Clough Judges Lesson 12

Judges 10-12

In Ephesians 4:17-19 we have a principle that we’re going to see operate over and over again in the society of Israel in their response to demonic pressures throughout the rest of the book of Judges. It goes back to the principle about kingship. Kingship is man’s attempt to create a perfect social order in security. In other words, it’s man’s attempt to live securely in a fallen world where man must cope with two things: he must cope with moral evil and he must cope with physical evil. However, these two things the Bible clearly indicates are not something that is the random product of the universe. These two things, both physical as well as moral evil are the results of negative volition and rebellion against God because this is the case, these things are produced, and like Adam’s nakedness no man likes it, he wants a covering. Society collectively wants a covering from the pressures of this kind of evil. Therefore, like Adam they try operation fig leaf in some way, shape or form.

Kingship is the way a society tries operation fig leaf. Society used government, where you have the divine institutions of volition, marriage, family, and government; you take government, increase its powers and subordinate each of the other three areas of divine institutions to create your fig leaf, your social fig leaf or your society-wide fig leaf. The objective, of course, is try and insulate the society against the results of evil. And while it’s legitimate to desire to insulate society against evil it is not legitimate to do it this way. For one thing, God has never authorized the erection of any kingdom on earth. God has only authorized government to be used to judge moral evil. He has never authorized anything beyond that where you have the government mixed with religion. And every kingdom is characterized by the government mixing with religion in some way. In other words, a kingdom is always characterized by a religion typical to that kingdom. It’s going to come out very clearly in the passage we will study in Judges tonight.

So each kingdom has its own national religion, just as America in our day has its own national religion. Kingship began with an apostate man by the name of Nimrod. Nimrod started the first United Nations movement. The reason was security in a fallen world and you mustn’t minimize

Nimrod’s kingdom because today if you argue with someone they’ll say we need a government, today we have nuclear weapons, today we have the ability to destroy the human race and because we have these new weapons of technology world government is necessary. But if you had taken a time machine and could go back to Nimrod’s generation they would have argued the same way, of course we need a world government, here we are after the great flood, around the surface of the earth, the surface of the earth is still characterized by tremendous catechisms because it’s obvious that the crust of the earth didn’t settle down for many generations after the flood.

So people in that era were subject to tremendous natural catastrophes. People in that era were subject to various other things besides the tremendous increase in the wild animal population and so on. They faced it with practically zero technology, they had not iron tools, they were completely at the mercy of the elements. And so they could have made a very, very persuasive argument that if the human race were to survive, notice the words because the same words are used to justify world government today, if the human race is to survive then we must do this. Same logic. We are threatened by such great moral and physical evil that we have to have a social collective fig leaf.

Now the same thing occurs today, why do we have the trend toward world government? The reason we have the trend toward world government is moral and physical evil once again. Ecological problems are what kind of category? It’s obvious, physical evil. All your ecology problems are physical evil. Why are they there? Mankind brought it on himself; we all did, collectively in Adam. We all did collectively in the antediluvian period, which brought on the postdiluvian depreciation of resources and so on, the postdiluvian climate, the postdiluvian nature as outlined in 2 Peter 3:7-9 and so modern ecology actually is just another same manifestation of physical evil, the same kind of category that Nimrod’s generation faced.

We also have the problem of moral evil; we have people around with the atomic bomb, we have to be nice to them or nuclear fallout will destroy our children, etc. There again, isn’t that the same essential argument to preserve moral evil? Of course it is. So the nature of the argument has not changed from Nimrod down to 1972; it is precisely the same form of argument and therefore as a Biblical Christian I cannot buy the argument that our age is unique. Our age is not unique; our age faces exactly the same problems that the human race has faced down through history, except in different form. There are not new problems in 1972, absolutely none. Our age is not unique. But nevertheless, the trend again is to try to reduplicate Nimrod’s great colossal effort in Genesis 10 and 11, using the same form of argument, no doubt, that Nimrod used on his people.

But when we come to Ephesians 4:17-19 we come to a section of the New Testament text that deals with the problems of religious domination of national entities. The principles given in verses 17-19, though applied here to individuals who have become Christians, apply also to groups of people. Verse 17, “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles are walking,” present tense, “in the vanity of their mind.” What Paul is saying here is that it is characteristic of the Gentiles or the national entities on the face of the globe to be walking, present tense, in the mataiotes or the vanity of their mind, we could translate it emptiness or vacuum, the emptiness of their mind.

Now there’s something dangerous about this and Paul goes on in verses 18-19 to show that this is not just stupidity, this is not just the case that mankind collectively is operating on ignorant systems. It is rather something far more sinister than just that because in verse 18 he says, “Having the understanding darkened, and being alienated from the life of God,” so you have the main verb “walking” in verse 17, and always remember the rule, the participle precedes the action of the main verb, sometimes its simultaneous and very, very rarely it’s after the main verb, but at least in this case where you have a present participle and a present main verb these present participles depict that condition or set of characteristics that accompany the action of the main verb. The main verb is “walking,” and so what is it that is in the background of the main verb with the main action to walk. What is in the background is in verse 18, “having the understanding darkened and being alienated from the life of God,” and then two things are listed as the causes for this, first “because,” not through but “because of the ignorance that is in them,” in other words, there is a concerted ignorance that exists, “in them,” that is in their minds, who are “them?” Gentiles. “…because of the insensitivity [or blindness] of their heart.”

And this leads us to the principle we’ve discussed before, and that is that when you have negative volition toward God’s revelation you create a situation where you have emptiness in the mind. The emptiness means that you begin to suck in all sorts of demonic doctrine. We call it human viewpoint but it is demonic and it is the demons and the demonic powers under Satan are able to control vast segments of mankind where you have a maximum number of population operating on negative volition toward God. With this it is just a law of psychology that the human mind will suck and grasp at anything to replace that which it has rejected. If a man rejects God, I don’t care who he is, I don’t care what his background is, the rule is he must replace God with an idol. You can’t have somebody floating in between; it’s just absolutely impossible. You are constructed so that you have to eat something, whether the food is good or bad you still have to eat and it’s the same thing spiritually, you have to have an idol, you have to have a God. So it’s going to be something and it’s going to be the true God or it’s going to be a false one but it will be some sort of God. And that’s just the way it goes, that’s the way it always has been.

