Israel’s crying out to God in their misery and confessing their sin of forsaking God in favor of serving the Baals wasn’t enough to rouse God’s compassion to rescue them. It was when they forsook the Baals and other gods and served Him that God exercised compassion and gave them victory over their enemy. As has been asked before, how does God get His people’s attention when they have forsaken Him? Suffering seems to be the only thing that prompts unfaithful people to turn to God. Therefore, God would be foolish to relieve the suffering in response to a mere crying out to Him or even to a confession of sin. It is when the suffering has achieved its desired result, that of returning His people to Him, that He relents. Let us keep in mind that if we New Testament folk are in an unfaithful state, God will impose suffering on us as encouragement to return to Him. He will not be moved until we move; simply crying out to Him or even confessing our unfaithfulness is not turning. Remember that God is neither unfaithful nor foolish.
Jephthah did not seem to be God’s choice of leader, but the people’s; nevertheless, God helped rescue Israel from Ammon by sending His spirit upon Jephthah for the mission of defeating their enemy. When can we ever have God or His ways figured out?
Jephthah made a rash vow needlessly, which demonstrated his ignorance of God. Even though human sacrifice is detestable to God, Jephthah had to keep his vow to God. Such is the importance to God of faithfulness to one’s word. That conflicts with our culture’s value of keeping one’s word, which devalues everyone’s word by teaching us to do what is most convenient for us. Whose standard will you accept and live by? God’s standard is a livable one if we are careful in the commitments we make.
Those Ephraimites were troublemakers, complaining after the battle was over that they didn’t get to participate. Who was in the right here? No one! God used such confrontations to judge His people for their sin. Sin creates chaos, drama and confusion. Let us remember that it is never attractive; if it seems so, it is because our enemy has deceived us. Don’t be deceived into thinking that sin is ever anything but what is represented here, and uglier.
The significance of the many sons and daughters some of these judges had, and their riding on donkeys, was that the judge described was king-like. The description was meant to convey how impressive they would have been to the people of that day. Only through many wives did a man get that many children, and only a wealthy man could afford that many wives. That he was able to provide a means of personal transportation for each one of his many children spoke of even greater wealth; this large family was not simply getting by. After years of judgment – remember what that would have looked like, according to Moses? – , they could only have accrued that much wealth by collecting it from their people, imposing taxes or tribute. Recalling that God, and not a king, was to be the leader of His people, you may realize that these leaders who were impressive to the people of their day are not in truth impressive at all. How disappointing this Old Covenant plan turned out for God and for His people!
Was God in error to devise the plan that deteriorated so quickly into such a hopeless spiral of sin and chaos? As the all-knowing being that Scripture teaches God is, He wasn’t surprised by this. So why did He give them this doomed plan? Why didn’t He give them a king like they obviously wanted? The kingdom plan was not as good as His plan – Scripture will teach us that. As I have contemplated all of this, it seems to me that God had a good reason for giving them the Law and designing their government as He did, for the outcome teaches us to long for something better – for Messiah. It teaches us the uselessness and hopelessness of man’s ways and thoughts, and points us to God’s higher ways and thoughts. Hopefully we’ll see that more and more as the story continues to unfold.