prophetic message; and it was spoken by one of those incisive ironic
preachers who were born from time to time among this strangely heathen,
strangely believing people. It is in terms of earnest remonstrance he
speaks, at first almost going the length of declaring that there is no
hope for the rebellious and ungrateful tribes. They found it an easy
thing to turn from their Divine King to the gods they chose to worship.
Now they perhaps expect as easy a recovery of His favour. But healing
must begin with deeper wounding, and salvation with much keener anxiety.
This prophet knows the need for utter seriousness of soul. As he loves
and yearns over his country-folk he must so deal with them; it is God's
way, the only way to save. Most irrationally, against all sound
principles of judgment they had abandoned the Living One, the Eternal to
worship hideous idols like Moloch and Dagon. It was wicked because it
was wilfully stupid and perverse. And Jehovah says, "I will save you no
more. Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen; let them save you
in the day of your distress." The rebuke is stinging. The preacher makes
the people feel the wretched insufficiency of their hope in the false,
and the great strong pressure upon them of the Almighty, Whom, even in
neglect, they cannot escape. We are pointed forward to the terrible
pathos of Jeremiah:--"Who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who
shall bemoan thee? or who shall turn aside to ask of thy welfare? Thou
hast rejected me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: therefore have
I stretched out my hand against thee, and destroyed thee: I am weary
with repenting."
And notice to what state of mind the Hebrews were brought. Renewing
their confession they said, "Do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good
unto Thee." They would be content to suffer now at the hand of God
whatever He chose to inflict on them. They themselves would have exacted
heavy tribute of a subject people that had rebelled and came suing for
pardon. Perhaps they would have slain every tenth man. Jehovah might
appoint retribution of the same kind; He might afflict them with
pestilence; He might require them to offer a multitude of sacrifices.
Men who traffic with idolatry and adopt gross notions of revengeful gods
are certain to carry back with them when they return to the better faith
many of the false ideas they have gathered. And it is just possible that
a demand for human sacrifices was at this time attributed to God, the
general feeling that they might be necessary connecting itself with
Jephthah's vow.
It is idle to suppose that Israelites who persistently lapsed into
paganism could at any time, because they repented, find the spiritual
thoughts they had lost. True those thoughts were at the heart of the
national life, there always even when least felt. But thousands of
Hebrews even in a generation of reviving faith died with but a faint and
shadowy personal understanding of Jehovah. Everything in the Book of
Judges goes to show that the mass of the people were nearer the level of
their neighbours the Moabites and Ammonites than the piety of the
Psalms. A remarkable ebb and flow are observable in the history of the
race. Look at some facts and there seems to be decline. Samson is below
Gideon, and Gideon below Deborah; no man of leading until Isaiah can be
named with Moses. Yet ever and anon there are prophetic calls and voices
out of a spiritual region into which the people as a whole do not enter,
voices to which they listen only when distressed and overborne.
Worldliness increases, for the world opens to the Hebrew; but it often
disappoints, and still there are some to whom the heavenly secret is
told. The race as a whole is not becoming more devout and holy, but the
few are gaining a clearer vision as one experience after another is
recorded. The antithesis is the same we see in the Christian centuries.
Is the multitude more pious now than in the age when a king had to do
penance for rash words spoken against an ecclesiastic? Are the churches
less worldly than they were a hundred years ago? Scarcely may we affirm
it. Yet there never was an age so rich as ours in the finest
spirituality, the noblest Christian thought. Our van presses up to the
Simplon height and is in constant touch with those who follow; but the
rear is still chaffering and idling in the streets of Milan. It is in
truth always by the fidelity of the remnant that humanity is saved for
God.
We cannot say that when Israel repented it was in the love of holiness
so much as in the desire for liberty. The ways of the heathen were
followed readily, but the supremacy of the heathen was ever abominable
to the vigorous Israelite. By this national spirit however God could
find the tribes, and a special feature of the deliverance from Ammon is
marked where we read: "The people, the princes of Gilead said one to the
other, What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of
Ammon? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead." Looking
around for the fit leader they found Jephthah and agreed to invite him.