Then in Ephesians 4:19 Paul says, “Who, being past feeling,” and this is a perfect participle, “who having past beyond the point of feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” So Paul is saying that these people through negative volition, creating emptiness in their minds have begun to suck in demonic dogma, demonic teaching, presuppositions, starting points; as a result, they have passed beyond feeling. This is the point where the conscience begins to get neutralized out; it gets covered over with porosis or hardening, or callous kind of thing. So the conscience is hardened and so they become beyond sensitivity.

Now there’s another passage in this same epistle that goes on to show the forces that operate on man when they are in this situation, Ephesians 2:2, “Wherein in times past you walked according to the present course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. Let’s look at this; first, “the prince of the power of the air” is Satan. Satan does not work in the children of disobedience. Who is it that works in the children of disobedience? It is the “power of the air,” the “prince of the power of the air” is Satan, but the “power of the air,” this is the atmosphere, the global [can’t understand words] climate, that is the power of the air. If you want to think of this think of air is the atmosphere, that in which man lives, breathes and so on, and just as you breathe polluted air because you have to open your mouth to breathe it, you have to breathe in human viewpoint to exist in society. That may come as a shock but you have to do this, and the only way you can solve human viewpoint is to purge it out after you have breathed it in, just like your body has to cope with pollution and it can’t cope with the pollution outside of your mouth, the air has to pass down into your lungs, etc. and there your body has to deal with the pollution.

So spiritually your body is always dealing with pollution and this is why Christians who do not have enough of the Word of God in their brain are incapable of handling the poisons that they have to breathe in. It’s as simple as that. Don’t think that you can be like the early fundamentalists thought they could be, if I just don’t drink and if I don’t smoke and if I do this and don’t do this, etc. then I’m safe. Oh no you’re not. There’s no place that you can be safe, you can go to a monastery, you can go crawl up in your attic and you can isolate yourself from people and you still aren’t safe any more than you could be safe from polluted air. There’s no way under the sun that this can be done. The only way we can exist in Satan’s world is to have something on the inside that acts as an antidote. But you cannot stop your personal intake of poison; there’s no way you can do it. The only thing is the Word of God on the inside. But in verse 2 it says, “the prince of the power of the air,” Satan is the head, he is the one who is in charge, the head of the power of the atmosphere, in other words under Satan there is a vast complex of demonic beings that set the tone for the world’s thought, so that in any age you have the world’s thinking, those things that are accepted, those things that people never think about, those are the things that are global, those are the things that are society-wide, that are accepted as the norms and standards, and yet often times they are satanic. And this is how the power of the air, this satanic spirit of the atmosphere, the intellectual atmosphere works.

Notice at the end of verse 2 this is amplified, “the power of the air” is in apposition to the clause “the spirit that now is working in the children of disobedience.” So that means, present tense, constantly working. Satan is able to work on man through the thought life and he is able to inject delusions and he is able to inject these things largely through the modern educational system, etc. And this shows you there’s a tremendous demonic complex facing the believer. Therefore what does the believer do in response? We’re going to learn some lessons from Judges 10, so let’s turn back to Judges and we will see if we can finish Judges 10, 11 and part of chapter 12 tonight.

The story of Jephthah; remember the overall situation in Judges. I will presume that you understand Egypt; you understand all of the symbols of Egypt and the sun symbol, the serpent symbol and so on. You understand why Pharaoh is the incarnate pseudo Christ, why Pharaoh becomes the antichrist, he is the one mediator between heaven and earth; Pharaoh is the virgin born son of the mother of god, Hathor, he is also the son of Isis and Osiris. So therefore in Pharaoh’s kingdom you have a perfect example of a kingdom; you have a perfect example of a social order that was deliberately structured to preserve man’s security in a fallen world.

The proof of how well Satan had designed the Egyptian society is shown in the statistics that in all of the thousands of years of Egyptian history, there never was a popular revolt against Pharaoh with one exception and you can guess what the exception was, but apart from that one exception there was never a popular revolt against this man, and yet this man ruled with an authority that is unparalleled in history. He ruled without any law; Pharaoh’s word was law, there was no written code in Egypt, unlike all other nations; Pharaoh was the absolute dictator. What came out of Pharaoh’s mouth was it; that’s it! And he had a total control over that society. Now why do you think thousands and millions of people would go along with a dictatorship like this? Why? It’s very simple; it gave them economic security.

That’s why, and that’s what you’re going to see develop increasingly in the United States; people will gradually vote for their loss of freedom as long as the government who claims this can give them or at least promise them economic security because people love their security and they will vote away their freedoms gladly, like the Egyptians did and have done down through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, yet there was one group of people that said I’ve had enough; it was the Jews, and they didn’t care, look at their security, where was their security when the Jews left Egypt. Their security was the Lord, and they left, millions leaving the nation to go out into a desert where there was no living thing. Now that’s a picture of the mental attitude that is required to oppose the increased government, when you say to hell with economic security and you can’t do that unless you know the promises of the Lord and have an active personal relationship with Him. If you don’t you will be a slave and when the showdown comes you will very timidly, but you will, go along with the system because that system will promise you security.

Now that was the problem in the book of Judges; you have a large segment of the population on negative volition, their cry was for security. You saw that in the Gideon episode. After Gideon gave them relief from their enemies, what did they want? Oh, Gideon, can’t you be our king forever, we’ll gladly vote away our freedom, we’ll gladly turn it over to you so you can collectivize all power and form one kingdom here in Israel. So the people would have gladly done it had not Gideon been on positive volition, realized the Word of God and realized this was wrong.

