40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 10:6-11:11 (Episode 209)

Episode Date: March 29, 2020

Once again Israel ramps up its idolatry and God is not pleased and says He will not save them again and then does. How does law and gospel help us understand texts like this? When is God's impatience a comfort to us? And we meet a warrior son of a prostitute named Jephthah. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all of the podcasts that are over there. while you're over there, you should check out that Hidden Streams podcast. It's been out for a little while, but we're going to bring it up again because, you know, you might have forgot. Maybe you didn't check it out. You meant to, but you didn't.

Well, you should go over there and check it out or just, you know, look for it on iTunes or any place that you do that listening. It's available on all the stuff. It's Chad and some other guys, Original Music, and they're basically going through sort of a devotional. It's basically a devotional take on the Psalms It's really good You should check it out if you have not already

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So if you would do that, we would appreciate it. Chad, what's going on, man? Looking at what's coming up here, and it's just it's pretty dark man i don't know if we're gonna we're gonna make it through this uh podcast today it's just it's like misery and and uh what was the old hee haw gloom despair and agony on me aging myself here yeah it was like gloom despair and agony coming up for israel this is uh it's not looking good you're telling me that that uh that israel hasn't learned yeah you know they haven't learned obedience yet uh well i know i know i would far be it for me to

make any of the mistakes of my father's right yeah isn't that funny i was talking to somebody about this recently uh we all we all it doesn't matter how like good if you had a great father it seems like there's always like certain areas where like every son's like yeah i'm gonna be better than my dad in those respects well we usually end up being replicas of our of our parents right i know i'm like that and my dad was like that it just yeah just you know we we repeat the same mistakes because we're made of the same flesh and blood so that's the way it goes yeah it's easy to sort of read these narratives and be like man what are you guys doing uh but you know when you when you look at your own life and then you look at the lives of those who came before

you you're like oh we're doing the same stupid things that we ever did humanity has not changed human nature is just the same yes i mean that's one of the reasons that uh that i i love the old testament i mean it's like human nature on display big time so we're going to see some of that this is uh so we are we're in chapter 10 uh if uh if we haven't said that already verse six this is sort of a a transitional section so if you remember at the beginning of judges not quite the beginning but close to the beginning we had a section where it talked about how israel had gone astray and they were whoring after other gods and doing all the things that israel typically does it's kind of a summary section highlighting a lot of the specific gods that they had gone after

and then god sends a prophet to uh have a come to jesus meeting with them and tells them how they've gone wrong well the same thing is going to be repeated here except uh in a in a more accelerated sort of way so if we thought things were bad at the beginning we're going to find out that they got a lot worse and this time it's not going to be a prophet that god sends god is going to speak to his people directly so that's that's where we're going where we left off if you if you it's been a few days since you listened to the last podcast we left off was was with two minor judges, Tola and Yair. We have two verses devoted to each of these. So after we finished Abimelech, who was the anti-judge, we have Tola and we have Yair. And then we're going to go next. So we're

kind of between judges right now. We're going to go next to Jephthah, who has a very, very interesting story to tell. He's in some ways like Gideon, in some ways like Abimelech, and in some ways he's his own person so that'll actually we'll spend quite a bit of time on him at least the book of judges spends quite a bit of time on him so anyway picking up here with uh judges 10 6 and following it says i'll just read a couple of verses to you it says then the israelites again did evil in the sight of the lord and served now count on me here serve the bales and the Ashtaroth, and the gods of Aram, and the gods of Sidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines. Thus they forsake the Lord and did not serve him.

All right. Now, of course, that number adds up to, as you'd expect, seven. So this, even though the first two, the Baals and the Ashtaroth, that's probably kind of a, that's sort of an old, Instead of saying gods and goddesses, that's kind of the Old Testament way of saying that. So the Baals and the Ashtaroth, Baal, of course, was the masculine deity, and then Ashtaroth was the feminine deity. So it's kind of like sort of a generic designation for gods and goddesses. But then we have, after that, five specific locations with their specific deities that are mentioned. So the Baals, the Asherot, and then the gods of Aram and Sidon and Moab and Ammon and the Philistines.