Now this shows distinct progress in the growth of the nation. There is,
if nothing more, a growth in practical power. Abimelech had thrust
himself upon the men of Shechem. Jephthah is chosen apart from any
ambition of his own. The movement which made him judge arose out of the
consciousness of the Gileadites that they could act for themselves and
were bound to act for themselves. Providence indicated the chief, but
they had to be instruments of providence in making him chief. The vigour
and robust intelligence of the men of Eastern Palestine come out here.
They lead in the direction of true national life. While on the west of
Jordan there is a fatalistic disposition, these men move. Gilead, the
separated country, with the still ruder Bashan behind it and the Argob a
resort of outlaws, is beneath some other regions in manners and in
thought, but ahead of them in point of energy. We need not look for
refinement, but we shall see power; and the chosen leader while he is
something of the barbarian will be a man to leave his mark on history.
At the start we are not prepossessed in favour of Jephthah. There is
some confusion in the narrative which has led to the supposition that he
was a foundling of the clan. But taking Gilead as the actual name of his
father, he appears as the son of a harlot, brought up in the paternal
home and banished from it when there were legitimate sons able to
contend with him. We get thus a brief glance at a certain rough standard
of morals and see that even polygamy made sharp exclusions. Jephthah,
cast out, betakes himself to the land of Tob and getting about him a
band of vain fellows or freebooters becomes the Robin Hood or Rob Roy of
his time. There are natural suspicions of a man who takes to a life of
this kind, and yet the progress of events shows that though Jephthah was
a sort of outlaw his character as well as his courage must have
commended him. He and his men might occasionally seize for their own use
the cattle and corn of Israelites when they were hard pressed for food.
But it was generally against the Ammonites and other enemies their raids
were directed, and the modern instances already cited show that no
little magnanimity and even patriotism may go along with a life of
lawless adventure. If this robber chief, as some might call him, now and
again levied contributions from a wealthy flock-master, the poorer
Hebrews were no doubt indebted to him for timely help when bands of
Ammonites swept through the land. Something of this we must read into
the narrative otherwise the elders of Gilead would not so unanimously
and urgently have invited him to become their head.
Jephthah was not at first disposed to believe in the good faith of those
who gave him the invitation. Among the heads of households who came he
saw his own brothers who had driven him to the hills. He must have more
than suspected that they only wished to make use of him in their
emergency and, the fighting over, would set him aside. He therefore
required an oath of the men that they would really accept him as chief
and obey him. That given he assumed the command.
And here the religious character of the man begins to appear. At Mizpah
on the verge of the wilderness where the Israelites, driven northward by
the victories of Ammon, had their camp there stood an ancient cairn or
heap of stones which preserved the tradition of a sacred covenant and
still retained the savour of sanctity. There it was that Jacob fleeing
from Padan-aram on his way back to Canaan was overtaken by Laban, and
there raising the Cairn of Witness they swore in the sight of Jehovah to
be faithful to each other. The belief still lingered that the old
monument was a place of meeting between man and God. To it Jephthah
repaired at this new point in his life. No more an adventurer, no more
an outlaw, but the chosen leader of eastern Israel, "he spake all his
words before Jehovah in Mizpah." He had his life to review there, and
that could not be done without serious thought. He had a new and
strenuous future opened to him. Jephthah the outcast, the unnamed, was
to be leader in a tremendous national struggle. The bold Gileadite feels
the burden of the task. He has to question himself, to think of Jehovah.
Hitherto he has been doing his own business and to that he has felt
quite equal; now with large responsibility comes a sense of need. For a
fight with society he has been strong enough; but can he be sure of
himself as God's man, fighting against Ammon? Not a few words but many
would he have to utter as on the hill-top in the silence he lifted up
his soul to God and girt himself in holy resolution as a father and a
Hebrew to do his duty in the day of battle.