Now we’re going to face a very similar situation tonight with Jephthah. Jephthah is another very brilliant man, he is a man who is going to lead in Israel, he is a man who faces Israel in a crisis hour, when Israel is facing the problem of physical and moral evil. Notice the same thing again, and who brought on this physical and moral evil. It was Israel, they were on negative volition, remember the three cycles that we have. We have first apostasy in the book of Judges, then where does apostasy lead? To chastening, and then after chastening and they confess their sins it leads to deliverance. But notice the cycles, over and over and over and over again you have this cycle repeated in the book of Judges.

First apostasy, then chastening, then deliverance, over and over and over and here we start off in Judges 10:6, “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not him.” So here you have first religious apostasy and false religion; here you have this lust. Now what was so attractive about these gods? I promised you that as time went on in the book of Judges I’d bring in more and more background so you could understand the problem of Baalism. I’m going to introduce one idea here which will be later amplified in succeeding nights.

What are nature deities? I want you to understand these gods and why they become so attractive; you say I don’t see anything so attractive about worshiping some little oddball with a lightening bulb, that’s what Baal looks like in some of these things they dig up in these archeological sites. What is the great attraction of Baal, what is the great attraction of Tiamat? They are all nature deities and they offer a man a promise. The first characteristic of a nature deity is he has nothing to do with creation; it is a process in the present. These nature deities at this time in history were not creator gods, they were gods of process; they were gods of the present, and if you study world culture you will see how in the earlier days of civilization you have what anthropologists have called these supreme beings, and how in culture after culture, you can go to Africa, to North America, South America, wherever you go you will find the more primitive the people the closer they are to a Supreme Being. But the Supreme Being is always characterized by a certain set of interesting points.

First, the Supreme Being is always classed as somebody who is a man in the sky. For example the Chinese symbol in the most ancient script for heaven looked like this: that’s the Chinese symbol for heaven. Where did they get that from? Obvious, referring to the one who is in heaven, the man in heaven. And so again over and over in all these societies you will find if you go back far enough a belief in a Supreme Being. But later on as they got further and further removed from the tower of Babel the Supreme Being was forgotten and he was re-designated as heaven or sky. And he was replaced by a young god and his girlfriend. This is why Baal had his consort and the other gods had theirs. But this the pattern of world religion, and it’s interesting that not much is ever known about the Supreme Being, he is very rarely invoked, he very rarely has a cultist or a religious practice. All religion in mythology begins with a replacement of the Supreme Being by the young god and his girlfriend. So we have a deterioration in the world’s religion and of course the closer you come to the area of Mesopotamia the worse it gets.

So you have this trend in world religions and these seven religions that are described in verse 6 are not meant to be all encompassing, they are just meant to set a tone for this chapter, for seven religions are described in verse 6. These are seven religions that competed with Yahweh-ism for allegiance in Israel and all of them are nature deities or this young god and his girlfriend pictured under various labels. Why is this young god so attractive? Because in the absence of the Supreme Being there is minus Creator; the Creator usually retreats up into the sky and he’s never known or heard from again. He’s left His people, and so the Supreme Being disappears from the scene of history. What do you have left? You have processes, natural processes, naturalistic forces operating in nature and how are these people going to get their economic security. Agriculture.

Now can you see the connection between economic security and nature deities? If you want a modern illustration of this think of a horoscope and astrology, these people that pay dollars and dollars every month to get their horoscope and they have this belief that the sun rules this part and if the moon is in the right part of the Zodiac it does this and certain hours of the day your life is ruled by these stars and all the rest of it. This is exactly the same mentality. You can’t buy and sell on the stock exchange until you consult your horoscope and so you pay $150 to have a special reading when you should sell AT&T or when you should buy General Motors or something and you’d better buy it at the right hour, the right day, because if you don’t the stars will bite you, this kind of thing. In other words, people are afraid to make decisions and to be free of nature because they feel that nature rules their life, and this is, of course, demonism. The source of astrology, no matter how respectable it is, is always Satan. Astrology is the modern parallel to Egyptian religion, they both operate on the same principles, they both enslave man to nature and they both, worse than that, enslave man to the demons that are behind these false ideas.

So the seven religions spoken of in Judges 10:6 are all nature religions and if you want to just visualize this in your mind, think of modern astrology. These farmers are desperate, they have problems with their business agriculturally, and so where are they going to go? They’re not going to go to some Supreme Being that took off some place thousands of years ago and disappeared so who do you pray to? You go to the nature forces, the ones that are immediate, the god of the thunderstorm, the gods that are manifesting themselves, that absorb you, that control your life; this is the modern 20^th century Americans that spend thousands of dollars a year on these horoscopes and all the rest of it, same idea exactly—man in bondage to nature. And this is the great attraction and reason behind these religions of verse 6, but behind these religions of verse 5 are demonic powers. What are the proofs of this?

Turn to Deuteronomy 32:16, predicting the apostasy of Israel, “They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, and with abominations provoked Him to anger. [17] They sacrificed unto demons,” now look at that carefully, “they sacrificed unto demons [dash] –no God.” Now be careful of something, every once in a while you get somebody that knows a little bit about the Bible and they’ll say to you why, monotheism didn’t begin until the time of the late kings; this is what you read in the history books in the high school. A lot of history books have this same old garbage that monotheism didn’t begin until the late kings. That’s ridiculous. They say these people believed in other gods; sure they believed in other gods, but the word “God,” Elohim, was used for both God and demons; that’s no argument, you haven’t proved polytheism there. If you’re going to use that evidence then go to 1 Corinthians 10:18-20 and I will prove to you that Paul was a polytheist. “Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not they who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” In other words, if you engage in a religion you become part and parcel of that religion. Application: verse 19-20, “What say I, then? That the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything?” Paul denies that idols are the gods, but he says, [20] But the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” same as in Deuteronomy 32, “and not to God; and I would not that you have communion with demons.” So therefore Paul uses exactly the same language as Moses because Deuteronomy 32 is one of the earliest sections of known literature by the liberal standards even, and here you have Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 picking up and using the same language.

