By the Spirit, we can hear Scripture in the light of Jesus, even the stories we’d rather skip. Here’s an example.
[Jephthah’s daughter] said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” Judges 11:36 NRSVUE
Jephthah emerged from a bad family situation to become a military leader. When the Ammonites attacked, he was recruited to fight back, and he vowed to the LORD: if given victory, Jephthah would dedicate to the Lord whatever came out of his house to meet him.
I am sure Jephthah was expecting livestock — a goat or a sheep. Instead, his only daughter, the joy of his life — ran out to greet him. Though he was lost in grief, he felt bound to keep his vow. “Dedicating to the LORD,” in Jephthah’s world, meant death and fire, so he sacrificed her.
Every time I read this story, I feel grief as if it were my own child. I also feel anger — anger that any father could believe God required Jephthah to keep this promise.
Some Bible stories are there to describe what we shouldn’t do. Indeed, some stories show us, to paraphrase Rowan Williams, how things can go so terribly wrong when we terribly misunderstand what God wants.
We understand God rightly by dwelling on the image he has given us in Jesus. We become like what we imagine, and some of our ideas about God come right out of our wrong imagination.
Prayer
May we receive the love of our heavenly Father as Jesus carries us into his presence. May we come to trust the Father as Jesus does. May the Spirit transform our regret and our grief into divine joy.
Matt Royal, Church Plant Team Member
Durham, NC, US