So it's kind of like Israel couldn't get enough, right? I mean, it's not enough just to worship Baal or maybe Baal and Asherah. It's like, we're going to look around, we're going to scout out all these other gods of all these other peoples, and we're going to add them to our idolatrous harem because we just can't we can't get enough of these these other gods and he i don't know i mean maybe it's uh the desire to kind of psychologize this you know but i mean theologically i can understand but you got to wonder like what's up with israel i mean for instance do you think do you think the

philistines were worshiping also the gods the ammonites and the moabites and the aramites and yahweh or you know do you think the the people of sidon were worshiping five or seven gods from other countries or was it just israel that was always going after the gods of other nations i mean that's an interesting question i don't really know the answer to it yeah well i mean you don't you don't see a lot of other nations worshiping yahweh that's for sure now maybe this is a little more difficult thing to do uh but what it seems like over and over again is that God is not the God that you would choose because what happens with all these other gods is that everything is very transactional. Baal doesn't make you promises for the sake of his

name, right? This is not what he does. Everything's transactional. And you would think like, well, I don't want that. What I want is a God who makes me promises. And then I just need to, he just needs to be my God and I need to be his people. And then he's going to care for us. That sounds like the best but you're wrong because that's not how we're wired we we are drawn to like listen i just want something i can i can know that if i do x i'm gonna get i'm gonna get y like that's that's what i want give me something to do right yeah yeah i mean and so that you don't you don't want it you don't want this god who sort of wants you just to to live and have you have him be your god uh and and you never and you don't know if it's you know life is hard i mean

there's there's they're they're living life in a in a fallen world just like we are so every generation faces its own problems and as these problems arise are they like well geez i mean our god doesn't seem to have a solution for this but these other gods seem to have a solution for this all i have to do is this thing and then supposedly they'll they'll do this this thing this other thing which would be really good right now because we're in a tough situation you know where yahweh just sort of promises to be there with you through whatever it is you're going through and to and to pull you through the other other side of it so yes whether it's results driven you know like if all of a sudden the crops aren't aren't growing uh well that year

you're like oh man we gotta we gotta do something time to time to find seek out a solution to this problem and that solution time and time again ends up being let's try to give this god a shot that's that's what i would assume it is is this desire for a a more sure thing as far as a more contractual god and uh probably facing situations that people face and then trying to figure out a way out and one of the the avenues that you explore is this god and that god and the other god yeah i I mean, that fits perfectly with what we know of human nature. So I think you're right. I mean, nothing's changed, right?

We still see when times get hard, very often people will turn to whatever the modern idolatries are, right? So those things have not changed because we want results, especially today. You know, we're not very patient. If I want something, I want it right now. And if God is not giving me what I want right now, then I'm very likely going to turn elsewhere and seek it in a way that I think I'm going to get it in a more expedited fashion. Well, that's what was happening with Israel.

So God responds. God does kind of what he does in almost every other situation. It says, first of all, that his anger was burning against him. That's that same idiom we talked about before where his nose was hot. So God is angry with him, and he more or less says, oh, you want to act like a Philistine, or you want to act like an Ammonite. I mean, you want to worship their gods. So I'll tell you what, I'm simply going to sell you into the hands of the Philistines. If you like their gods so much, well, then you can just be their servants. So that's

what he does. He sells them into the hands of Philistines and hands of the Ammonites. So we don't know exactly what this looked like on the ground, but I'm assuming there were probably some pretty heavy taxation that had to be paid. Most likely, a lot of the people were taken as slaves. It's just kind of the way it worked in the ancient world. When you conquered another people, then you took what you wanted. You made a lot of them slaves. It's what the Romans did with the Jews. When the Jews would rebel, very often they would squash the rebellion, and then they'd ship thousands or 10,000s of the Jews to Rome or elsewhere to serve as slaves. So you had families separated, you had people enslaved, you had heavy taxation, and presumably something like that was

happening here with the Israelites and the Ammonites and the Philistines. So it says they afflicted and they crushed the Israelites that year. And for 18 years, they afflicted the sons of Israel who were beyond the Jordan in Gilead in the land of the Amorites. So you got the Philistines the Ammonites, afflicting them, crushing them. Those two verbs, by the way, are connected with narratives that we already know. So the word for afflicted, it's a pretty unusual word in Hebrew, but it does occur in Exodus 15 in connection with what God does to the enemies of Israel. So when that same verb is used here for what God is using the enemies of Israel to do to Israel, you see how the tables have turned and God is acting in law toward his people in order

to drive them to the point of repentance. The second verb for crushed is the same verb that's used in the previous story of Abimelech when the woman dropped the millstone on the head of Abimelech and crushed his skull. That's the same verb that's used here. So they were afflicted and they were crushed and not just like on the western side where the philistines were but also even on the transjordan on the the eastern side of of the jordan in the land of gilead and it says that the sons of ammon the ammonites they would cross the jordan to fight against judah and benjamin and the house of ephraim ephraim and so israel it says was greatly distressed now we know what's coming. We've seen this before. Anytime that Israel goes whoring after other gods,