You’ve got to be consistent, if you want to say that polytheism is in the Old Testament on the basis of passages like Deuteronomy 32, then you better be consistent and say Paul also was a polytheist because he too believed in other gods. But he believed that these other gods were qualitatively different from the one Triune God. So you have this belief, that demons are behind these false religions.

Now turn back to Judges 10:7, this is why this thing so offends God; it’s not that God gets hacked because they go to a different church or something; that’s not the point. The point is that this nation is coming under demon control and by getting involved with these seven apostate religions they are gradually coming under demon control. What is wrong with demon control? Because what the demons want to do, you take demons and add to the human old sin nature and a desire for security, and demons plus the old sin nature and desire for security will result in the kingdom. In other words, they want to transfer Israel, as it was originally set up, into a kingdom. Notice that each one of these religions are national religions; notice how neatly they are listed in verse 6; they are listed by city, state and nation. Each one of these city-states in a nation was a kingdom; in other words it was more than just the government reigning, it was a government that was reigning that had been distorted by demon possessed and demon influenced priesthood and leaders.

So you have this tremendous religious infiltration, and as a result in Judges 10:7, “And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon,” this is the second step in this three part cycle that we see, first you have apostasy, then you have chastening, then you have deliverance. So beginning in verse 7 we have the chastening; here is the introduction of physical and moral evil. In other words, this is a result of their sin, and so what does God do? He sells them into the hands of two nations, the Philistines and the Ammonites. The Philistines are down here and the Ammonites are over here. The rest of this section, from Judges 10 to Judges 16 will deal with two men versus these two countries. We’re going to deal with Jephthah tonight against Ammon, and next time Samson against the Philistines. Both these men are fighting off moral and physical evil.

But notice the cause and effect in verses 6-7. What led to that suffering? The thing that led to that nasty suffering was religious apostasy. That is what led to national suffering. Now what happened? The people tried to get rid of it and I imagine there were all sorts of schemes and gimmicks to undo this thing and finally they realized they couldn’t. [8, “And that year they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel: eighteen years, all the children of Israel that were on the other side Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. [9] Moreover the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; so that Israel was sore distressed.”

And so later on, Judges 10:10, “And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, saying, We have sinned against thee, both because we have forsaken our God, and also served Baalim.” Now they had done this a number of times and so God does not accept this confession. This may strike you as unusual after all of what I’ve said about 1 John 1:9, but when it comes to application of 1 John 1:9 you want to recall something. When you confess your sin to get back in fellowship with the Lord…when you become a Christian you’re put in union with Christ, you have the bottom circle, the circle of fellowship; at any moment you’re either in that circle or out of the circle. You get out of the circle by committing some sin, you get back in the circle by 1 John 1:9. So you’re in fellowship, but the point is that oftentimes we’ll get out of fellowship, and here we are, out in the toulies, now how do we get back in. We go through mechanically, “if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,” fine, if you’ve confessed your sin.

Now there are two extremes on this 1 John 1:9 thing; on the one hand you can add to it all sorts of agony and so on. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about the fact that 1 John 1:9 is a conditional promise, and it depends upon acknowledging responsibility and this acknowledgment in verse 10 is a preliminary acknowledgment but God does not consider this acknowledgment satisfactory. No this is not to say that God is kind of an I’ll-get-you type, and He’s just going to kind of stick your nose in it because He’s going to really make you squirm because you’re out of fellowship. Now some believers have that concept, that’s apostate, the idea that God is going to paddle them forever. That is satanic, if you have that idea and you’re running around with a big fat guilt complex you’ve been infiltrated by Satan at that point. The point is here God is not trying to be a meany, He is trying to get His children to understand a principle, and so He denies them the result of their confession.

Judges 10:11, “And the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Did not I deliver you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? [12] The Zidonians also, and the Amalekites,” and apparently the Midianites, as this should read, “and the Maonites, did oppress you; and ye cried to me, and I delivered you out of their hand.” Count the number of nations that have just been listed. Do you notice something, how that corresponds beautifully with the seven religions mentioned earlier? What is God saying? He’s saying look, He says I’ve delivered you seven times, and for every time I’ve delivered you right now you’re engaging in an apostate religion. In other words, what God is saying is look, I got you out of seven jams before and now for every time that I delivered you, you have deliberately become re-involved with seven apostate religions; before it was just one, now you’ve seven you’re dealing with. So there’s a seven on seven word play here, as this is a prophetic historian bringing this out.

Judges 10:13, “Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I will deliver you no more. [14] Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen;” He says, “let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation.” In other words, if your nature deities are so great, and you believe you can set up a kingdom by integrating man with nature and if you believe that you can set up the perfect social order in this way, and you’re having trouble in your social order through sin and so on, well then go cry, bellyache to your gods then. You want a perfect society, well then use these things. To use a modern day analogy, for example if you want to start out as a communist, if you think that economic determinism solves your problem then if you have trouble don’t cry to the capitalists, go solve it on principles of economic determinism. If you’re a Nazi don’t blame the third army or something running across France for your destruction, you didn’t kill enough Jews or something. Do you see, that’s what God is trying to say? He wants to make sure that they understand the vanity of the system and so He calls them in verse 14 back to their apostasy. He says come on, give it a try, you haven’t tried hard enough. Now this is sarcasm and this is often used by God in Scripture and He’s saying look, if you like this fine, then go ahead and go with it for a while.