Thus we pass from doubt of Jephthah to the hope that the banished man,
the free-booter will yet prove to be an Israelite indeed, of sterling
character, whose religion, very rude perhaps, has a deep strain of
reality and power. Jephthah at the cairn of Mizpah lifting up his hands
in solemn invocation of the God of Jacob reminds us that there are great
traditions of the past of our nation and of our most holy faith to which
we are bound to be true, that there is a God our witness and our judge
in Whose strength alone we can live and do nobly. For the service of
humanity and the maintenance of faith we need to be in close touch with
the brave and good of other days and in the story of their lives find
quickening for our own. Along the same line and succession we are to
bear our testimony, and no link of connection with the Divine Power is
to be missed which the history of the men of faith supplies. Yet as our
personal Helper especially we must know God. Hearing His call to
ourselves we must lift the standard and go forth to the battle of life.
Who can serve his family and friends, who can advance the well-being of
the world, unless he has entered into that covenant with the Living God
which raises mortal insufficiency to power and makes weak and ignorant
men instruments of a divine redemption?
XVII.
_THE TERRIBLE VOW._
JUDGES xi. 12-40.
At every stage of their history the Hebrews were capable of producing
men of passionate religiousness. And this appears as a distinction of
the group of nations to which they belong. The Arab of the present time
has the same quality. He can be excited to a holy war in which thousands
perish. With the battle-cry of Allah and his Prophet he forgets fear. He
presents a different mingling of character from the Saxon,--turbulence
and reverence, sometimes apart, then blending--magnanimity and a
tremendous want of magnanimity; he is fierce and generous, now rising to
vivid faith, then breaking into earthly passion. We have seen the type
in Deborah. David is the same and Elijah; and Jephthah is the Gileadite,
the border Arab. In each of these there is quick leaping at life and
beneath hot impulse a strain of brooding thought with moments of intense
inward trouble. As we follow the history we must remember the kind of
man it presents to us. There is humanity as it is in every race, daring
in effort, tender in affection, struggling with ignorance yet thoughtful
of God and duty, triumphing here, defeated there. And there is the
Syrian with the heat of the sun in his blood and the shadow of Moloch on
his heart, a son of the rude hills and of barbaric times, yet with a
dignity, a sense of justice, a keen upward look, the Israelite never
lost in the outlaw.
So soon as Jephthah begins to act for his people, marks of a strong
character are seen. He is no ordinary leader, not the mere fighter the
elders of Gilead may have taken him to be. His first act is to send
messengers to the king of Ammon saying, What hast thou to do with me
that thou art come to fight against my land? He is a chief who desires
to avert bloodshed--a new figure in the history.
Natural in those times was the appeal to arms, so natural, so customary
that we must not lightly pass this trait in the character of the
Gileadite judge. If we compare his policy with that of Gideon or Barak
we see of course that he had different circumstances to deal with.
Between Jordan and the Mediterranean the Israelites required the whole
of the land in order to establish a free nationality. There was no room
for Canaanite or Midianite rule side by side with their own. The
dominance of Israel had to be complete and undisturbed. Hence there was
no alternative to war when Jabin or Zebah and Zalmunna attacked the
tribes. Might had to be invoked on behalf of right. On the other side
Jordan the position was different. Away towards the desert behind the
mountains of Bashan the Ammonites might find pasture for their flocks,
and Moab had its territory on the slopes of the lower Jordan and the
Dead Sea. It was not necessary to crush Ammon in order to give Manasseh,
Gad and Reuben space enough and to spare. Yet there was a rare quality
of judgment shown by the man who although called to lead in war began
with negotiation and aimed at a peaceful settlement. No doubt there was
danger that the Ammonites might unite with Midian or Moab against
Israel. But Jephthah hazards such a coalition. He knows the bitterness
kindled by strife. He desires that Ammon, a kindred people, shall be won
over to friendliness with Israel, henceforth to be an ally instead of a
foe.
Now in one aspect this may appear an error in policy, and the Hebrew
chief will seem especially to blame when he makes the admission that the
Ammonites hold their land from Chemosh their god. Jephthah has no sense
of Israel's mission to the world, no wish to convert Ammon to a higher
faith, nor does Jehovah appear to him as sole King, sole object of human
worship. Yet, on the other hand, if the Hebrews were to fight idolatry
everywhere it is plain their swords would never have been sheathed.
