instruction which helps us have the best experience of life is what makes us happy and is what is better than gold and silver.
The word of God is a message. It’s a beautiful message. One that tells us about God’s goodness, beauty, and love. It also reveals to us man’s selfishness and rebellion.
But because God is good, because he is beautiful and full of love, he has been working throughout all of history to redeem humanity from the inside out to the point where humans choose to give their allegiance to Yahweh and not themselves. They choose to love others and live righteously instead of taking from others and living in ways that cause death.
This work of redemption is completed through Jesus Christ and becomes reality within any human being in creation through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, it’s a beautiful message and we can know it and know God through it because it has been made known to us in a collection of writings we know as “the Bible.”
This leads to the second piece of clutter to sort through:
The Bible is a collection of writings which reveals God’s Word to us.
God’s Word is a message. So, if I yank parts of the Bible out of that over-arching message to communicate a different message—even though I may still be quoting verses—I am no longer speaking “God’s Word.”
I am only telling you “God’s Word” when I am communicating the whole message.
Heresy 101: take a verse completely out of context to make a point that verse does not make within its original context.
So how do we know we are getting the message God wants to communicate to creation?
Each of our Bibles are organized to tell that message. When was the last time you read the Bible cover to cover? When was the last time you read it cover to cover in, say, ninety days?
Don’t feel shame if you haven’t ever done this. Until Bible college where my assignments were to read large chunks of scripture over and over again, I had never read the Bible in such a condensed way before.
This has actually been, in my opinion, the greatest benefit of Bible college: forcing me to read large portions of scripture over and over again. Because in doing this, the message has become quite clear to me.
And it’s so beautiful.
However, I would suggest the message is most clear when we read according to the Hebrew canon.
Most English Bibles begin the Old Testament with Genesis and end it with Malachi. But when we read the Bible this way, not only do we get burned out in Chronicles when it feels we are re-reading everything we just read in Kings, but we can also struggle to track the greater story God is revealing through Israel because we have writings that apply to random parts of Israel’s history smack in the middle of the account of their history (look at how Job, Psalms, Proverbs are in between Kings and the Latter Prophets).
The Hebrew canon begins the Old Testament with Genesis. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all make up the “Torah,” which is the Law or Pentateuch as we know it. Did you know within those first five books you have the Gospel message, and the message of God’s Word? The rest of scripture is just fleshing it out and showing human interaction with God and his way.
After Deuteronomy, it goes into the “Former Prophets,” which contain anecdotes about major Hebrew persons and include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. The Former Prophets are followed by the “Latter Prophets” which exhort Israel to return to God. These are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and (together in one book known as “The Book of the Twelve”) Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The Hebrew Old Testament then ends with Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. These are known as “the Writings,” which recount the story of Israel and God’s faithfulness to his Word.
An example of why I believe reading the Hebrew canon brings out the message in the clearest and most beautiful way is how Malachi ends with God calling the people of Israel to “remember the instruction of Moses My servant, the statutes and ordinances I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel” (Mal. 4:4).
If you read the Christian canon, it goes from there to Matthew. Most readers have probably forgotten what “the instruction of Moses” was. They may not realize how those “statutes and ordinances” play into the overall story scripture is revealing.
However, if you read the Hebrew canon, you go from Malachi into the writings which recount those instructions and all of Israel’s history through various poems and dramas, ending with the final chronicling of the great story in the book of Chronicles.
“What’s the Big Deal about the Head Covering?”
The tradition of men not covering their heads and women covering their heads serve as signs for remembering and showing honor of each other’s place in Christ, which helps us walk in unity.
Then you flip the page to Mark and discover the “son of Man” has come to rescue—a child of man with divine authority has come to reign as king.
Whether you read the Bible according to the Hebrew canon or according to the Christian canon, what matters most is that you understand the value of reading it, knowing it, and memorizing it is not in that those actions themselves gain you favor with God, but that in knowing the message you get to know the Creator.
Thirdly, the Bible is not a roadmap or instruction manual for life.
There is way too much going on in the story for us to use it as we would an atlas. We need to spend time in it, observing the movements that God is doing throughout the message of the whole collection of writings.
The Bible is not a self-help devotional.
If we grab its bits of wisdom saturated throughout the story and implement them as we do tips on how to better craft a blog article, we’ll get frustrated at how “it doesn’t seem to work.” The wisdom is connected to a much larger work taking place beyond our immediate circumstances. We won’t always see the promised results right away.
The Bible is not a list of dos and don’ts.
Have you read it? The bulk of these writings are narrative, poetic, or explanatory. Only few sections are simple, straight-up commands or rules.
The Bible includes direction and instruction for life. It includes devotional material. And it includes dos and don’ts.
But the Bible is so much more, and it is intended to be deeply interacted with.
If Jephthah had only done the simple act of writing out God’s message for himself, he could have defeated the Ammonites and kept his vow to God without killing his daughter. But because of his neglect to interact with God’s Word in the way God desires us to, Jephthah suffered an extremely devastating tragedy.
The Bible is the collection of writings which reveal God’s message about his good creation and his design to walk in relationship with mankind. This message ultimately culminates in the person of Jesus Christ.
You and I are invited to know this message, and to know God through it. Do we?
If not, why don’t we?
Do we find it hard to understand?
In an age of many different types of Christianity, is it confusing to know what the Bible actually says?
In my next article, I’d like to look at how we should interpret what the Bible says. It might not be as difficult as we first perceive it. At the same time, it’s okay to acknowledge there are many challenging aspects to understanding scripture.
In that article, we’re going to sort through all of that and more.
Until then, I’d love to hear from you. Do you understand how the Word of God is something much bigger than a book? Is this a new concept to you? What questions or thoughts do you have in response? You can share them in the comments below.
*For further study, check out:
- The Drama of Scripture by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
- The Bible Project (free resource)
- Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley
- The Canon of Scripture by John Frame
- The Canon of Scripture by Wayne Grudem
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