Judges 10:15, “And the children of Israel said unto the LORD, We have sinned: do thou unto us whatsoever seems good unto thee; deliver us only, we pray thee, this day. [16] And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the LORD: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.” In other words, they proved their sincerity by works. Now this is not sanctification by works, it’s simply pointing out a principle, they understood. And as a result of their understanding, beginning in verse 17 we have God’s deliverance. Again notice the proportion of verses; one verse repeats their apostasy; a few more verses deal with the chastening and the suffering and the rest of two entire chapters deal with grace and deliverance. So you can see where the Old Testament puts the emphasis.

So it goes on in Judges 10:17, “Then the children of Ammon were gathered together, and encamped in Gilead.” Now Gilead is on the east side of Jordan; by the way, do you know a modern city that carries the name of this? Amman, the capital of Jordan. This is the modern day continuity o f the same people, in fact King Hussein is related to the Moabites, he can trace his lineage back. So you have people that are operating on the political scene today that are part and parcel physically with these people that you’re reading about here in the text. So you have Ammon, and they gathered together. [17b, “And the children of Israel assembled themselves together, and encamped in Mizpeh. [18] And the people and princes of Gilead said one to another, What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

In Judges 11:1, introduction to Jephthah. Verses 1-3 are a background on this man’s life. You have to understand the background on his life because much like David he was a man who was thrown out of his home at an early age, he was removed from the scene and therefore he was kind of a foreigner to his own land. “Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.” Now the reason that is put in there is to show once again God’s grace principle. He is the son of a whore and like many of the great Bible characters they come from very unfortunate childhoods. Fortunately, they didn’t have the psychologists to get them to feel sorry about their great deprivation in childhood, and spend money on psychoanalysis and why? Because your mother was a whore this has caused all sorts of repercussions in your life and this kind of thing. Jephthah didn’t have any of that, thank God.

Judges 11:2, “And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father's house; for thou art the son of a strange woman. [3] Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.” So he gathered a band around him, much like David. He was kind of a gorilla leader at that time and he had his little band that he gathered around him. But this man is nobody’s fool; Jephthah was a smart man. And we’re going to see how shrewd he is in a moment but get the background; that’s the picture of this man, a very bad childhood, thrown out of his home, a very rotten home life, and yet this man is going to be one of God’s stars, a tremendous success story of grace.

Judges 11:4, “And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel. [5] And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob,” see, it’s the same old story, you can’t stand to have people around but you know where to go when they’re needed.

Judges 11:6, “And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon.” And in this section Jephthah is going to do a very shrewd thing, this is the first shrewd thing he does, and in verse 7 he reviews a little bit about his background, and then he makes a proposal to them. “And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father's house? And why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress? [8] And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. [9] And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head?”

Do you know what he’s doing here? He’s a very smart man; he refuses to take the job if he doesn’t have authority to do the job. See, he faces a problem that people are not going to have respect for him. He faces this background problem, am I going to be respected? When you get out in the battle are you going to follow my orders? Are you going to trust my leadership? Do I have authority over you, and if I don’t have authority, forget it. So his first thing is he demands authority, and he says are you going to grant me the rank that is necessary to do this job?

Judges 11:10 “And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words. [11] Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the LORD in Mizpeh.” So we have a covenant of some sort made.

Beginning in Judges 11:12 we have his second move. His second move is to send messengers to the king of the children of Ammon, now I want you to notice the progress of this man. First he gets authority; authority structure. The second thing that he does is instead of going to war first he delineates the cause of war, he checks them out and so beginning in verse 12 we have a big controversy in Ammon over some historical boundaries. And verse 12 and following is a legitimate procedure for government officials to engage in. Before you go to war obviously you want to clarify what the issue is and if you can clarify what the issue is, then you can tell when he’s lying. That’s a point we haven’t learned yet in Vietnam. But if you go to war and you never clarify the issue, how are you going to tell when you’ve won the issue, you don’t even know what the issue is to start with. “And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?”

So in Judges 11:13 he is going to start working with the king of the children of Ammon, he asks them why are you coming up here to fight me, “And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again peaceably.” The background of this is in 1400 when you have the invasion from the east, you have Moses lead the forces up along this area. Turn to Deuteronomy 2:18, it goes back to a little incident here in Deuteronomy. Moses is going up the east side; remember he tried a southern penetration and it didn’t work. So now forty years later he leads his people to an eastern invasion to cut across the Jordan Valley. And as he comes up he faces a series of blocks. He faces Edom, he faces Moab and he faces Ammon, and also up here he faces the kingdom of Og and Sihon.

These are Amorites; they have taken over this whole area. Notice they are infringing on Ammon’s rights and they come almost down to the boundary of Moab. Moses goes up here, God says look Moses, I want you to leave Edom alone. Why? Because Edom is genetically related to us; I want you to leave Moab alone, and in verse 18 I want you to leave Ammon alone, “Thou art to pass over through Ar, the border of Moab, this day. [19] And when you come near over against the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle with them; for I will not give thee of the land of the children of Ammon any possession,” in other words, they have legitimate title to that land. Why? Now watch what’s going to happen here because in verses 20-21 there’s going to be a little aspect of history that was long forgotten by the Ammonites and Jephthah is a sharp student. He must have been reading his Bible in Old Testament for many, many hours because when it came to this bargaining table at the international session he got these people in a real good corner because he knew his history. And so here’s the history that Jephthah is going to pull on them. The last part of verse 19, “because I,” Jehovah, “I have given,” past tense, “it unto the children of Lot for a possession.”

Notice that, here’s a whole area and God says look, you leave these people alone, I gave them that land. And then it’s explained in Deuteronomy 2:20, “That also was accounted a land of Rephaim” or giants, “giants dwelt therein formerly, and the Ammonites call them the Zamzummim, [21] A people great and many, and tall as the Anakim, but the LORD destroyed them,” notice who’s doing the destroying, not for Israel but for Ammon, “the LORD destroyed them before them,” and “them” does not refer to the Jews, “them” refers to the Ammonites, “and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead.” Now you keep that in mind, the Ammonites have a divine right to that land.