and then God sells them into the hands of their enemies, and they oppress them, the very next thing that happens every single time is what verse 10 records. It says, the Israelites cried out to the Lord, and they say, we have sinned against you, for we have indeed forsaken our God and served the Baals. Now, in a lot of these situations we've seen before, what happens next is that God raises up a deliverer. He raises up a Yoshia, a savior who's going to deliver them from the hands of enemies. That doesn't happen here, at least not yet. And it's a little bit unclear how this is all going to play out. So after they say this, here's how God responds. God does not respond by saying, I got this. I'm going to raise up a judge, a savior for you. He says to them,

did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and the Amorites and the Ammonites and the Philistines? And when the Sidonians and the Amalekites and the Maonites, we'll talk about them in a minute, when all these guys oppressed you, you cried out to me and I delivered you from their hands. So he's like given basically his CV here, right? He's telling them, this is what I've done. This is what I've accomplished for you. Then he goes on. I did all this, verse 13, yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore, this is where it gets, it's pretty harsh here. Therefore, i will save you no more and then he says go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen let them deliver you in the time of your distress man that's not a sermon you want to hear preached

to you no this is this is fascinating stuff too because is this how it's going to play out so god says i will save you no more that you can you can wrestle with this kind of stuff uh and and try to jam that square peg into a round hole if you want but there's no way around that god says here that he will save them no more but he will but he will isn't that yeah it's it's it's so strange the way the scriptures are working that way i mean that's a you cannot get more of a blanket statement than that right yeah he's not like i'm not gonna i'm not i'm not gonna save you any ever again ever again period no more go cry out to go cry out to your gods yeah cry out to your puny gods that you wanted to worship so much and let them let them do their job right let them save you see how that

works and this this is sort of where you get this you see you know there's there's god who knows all things uh and then there's god interacting with people in time and space yeah and these are these are kind of different so does does god know that yeah he's going to save them i mean well he knows that he's ultimately preserving israel to bring about the christ to save the world like he knows he knows that he knows absolutely he's gonna not just save them from this but that their role in redemptive history is to bring about the promise so of course he's going to to save them but in that moment it's it's sort of like in the it's like the way that you you wrestle with these things i think is that it's like in that moment when god looks at the earth uh in the story of

noah and says he regrets ever making man and in that moment he does right this is and and in this moment he's i'm not gonna do it even though he knows he is and and i think that we can all sort of relate to this sort of thing like in that moment you're like i'm not doing that like i'm i'm not i'm not doing like you know you could imagine a relationship you have with someone that you know that you can't get out of like you know like being a father or something and you're like i am never going to do this thing again for you and you know darn well that you are i'll never cook you dinner again if you're not going to eat that sure yeah sure you're not yeah this is man this is statements like this really hammer home the

full force of the law right i mean there is there is nothing that's held back here there's no unless until maybe it's just like nope i'm done i will save you no more go and cry out to the other god that you've been whoring after and say see if they will will save you it seems that israel knows at this point that turning to these other gods is not going to work and what you also what you see time and time again is that turning to other gods, they're not just impotent. You actually become enslaved. It's worse than just a worthless god. It's a god that only brings about evil for you. That's a great point. I don't think that's something that we really talk about enough, either. I mean, I do think we sometimes get the impression that, oh, well, they're false gods,

right? So they don't really exist. It's not like there is an actual Baal or Asherah or whoever it might be. But if you look, I think it begins in Deuteronomy. Well, it's certainly made explicit in 1 Corinthians. Paul says, and then Moses says of these idols that, yeah, they are not gods. and Isaiah like mocks them right but they also say there is a power behind these gods behind these idols and Paul says it explicitly in first Corinthians that the power behind these are demons so even though they're false gods they're not false demons well they're false gods because demons aren't God yes exactly but doesn't just because you're not God doesn't mean you're nothing yeah right right i'm not i'm not god but i'm something but you're something yeah

and i i do think that sometimes what we what we forget and it's the point that you were making is because there is a dark and demonic power behind that that are impersonating these deities to worship them is to be enslaved by them yep yeah so i mean it really is a it's not just the fact that you're worshiping vanity there is something that is actually there and that thing that's there will make you its its slave i do like this uh persistent widow move that israel puts on god here too because they say we have sinned do whatever seems good to you only please deliver us this day now this is an interesting way to say this like we know we sinned you just do whatever you want as long as that includes delivering us this day yeah that's a great line