Phoenicia was close beside; Aram was not far away; northward the
Hittites maintained their elaborate ritual. A line had to be drawn
somewhere and, on the whole, we cannot but regard Jephthah as an
enlightened and humane chief who wished to stir against his people and
his God no hostility that could possibly be avoided. Why should not
Israel conquer Ammon by justice and magnanimity, by showing the higher
principles which the true religion taught? He began at all events by
endeavouring to stay the quarrel, and the attempt was wise.
The king of Ammon refused Jephthah's offer to negotiate. He claimed the
land bounded by the Arnon, the Jabbok and Jordan as his own and demanded
that it should be peaceably given up to him. In reply Jephthah denied
the claim. It was the Amorites, he said, who originally held that part
of Syria. Sihon who was defeated in the time of Moses was not an
Ammonite king, but chief of the Amorites. Israel had by conquest
obtained the district in dispute, and Ammon must give place.
The full account given of these messages sent by Jephthah shows a strong
desire on the part of the narrator to vindicate Israel from any charge
of unnecessary warfare. And it is very important that this should be
understood, for the inspiration of the historian is involved. We know of
nations that in sheer lust of conquest have attacked tribes whose land
they did not need, and we have read histories in which wars unprovoked
and cruel have been glorified. In after times the Hebrew kings brought
trouble and disaster on themselves by their ambition. It would have been
well if David and Solomon had followed a policy like Jephthah's rather
than attempted to rival Assyria and Egypt. We see an error rather than a
cause of boasting when David put garrisons in Syria of Damascus: strife
was thereby provoked which issued in many a sanguinary war. The Hebrews
should never have earned the character of an aggressive and ambitious
people that required to be kept in check by the kingdoms around. To this
nation, a worldly nation on the whole, was committed a spiritual
inheritance, a spiritual task. Is it asked why being worldly the Hebrews
ought to have fulfilled a spiritual calling? The answer is that their
best men understood and declared the Divine will, and they should have
listened to their best men. Their fatal mistake was, as Christ showed,
to deride their prophets, to crush and kill the messengers of God. And
many other nations likewise have missed their true vocation being
deluded by dreams of vast empire and earthly glory. To combat idolatry
was indeed the business of Israel and especially to drive back the
heathenism that would have overwhelmed its faith; and often this had to
be done with an earthly sword because liberty no less than faith was at
stake. But a policy of aggression was never the duty of this people.
The temperate messages of the Hebrew chief to the king of Ammon proved
to be of no avail: war alone was to settle the rival claims. And this
once clear Jephthah lost no time in preparing for battle. As one who
felt that without God no man can do anything, he sought assurance of
divine aid; and we have now to consider the vow which he made, ever
interesting on account of the moral problem it involves and the very
pathetic circumstances which accompanied its fulfilment.
The terms of the solemn engagement under which Jephthah came were
these:--"If Thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into mine
hand, then it shall be that whatsoever" (Septuagint and Vulgate,
"_whosoever_") "cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me when I
return in peace from the children of Ammon shall be the Lord's, and I
will offer it (otherwise, _him_) for a burnt offering." And here two
questions arise; the first, what he could have meant by the promise; the
second, whether we can justify him in making it. As to the first, the
explicit designation to God of whatever came forth of the doors of his
house points unmistakably to a human life as the devoted thing. It would
have been idle in an emergency like that in which Jephthah found
himself, with a hazardous conflict impending that was to decide the fate
of the eastern tribes at least, to anticipate the appearance of an
animal, bullock, goat or sheep, and promise that in sacrifice. The form
of words used in the vow cannot be held to refer to an animal. The chief
is thinking of some one who will express joy at his success and greet
him as a victor. In the fulness of his heart he leaps to a wild savage
mark of devotion. It is a crisis alike for him and for the people and
what can he do to secure the favour and help of Jehovah? Too ready from
his acquaintance with heathen sacrifices and ideas to believe that the
God of Israel will be pleased with the kind of offerings by which the
gods of Sidon and Aram were honoured, feeling himself as the chief of
the Hebrews bound to make some great and unusual sacrifice, he does not
promise that the captives taken in war shall be devoted to Jehovah, but
some one of his own people is to be the victim. The dedication shall be
all the more impressive that the life given up is one of which he
himself shall feel the loss. A conqueror returning from war would, in
ordinary circumstances, have loaded with gifts the first member of his
household who came forth to welcome him. Jephthah vows to give that very
person to God. The insufficient religious intelligence of the man, whose
life had been far removed from elevating influences, this once
perceived--and we cannot escape from the facts of the case--the vow is
parallel to others of which ancient history tells. Jephthah expects some
servant, some favourite slave to be the first. There is a touch of
barbaric grandeur and at the same time of Roman sternness in his vow. As
a chief he has the lives of all his household entirely at his disposal.