Come back to Jephthah in Judges 11:14 when he’s talking about this international agreement. Jephthah says Israel, when it came up the east side, took some of his land. Now here’s what happened, in a nutshell so we don’t have to spend time on all the details, here’s basically what happened. After Ammon got their land in history, they in turn were later invaded from the northeast by the Amorites, under the command of Sihon and Og. Now here’s what happened. Here you have a little piece of territory; here’s Ammon’s territory, that is what God gave them, they knocked out a whole bunch of people and secured that region. Now from the northeast you have the Amorites take a chunk out of their territory. Up comes Israel from the south and what do they do to the Amorites? Not the Ammonites but the Amorites, who have taken over this piece. They destroyed them; remember the whole campaign on the east side of Jordan. So they destroy the Amorites and take all the Amorite territory, but notice, part of the Amorite territory used to be the Ammonite territory and that is the boundary zone that’s under dispute in this international discussion that’s going on at this point. That’s the background. Israel came up, destroyed the Amorites and ceased all Amorite lands, which means after Israel got through Israel had this chunk out of Ammon.

Judges 11:16, “And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon: [15] And said unto him, Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon: [17] But when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red sea, and came to Kadesh; [17] Then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel abode in Kadesh. [18] Then they went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and pitched on the other side of Arnon, but came not within the border of Moab: for Arnon was the border of Moab.

[19] And Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my place. [20] But Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but Sihon gathered all his people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel. [21] And the LORD God of Israel delivered Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel, and they smote them: so Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, the inhabitants of that country.”]

Watch Jephthah’s reply, Judges 11:22, here’s where he’s saying they have taken the whole thing, “And they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto Jordan. [23] So now the LORD God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and should thou possess it?” In other words, God is the one that got the Amorites off of this chunk. Now he uses a very sneaky argument here, he gets a real sarcastic jab in because the next verse says after Ammonite, if Chemosh, your god, displaced the people from before you, wouldn’t you possess it. [24, “Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess”]

Now that goes back to their religion. Here’s what happened; down in the history of religious apostasy the Ammonites forgot that divine being, the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being is who? Jehovah, we know this from Deuteronomy 2. Who was it that got them into that land to begin with? It was Jehovah. But who do they think later on got them in? Chemosh! So what the Ammonites have done is convert Jehovah into Chemosh and have established a false religion and then have turned around and based their national claims upon the results of their god, Chemosh. And so Jephthah says oh, say, you base your claims to the land on Chemosh, now if Chemosh displaced your people then wouldn’t you possess the land at that point? Of course you would.

And it’s a subtle slap in the face to the national religion because who was the Chemosh, who was their god who really got it? It was Jehovah. So Jehovah had gotten the Ammonites their land, they went apostate and began to worship Jehovah under the false name Chemosh, and then God said all right, I’ve had enough of both of you. So He walks up there and wipes out the Amorites and Israel takes over their land and so Israel has a divine right to their land; they apostacized from their possession.

So he says therefore, Judges 11:24b, “So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, then we will possess.” That’s his argument. We have final rights because you people lost your right to that land. God gave it to you, you apostacized and you are the losers. [25] “And now art thou any thing better than Balak?” Now he uses another argument in this international discussion, “are you anything better than Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them,” he uses a second argument, he says now look, look at it another way, if you don’t accept my first argument that you lost your divine right to the land, then how about this one, try this on for size. When we came up here from the south, Jephthah says, we were opposed by one of your neighbors, the neighbors of Ammon was Moab; we were opposed by one of your neighbors, the man’s name was Balak, but you know, he says it’s a funny thing, Balak opposed us, and you can read the story for yourself sometime in Numbers 22, he hired a phony religious person to curse Israel but he says you know, it’s a strange thing that all during this process when Balak was opposing us, isn’t it funny he never pressed any territorial claims against Israel. So his argument is this: if you had genuine territorial claims, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you claim them back when all this was going on, why do you wait 300 years before you claim title to this thing?

So this is what he says in Judges 11: 26 “While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? Why therefore did ye not recover them within that time?” If you had a bona fide legitimate territorial claim you had time to do it buster, and you didn’t. Therefore you never made the claim so therefore you’re not going to get the land.

Judges 11:27, he says, “Wherefore I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me: the LORD the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.” Now there is the proper attitude about going to war. I want you to notice what this man has done; he has clarified the exact international issue. He says this is a matter of an absolute, a claim grounded on God who is right and wrong and is the Judge of the earth. He says we have established our case. Notice he hasn’t just started war, he’s held off the war thing until the issue has been clarified. And the final clarification is verse 27, he denies moral guilt on and he places my guilt on the opponent. Now this is something that is completely lost sight of in international disputes. The issue of war is to solve and judge moral guilt. War is an extension nationally of capital punishment, and therefore war is defined as judgment for specific wrong.

You can connect that with the Vietnam thing and see exactly why we’re in a mess. There’s no specific wrong. On the one hand we are saying the North Vietnamese are the enemy. All right, fine, if they’re the enemy why can’t we bomb them; now they’re either the enemy and should be judged with the sword that God has placed in the hands of government or they’re not the enemy and shouldn’t be judged; they can’t be half and half. It’s either one way or it’s the other way but you can’t halt between the two opinions. Yet we have halted between the two opinions for ten to fifteen years in Vietnam and many young men have bled to death because of it and we still haven’t got any solution to it. We don’t even know if we’ve won the war or lost it it’s so confused, because there were no specific charges. In other words, before war occurs you should have, just like you have when you send a police officer out, hey, would you arrest someone on 34^th street. That would be a brilliant instruction to the policeman. That’s exactly what’s happened with the U.S. military, go to Vietnam and kill somebody so they kill somebody; oh, you’re not supposed to do that, that’s being cruel to the civilians. Don’t you see, no guidelines. You can’t win a war that way; you can’t fight a war that way. And this passage is a classic on the correct way of waging war; you get specific objectives, without specific objectives everything falls.