just i mean i'm gonna completely leave it up to you god i mean you know best just do whatever you think is right just make it happen in the next 24 hours so we're asking yeah and i guess to their credit you know does it that they put away the foreign gods among them and serve the lord and he became impatient over the misery of israel now this this i love man so they're like do whatever you want but it really needs to include delivering us uh we're let's go ahead and like and so you see them trying to be like okay maybe we'll just put away all these idols and we'll serve the lord and we'll see what happens and i like that like i don't know how your trans your translation has it but i like this became impatient over the misery of israel

In other words, he's watching his people suffer, and he's really getting impatient about it. In other words, they have successfully turned God's heart, right? God now can't bear to watch this misery any longer, even though they totally deserve it, and they brought it on themselves. He's grown impatient. He is now—what is he angry with? And I love that this is true about God. He is angry with misery. He's impatient with it.

He's had enough of misery. this is this is really good news for for us that that we have a god who when he sees misery could grow impatient with it that he's like man i have had enough of watching this suffering even if you brought it upon yourself even if you deserve it this is not a god who delights in watching people suffer yeah he's not sadistic no he's like man i i've i've had like just bearing witness to this i've had i've had about as much as much of this as i can handle yeah yeah the particular hebrew idiom that's used here we've actually seen it before in a different context though so way back in numbers when the people were journeying along and they started complaining

and god sent the fiery serpents that same idiom is used there it says the the the people became impatient along the way. So the same, literally it would be their, their soul was shortened. And so in this particular verse, it's going to be that the God's soul was shortened. We know we used a similar expression. If someone snaps at me, I can say something like, don't be short with me. So we have an idiom like that in Hebrew, except we don't say don't be short soul, but that is what's that's the idiom that's behind here. So yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. God is impatient he's short of soul with the misery of his people that's good he's ready for it to be over yeah it's good when god is short with misery he sure is yeah we don't want him to prolong it

anymore than uh than it already is happening so yeah it's great news that we have a we have a god who well my translation isn't that great it has two could he could bear the misery of israel no longer i actually like impatient uh i think it captures the hebrew a little bit a little bit better he was impatient with the misery of israel so well we're going to find out what happens it says that uh verse 17 and 18 is going to wrap up the chapter it says the ammonites were summoned and they camped in gilead gilead is uh it it's it's a region that is on the the eastern side of the jordan so you know that's where we have the two and a half tribes that are hanging out so this is not in the holy land proper but it's in the the transjordan so that the people of

so they came to gilead and the israelites gathered together at mizpah which is i guess close to there this is a different mizpah than we hear about later and then the the people the leaders of gilead they they know they got to do something and so they're basically like looking around and they're like okay who's it going to be who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites because whoever it is, he is going to become the Rosh, the head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Now it ends there. There's an interlude where we're going to meet our friend Jephthah, but that's kind of left hanging as if nobody stepped up to the plate. It's like, all right, all we need, we need a leader who's going to be our top guy in the battle because whoever

our top guy in the battle is going to be is going to be the top guy in the government he's gonna he's gonna rule over us and nobody nobody takes the opportunity to step up and say i am your man yeah because it almost seems like this is like the incentive right like who's going to step up and lead us also if you if you're successful you're going to be the guy yeah yeah i mean you'd think there'd be someone with some there's always somebody with a lot of ambition you know waiting in the wings for an opportunity like this but it didn't happen here nobody stepped up so as we'll see when we get into chapter 11 which we're about to do god had he was working a little bit different planned because he had somebody else that he was going to put into into that position

so anyway that's uh that's a chapter 10 and we will jump into 11 now so this is when i meet our friend Jephthah. So we start out here by finding out a little bit about his background. I mentioned earlier, maybe his last podcast, that Jephthah is kind of like Gideon in some ways, and he's kind of like Abimelech in some ways. And right away, we find out how he is similar to Abimelech. Remember that Abimelech was the son of Gideon and a concubine. Now Jephthah says he was a valiant warrior but he was the son not of a concubine but of a harlot and gilead was the father of jephthah so gilead uh has this uh i don't we don't know if it's just a one-time deal or what it was but he visits a prostitute he gets her pregnant and she gives birth to this guy named