To sacrifice one will be hard, for he is a humane man; but he expects
that the offering will be all the more acceptable to the Most High. Such
are the ideas moral and religious from which his vow springs.
Now we should like to find more knowledge and a higher vision in a
leader of Israel. We would fain escape from the conclusion that a Hebrew
could be so ignorant of the divine character as Jephthah appears; and
moved by such feelings many have taken a very different view of the
matter. The Gileadite has, for example, been represented as fully aware
of the Mosaic regulations concerning sacrifice and the method for
redeeming the life of a firstborn child; that is to say he is supposed
to have made his vow under cover of the Levitical provision by which in
case his daughter should first meet him he would escape the necessity of
sacrificing her. The rule in question could not, however, be stretched
to a case like this. But, supposing it could, is it likely that a man
whose whole soul had gone out in a vow of life and death to God would
reserve such a door of escape? In that case the story would lose its
terror indeed, but also its power: human history would be the poorer by
one of the great tragic experiences wild and supernatural that show man
struggling with thoughts above himself.
What did the Gileadite know? What ought he to have known? We see in his
vow a fatalistic strain; he leaves it to chance or fate to determine who
shall meet him. There is also an assumption of the right to take into
his own hands the disposal of a human life; and this, though most
confidently claimed, was entirely a factitious right. It is one which
mankind has ceased to allow. Further the purpose of offering a human
being in sacrifice is unspeakably horrible to us. But how differently
these things must have appeared in the dim light which alone guided this
man of lawless life in his attempt to make sure of God and honour Him!
We have but to consider things that are done at the present day in the
name of religion, the lifelong "devotion" of young women in a nunnery,
for example, and all the ceremonies which accompany that outrage on the
divine order to see that centuries of Christianity have not yet put an
end to practices which under colour of piety are barbaric and revolting.
In the modern case a nun secluded from the world, dead to the world, is
considered to be an offering to God. The old conception of sacrifice was
that the life must pass out of the world by way of death in order to
become God's. Or again, when the priest describing the devotion of his
body says: "The essential, the sacerdotal purpose to which it should be
used is to die. Such death must be begun in chastity, continued in
mortification, consummated in that actual death which is the priest's
final oblation, his last sacrifice,"[6]--the same superstition appears
in a refined and mystical form.
[6] Henri Perreyve.
His vow made, the chief went forth to battle leaving in his home one
child only, a daughter beautiful, high-spirited, the joy of her father's
heart. She was a true Hebrew girl and all her thought was that he, her
sire, should deliver Israel. For this she longed and prayed. And it was
so. The enthusiasm of Jephthah's devotion to God was caught by his
troops and bore them on irresistibly. Marching from Mizpah in the land
of Bashan they crossed Manasseh, and south from Mizpeh of Gilead, which
was not far from the Jabbok, they found the Ammonites encamped. The
first battle practically decided the campaign. From Aroer to Minnith,
from the Jabbok to the springs of Arnon, the course of flight and
bloodshed extended, until the invaders were swept from the territory of
the tribes. Then came the triumphant return.