What does the Word of God say? What is the role of government? To judge evil. Who invested the government with that purpose? Who put the sword in the hand of the government, including if that sword happens to be an H-bomb? Who put that in the hand of government? God did, therefore is there is evil, which mean the Chinese and the Russians want jurisdiction over your home, your loved ones, your wife and so on, you’re going to lie right down and let them have them? In that kind of a situation, faced with only one choice, a worldly global H-bomb war, what would the Christian do? Do you know what the Christian would do? Press the button. Do you know why he would? Because God has ordained that the sword be used against evil and you trust God for the results of the sword. The world is still going be around for the Second Advent of Christ, there’s no problem of nuclear annihilation. The Christian has the trump card; in that kind of a jam the Christian has the trump card he can play, the Word of God, prophecy. So the Christian can make a solid, firm, quick and sure decision, go to war, period. And the timidity and hesitation to make decisions under this kind of extreme pressure is a manifestation of the weakness of our generation; a generation that has been fed human viewpoint, human viewpoint, human viewpoint, apostate religion for years and years and we see the results.

When we get down to Judges 11:28, [“Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him.”] we have had an international discussion, and they got down to the issue, and Jephthah went ahead to war. You can say well, that’s not nuclear war; yeah but as far as Jephthah is concerned it’s just as devastating because he’s outnumbered. We know from contemporary sources has nowhere near the number of people. That man is risking his life to go to war. But you know what, he knows he’s right and he knows God is going to justify Himself; he doesn’t care, you trust the Lord for the results.

Judges 11:29, “Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah,” this is a connotation particularly in the book of Judges and it refers to power, it refers to leadership ability, “and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon. [30] And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, [31] Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” Here we have the famous vow of Jephthah, and you’ll see what happens. He makes this vow. What is the vow? The vow is legitimate in one sense and I’m going to explain this as we go on. A vow is a declaration of intention; it is an intention to witness. Any time you witness for Jesus Christ you are paying your vows to Christ. In other words, a vow is a public declaration of God’s work for you. So that’s the New Testament counterpart.

Judges 11:32, “So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands. [33] And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel,” a complete slaughter.

Judges 11:34, “And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.” Now you see, here’s a man with his back against the wall. He has made a vow to the Lord that the first person who enters is the Lord’s, and now out comes his only daughter, no sons, no daughters to continue his line, and here she comes.

Judges 11:35, “And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! Thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me,” it’s an expression for his upset nature, “for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.” Notice this man, he makes a decision and he sticks with it. [36] “And she said unto him, My father,” notice the reaction of this girl toward her father; evidently he was able to breed in her respect for authority, respect for commitment and so on, no rebellion, she didn’t say you cluck, what did you do that for; there’s none of that. She says, “My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. [37] And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellow girls” this should read.

Judges 11:38, “And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. 39] And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, [40] That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.”

Now it is often said that he had her sacrificed at this point, and of course liberals sieze up on this as ah-ah, look at the brutality in the Word of God. However, I would suggest to you that the sacrifice never occurred, because of the following reasons. Number one, Jephthah is [can’t understand words]. Even the Scofield Bible has notes, this was an impulsive vow. In a careful study of Jephthah’s life I see no evidence whatever that he was an impulsive man. Notice how he went to war, it wasn’t the act of an impulsive man to go to war. What did he do before he went to war? He went through the proper channels. What did he do before he assumed command in Gilead? Didn’t he ask whether he had authority or not. Jephthah was not an impulsive man. I see no evidence to suggest that Jephthah was an impulsive man, and since the vow is [can’t understand word] to beg the question to say this is the evidence for his impulsiveness. So on the data there is no evidence for him being impulsive.

The second thing about Jephthah is the Lord prohibits absolutely human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is the mark of the apostate religions and he knew the Law. People say oh well, he was some sort of a dumb cluck who sat around some place picking daisies for a couple of years and never studied the Word of God. That can’t be true because what happened in the international negotiations. Wasn’t he able to quote chapter and verse, wasn’t he able to make that little innuendo about Chemosh in Deuteronomy 2; a man who knows the Word of God like that would certainly know the prohibitions against human sacrifice.

The third thing, when human sacrifice is mentioned in the Old Testament it is under 2 Kings 3 and Jeremiah 19 and in both of those passages it is condemned with an unspeakable horror; how come it’s not condemned here, when the prophetic historian who writes this book, that’s his job, to condemn sin and to expose the weaknesses of the upper and lower classes, which has been the theme of the book up to this point. Certainly he would have condemned him had he done this.

The fourth thing is why is there such an obsession in the last three verses with this girl’s virginity. What has that got to do if she was committed to a literal sacrifice? It appears that the solution is that in the Old Testament we have passages such as Exodus 38:8, such as 1 Samuel 2:22, where women who apparently are virgins, serve the temple for the rest of their life and in this case what he did, the sacrifice that he sacrificed, it’s true that this word “sacrifice” usually refers to a literal sacrifice, that’s one of the difficulties, but I suggest that because of the reasons at this point this word means more than that, it means a sacrifice to him of his only daughter; that daughter would continue his line, not in his name but at least it would be a continuation of his line. At this point the man is cut off; at this point she realizes she will never have a seed, with her the family is ended. And this explains the bewailment.

Notice Judges 11:39, after ht does “with her according to his vow,” the notice again comes in that “she knew no man.” Why is that there if it’s just a death sacrifice? In other words, it doesn’t make sense. The commentator appears in these last three verses to be pointing us the direction of another point. This is just some of the evidences that I show you at this point to relax this problem of the human sacrifice. You have to assume quite a bit to get a human sacrifice in this passage. It is not obvious and it appears that the weight of the evidence is the other way, namely that it was never a human sacrifice at all, it was a sacrifice to perpetual virginity as Exodus 38:8; 1 Samuel 2:22.