Jephthah. Now, Gilead had other sons, as we're about to hear, but he also had this illegitimate son as well. And it does say right away, actually, this first verse has parallels both with Gideon as well as with Abimelech, because it's first of all says he was a valiant warrior. And if you remember the very beginning of the story of Gideon, when the angel was speaking to him, he hailed him as a valiant warrior. So he's kind of got both these things in the background here. And maybe it was written like that on purpose so that when we're reading the story, we can be like, hmm, okay, well, I hear echoes here of Gideon's story and I hear echoes here of Abimelech's story. So is this guy going to be more of a Gideon person or is he more of an

abimelech person or is he going to be somebody entirely differently you know so it's like piquing our curiosity as to what exactly is going to happen with him i know this when i when the chapter starts out with jephthah the jephthah was a mighty warrior but he was the son of a prostitute i'm immediately like this seems like the guy that god's going to use yeah isn't that true like is this guy is this guy like rejected by everyone it's probably the guy probably the guy yeah it's like that's what god's looking for right yeah if it had started out and he's like like all these credentials to be like oh man this ain't gonna work not gonna happen so it goes on to give us a little bit more of the background here it says uh gillian did have a wife uh even

though he's visiting prostitutes so he's got a wife and she she had sons and when the sons the the sons of the wife grew up they drove Jephthah out so I really hadn't noticed this until this moment but I guess what happened so he had the son with the prostitute but evidently he brought that son Jephthah home with him right because it says they they drove him out uh when they were when they were older and said you shall not have an inheritance in our father's house because you're the son of another woman so i mean it's somewhat similar again here to abimelech except here i mean evidently judging by what we're told jephthah was raised in the home of gilead raised with his half brothers but when they got old enough they're like off with you because we're

not going to split our inheritance with you because you're not from the union of our father and mother. So Jephthah takes off. It says he ran away from his brothers and he lived in the land of Tov. We don't know anything about that. Tov is the Hebrew word for good, a very common word. There's actually a lot of places that are called Tov in the Old Testament. So it was a good place, I guess, wherever he was at. That's where he's at, land of Tov. And it says that worthless fellows, we've seen this before, right? Abimelech gathered around him a bunch of empty and worthless fellows as well these uh assassins that he used to slay his 69 brothers well anyway jephthah has his own worthless fellows and they gather around him and it says they went out with him presumably

they went out with him on like i don't know raids or something like that yeah yeah there's sort of like a contrast right here like the the tobe and then the the worthless fellow these are these are sort of because this is the word you can correct me if i'm wrong but this is the the word we see in Genesis, right, where God said that everything was good. It was good, yeah. It was tov, right? Right. Yeah, so it's like, the land of good, some worthless

fellows, not good, collect around him. But, I mean, this kind of makes sense. So, I mean, this guy's family drives him out, says, hey, you're out of here. So he's all on his own, and so what does he do? He joins up with

some other guys that are maybe in similar situations. when it talks about like these kind of things like like worthless fellows maybe two things can be true at once they could be up to no good up to worthless things and they could also be people that are also deemed as pretty worthless by by everyone else yeah so in a land of good you have these worthless fellows i mean it's pretty evident that jephthah's brothers think he's pretty worthless and uh god is going to do something different but hebrew does this sometimes and there's it's it's playing with these sort of these words yeah i think that's precisely what's

going here i mean tov is a very common hebrew word means means good and so it's like taking the opportunity here to set up the contrast right good land worthless fellas probably up to to no good because as a story unfolds we find out that well well jeff is is not like he's without uh without experience in fighting i mean that's one of the reasons as we'll see in just a second that they approach him to be their military leader yeah well it's hard i mean it's hard to say someone's a mighty warrior if he's never fought so he said this guy was a mighty water warrior but he was the son of a prostitute uh so these must be objectively true of him like how do you have what do you mean he's a mighty warrior well i mean that he's done some fighting and won yeah

yeah yeah he's not uh probably had a pretty rough life you know he grew up with with brothers he got kicked out and uh he's just kind of scraping by doing what he doing what he could do probably some of it quite illegal but uh that it was sort of you know the way he was formed and shaped to be the person that he grew up to be well it says after a while picking up with verse four after a while the ammonites fought against israel and when that happened the elders of gilead they went to get jephthah from the land of tobe so they're like summoning him back home and they say to him now this is, this is interesting. We kind of got to pay attention to the language I used. Remember the first time they said, whoever volunteers to be our, our leader, our Rosh, our head,

well, then you're going to be ahead of all Gilead. Now, when they first approached Jephthah, they don't say that. They say, come and be our chief that we may fight against the sons of Ammon. So at first they're just offering him, Hey, why don't you come and be our military commander? they don't say anything about and we'll make you the president of our little area or our governor of our little area our rosh they don't promise that to begin with they're just promising him a position in the army more or less come and be our chief come and be our cut scene in the hebrew that wouldn't be fought against the ammonites and then of course you can just imagine the uh And what kind of what is going through Jephthah's mind is like, oh, yeah, so now, now you call me, right?