To finish up very rapidly, in the first few verses of chapter 12, the end of Jephthah’s reign. He went out in glory, this man Jephthah. Notice there’s not a hint of condemnation; he is parallel to Gideon and much better than Samson.

Judges 12:1, “And the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together, and went northward, and said unto Jephthah, Wherefore passed thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? We will burn thine house upon thee with fire.” Does that sound familiar? Wasn’t that the same thing with Gideon? These Ephraimites see the Ephraimites were the ones who settled in the north. This is going to some out later on, in 930 BC there’s a civil war and the people who are behind a lot of it? Ephraim. Ephraim settled in the north, Judah settled in the south. But Ephraim in the north had a peculiar mental attitude; they had mental attitude sin of a particular kind. They always wanted to be number one and they got hacked when Gideon went out and creamed the Midianites; well Gideon, why didn’t you call us. And now it’s the same old story, well why didn’t you call us. So they go on.

Judges 12:2, “And Jephthah said unto them, I and my people were at great strife with the children of Ammon; and when I called you, ye delivered me not out of their hands.” He said I did call you. Now we don’t have the historical reference but we are to trust this narrative and that is that he did call them. He said I called you and you didn’t come. See, Ephraim had this attitude that they wouldn’t serve under some son of a whore, this concept; they wanted to be number one and nobody at all, the prima donnas, they had 80,000 prima donnas in the tribe of Ephraim and they couldn’t work with anybody else, they had to be number one or they would be in it. Well, they’re going to get fixed up real good. See, up to this point Ephraim is the blocking to a move which is going to occur in 1 Samuel 4 and 8 when the kingdom comes. Now the kingdom is going to come out of a little tribe called Benjamin, but if Saul were to be picked king, do you know who would come down there right now? Ephraim, and wipe him out. So in this chapter providentially you have the way prepared for the kingdom, the God kingdom.

Judges 12:3, “And when I saw that ye delivered me not, I put my life in my hands, and passed over against the children of Ammon, and the LORD delivered them into my hand: wherefore then are ye come up unto me this day, to fight against me? [4, “Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites. [5] And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;”

So in Judges 12:6 he has a big struggle with the Ephraimites. By the way, this shows you the deterioration in the book of Judges; notice this, how this book starts out with a unity left over with Joshua and now you’ve got brother fighting against brother. Why? Religious apostasy, that’s the theme of this whole book. And now in verse 6 they have a little password, this is a famous thing, the Shibboleth of the Sibboleth, and you may have wondered where this thing comes from, here it is and it was two ways of pronouncing the Hebrew letter Shen; here’s the way it looks in the Hebrew; in modern Hebrew text one is like that and the other like that. So you can tell when you read the Hebrew text today which is “s” and which is “sh.” But apparently the Ephraimites had kind of a Texas accent, and they couldn’t pronounce certain words correctly and so Judges 12:6, “Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” They’re all Jews, they had to find out who was of the right tribe and this tribe had this peculiarity, they had to speak with this crazy accent. So that’s how they were spotted and then finally killed, 42,000 died and from this point on in Scripture the Ephraimites are never again a viable force against the king. Later on when the king sits on the throne he’s not going to have any more trouble with the Ephraimites; they’re taken care of very neatly here by Jephthah.

So thus ended the reign of Jephthah; what do we learn from this? First of all, we have seen again that gradually throughout this book the nation is deteriorating; gradually the grass roots people operating on negative volition by the thousands and thousands become suckers for demonically inspired false religions. One thing after another, one war after another war, each one getting worse than the other one, and finally you’re going to have the problem that God is going to provide a king and it’s going to be done on His terms. He is going to acquiesce. A society of sinners always needs centralized authority, they need some order to preserve against moral and physical evil and God will give that, He will centralize the power but it’s going to be on His terms.

So in closing turn to Deuteronomy 17, we’ll show you the prophecy of the coming king. In all this chaos of the book of Judges, with the wars against brothers, wars against the country round about, finally moral and physical evil climbed to such great heights that God Himself will provide, just as He did for Adam and Eve, the fig leaves, except God didn’t provide the fig leaves, He provided the skins. God solved the problem His way. So in Deuteronomy 17:14 God looks forward in time, “When you have come into the land which the LORD thy God gives you, and shall possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me, [15] Thou shalt surely set him king over thee whom the LORD thy God shall choose,” notice the restraints given to him, verses 16-18, and then notice in verse 18, when this king sits upon the throne of his kingdom, “he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites; [19] And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he many learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, and do them.” Doesn’t that ring a little different bell than what you saw with Pharaoh? He proclaimed his son, son of Hathor, god Horus incarnate. What is this king going to do? He’s going to subject himself to the Word of God and be under God’s authority; he’s not going to claim or be in competition with him.

And so these forces, on one hand the satanically inspired religions promoting kingship all around and God’s move, we come down as we move toward the end of the book of Judges, and basically Judges 16-17 is the end, chronologically of the book, and we come down, the tension is increasing. We’ve passed these three hundred years of history so far in the book of Judges, and we come down to those last few years and one more judge, Samson, and you will see how the bottom just falls out of the nation and they must surrender their freedom. God is gracious and He’s not going to permit surrender of freedom to a centralized power like Pharaoh, it’s going to be a gradually surrender of freedom to a God-ordained king, a man by the name of Saul.

[Judges 12:7 And Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then died Jephthah the Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead. [8] “And after him Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. [9] And he had thirty sons, and thirty daughters, whom he sent abroad, and took in thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. [10] Then died Ibzan, and was buried at Bethlehem. [11] And after him Elon, a Zebulonite, judged Israel; and he judged Israel ten years. [12] And Elon the Zebulonite died, and was buried in Aijalon in the country of Zebulun. [13] And after him Abdon the son of Hillel, a Pirathonite, judged Israel. [14] And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years. [15] And Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died, and was buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekites.]