So he says to them, oh, didn't you hate me and drive me out of my father's house? So why have you come to me now when you're in trouble? I mean, he's got to be enjoying this a little bit, right? Right. So you hated me and you drove me away. And now you come begging me when you need some help. this has to tell you something about his reputation i mean i mean he must be a pretty a pretty bad dude yeah he must be i mean yeah to come crawling back to to him knowing what

they've done to him hey we're in desperate straits and he must have yeah he must have been a pretty bad dude to for them to approach him for something like this so he's gonna take advantage of this opportunity i mean he's he is he is jephthah makes some really stupid mistakes later but he is he makes some some smart moves at least politically at this point the elders say to him here's why we've come to you so that you can go fight against the ammonites and now listen and you can become rosh head over all the inhabitants of gilead so now instead of just saying that you can be our chief they say you can be our leader so they apply to him the same promise that they originally applied generally, which no one took them up on. So Jephthah says,

you can tell he's a little bit leery. He says to them, all right, he says, if you take me back to fight against the Ammonites and the Lord gives them up to me, will I become your head? It's like he's wanting them to say it again, right? And they say, yep. In fact, they use the Lord's name, Yahweh. The Lord is witness between us. Surely we will do as you have said. And then Jephthah still wants a little more confirmation. So he goes with the elders of Gilead, and it says the people made him both head and chief. So he's like the political leader, I guess we would say in our terminology,

as well as the military leader. So he's the Rosh as well as the Kotzeed. Yeah, you're governor and general. Yes, governor and general. That's it. And then it says Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah. Now, I wish we knew more about this, because we don't know really what's going on there at Mizpah. And it says before the Lord at Mizpah, which would indicate there was some sort of sacred site there, some sort of altar. But all we have is conjecture.

it's probably no one way we do of israel it's probably no uh surprise that they had altar set up all over the place there was only supposed to be one altar of course the altar at the tabernacle and you notice that we hear nothing about the tabernacle right because it judges everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes so maybe they had an altar to bail but had an asherah pole maybe they had another altar to yahweh whatever's going on at mizpah evidently they have some sort of worship site that is dedicated to Yahweh. And so they basically gather there, probably offered sacrifices,

and made him the general, made him the governor, and Jephthah spoke all these words in sort of a formal covenant sort of way before the Lord there at Mizpah. Yeah, you almost get a sense of swearing in or something here, right? I mean, the modern thing of this

that we would relate to as like an inauguration like this is public and at least supposedly is before god as well this is why the bible shows up and you put your hand on it and all that kind of stuff it seems like this is sort of a similar thing it's a very formal thing before god they're like this is the guy that we're gonna set apart to do to do this work and we're also making him the head yeah that's that's exactly it and we'll uh we'll have to stop there in just a minute but kind of give you a heads up as to what's coming up. I mean, if the story of Jephthah didn't

end the way it does, I'd be super impressed with him. Yeah. Because I mean, he's a very accomplished military leader, obviously. And as we're about to see, he's very eloquent. And even though he was the son of a prostitute

and, you know, so he kind of had that background, he knows his history. In fact, this is one of those sections coming up in the book of book of judges where we have kind of a a rehearsal of sacred history he's going to go through beginning with the exodus and then up to the modern day hey this is what god did for his people this is where he led them this is these are the lands that uh that they conquered as a result of his of his power and his promise so he's got a lot of good qualities uh but those qualities those good qualities are uh also balanced by some other stuff that we'll get to

later in the in the chapter yeah well next week guys we get uh the the warrior son of a prostitute and see see what kind of stuff he does uh including uh maybe the most tragic oath of of all time yeah yeah that's right that's uh verse 29 following so stay tuned all right well guys if the podcast has been helpful to you and you've enjoyed it you can become a contributor and help it continue by going over to 1517.org

go to the donate page and you can become a monthly contributor thank you so much to those of you who do that make it all possible Chad I will see you next week we'll see ya

Oh, my God.