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Dr. Ted Hildebrandt, OT History, Lit., and Theology, Lecture 21
© 2012, Dr. Ted Hildebrandt
This is Dr. Ted Hildebrandt in his Old Testament History, Literature, and Theology course. Lecture #21: finishing up the book of Judges with Samson, the tale of the two Levites, and then the book of Ruth.
Abimelech
Alright, let’s talk about the book of Judges. What we were talking last time was about Gideon fighting Midian, Gideon defeating the Midianites with the sword of the Lord, Gideon throwing down their Molotov cocktail lamps and catching things on fire, blowing the trumpets and winning the victory against the Midianites. What happened after Gideon’s big victory is that Gideon has a son and the son’s name is Abimelech. Now the name is really important. His name is Abi-melech. Ab means what in Hebrew? Abba: father. So Abi is “my father.” Melech means “king.” “My father is king.” Who is his father? His father was Gideon. Was his father king? No, he wasn’t. Are there any kings in Israel in the time of Judges? No. So is this name really kind of an interesting name? It clashes with the book, my father is king but he wasn’t king. But his name is Abimelech, nevertheless.
Jotham’s Fable
Now what happens is Abimelech takes over. He’s the older brother. What he does to all of his other siblings is he kills them all off. There’s I don’t know, thirty, forty, fifty, there is a ton of them. He kills off his brothers and sisters. What happens is Jotham, one of the youngest guys hides and gets away. Jotham then goes up on a hillside and he’s going to tell a fable to his brother and this is basically in chapter 9 of the book of Judges. He’s going to tell this fable. I’ll just narrate and give kind of a summary of the parable. But basically he goes up and he tells this story. “The trees of the forest went out to make themselves a king.” By the way, what is a fable? Are there fables in the Bible? What’s a fable? Usually a fable is like an animal talking, or a tree talking. Well, here the trees of the forest go out to anoint themselves a king. “And so they go to the olive tree and they say to the olive tree: olive tree would you be our king? You give us olive oil and all these wonderful things that we eat. Olives that we can put them on a pizza. And we would just love to have an olive tree for our king. And the olive tree says, I can’t be your king. If I am your king, there’s no olives and that’s no good.
So they go to the vine. And they say, hey, vine would you be our king? You can party all the time now when a vine is our king. There will be wine for everybody. The vine says, I can’t be your king because if I am your king, I can’t produce the grapes to grow that makes everybody, the heart of man happy.
So, finally they go to the bramble bush. Have you guys ever been in Texas? A bramble bush is a bush that there’s no leaves on. All it is thorns and thistles. It slices your legs up when you try to walk through them. They’re usually about knee high. They’re low very thorny bushes, with almost no leaves. They’re just these thorns and thistles. So what happens is they come to the thorn bush and they say: thorn bush would you be our king? And the thorn bush says, I will be your king. Come hide in my shadow.
Now why is this so ironic? The thorn bush doesn’t have any shadow. The thorn bush is good for what? It is good for nothing. Yet it claims it’s going to be the king. What is Jotham trying to say about Abimelech through this story? Is Abimelech least likely to be the king? And yet he’s pretending like he’s the big king, but he’s really the least likely. The olive tree is gone. The vine is gone. And here is this bramble bush, now this thorn bush is trying to become king.
So this is a fable. This is a fable that Jotham tells. It’s a fable that’s recorded in the Bible. So if you want to get people mad say: well there are fables in the Bible. And people will get all bent out of shape because a lot of people think the Bible is a fable rather than history. But there are fables in the Bible. This one is told by Jotham, about the trees making this bush their king.
By the way, is this sarcastic fable meant to put down his older brother? And so that’s what this fable is there for. The thorn bush, is a satire on power. I think we’ve said this before, money, sex, and power. We talked about this last time. Power is the one that gets Abilmelech. He kills his own brothers. So that he can have power and be the next ruler. Often times you see that kind of thing. So sad. This is a sad story.
This is the end of Gideon. Do you see how Gideon was really a good person? But do you see after Gideon leaves, his sons they go onto this warfare in their family and just destroys his family. So Gideon’s clan goes down.
Now, the first kingship attempt is Abimelech. Some people associate this with the first kingship attempt. A failed attempt at kingship is found here in the book of Judges. In the book of Judges there is what? “There is no king in Israel, and everyone does that which is right in their own eyes.” Right? And so Abimelech makes a run at the first attempt at that kind of petty kingship in the book of Judges. It was failed attempt, however.
Jephthah
What about this fellow Jephthah? He is famous for basically one thing. He’s a Gileadite. He didn’t really fit into society real well. So basically he was driven out because he was not accepted. His mother, there was some illegitimacy there. What happens? Does God ever say the exact opposite of what he means? And chapter 10 verse 14, God says this: “But you have forsaken me.” He’s talking to the people of Israel. “He says you have forsaken me and served other gods. So I will no longer save you.” God’s role as the rescuer. “I will no longer save you.” And then God says this: “Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble.” Is God commanding his people to idolatry here? He says, “Go to the gods you’ve made and cry out to them!” Is God commanding idolatry, here? Is this sarcasm? Is God being sarcastic? He says: “I’m no longer going to save you because you guys are worshiping these idols. Okay, go to the idols, let them save you.” That’s sarcastic. He’s wanting to tell them “get rid of their idols and come back to Him.” But he uses sarcasm here, saying the exact opposite of what he meant. Is there sarcasm in the Bible? Actually does God get sarcastic? Yes, he does, okay. So you got to be real careful with sarcasm.
A lot of times I use sarcasm. Can sarcasm be very detrimental? I’ll never forget my daughter when she was in sixth grade. She came back to me ten to fifteen years later and she said, I remember when you said and quoted some crazy thing that I had said, but I was being sarcastic. She didn’t get the fact that it was sarcastic. She thought that that was what I actually held. So what I’m saying is be careful with sarcasm because sarcasm can do damage on people who don’t understand. But God uses it here. So there’s a place for sarcasm. There’s a place not for sarcasm sounds like Ecclesiastes or something.
So context determines meaning. It is clear here that God did not mean for them to be idolaters. By the way, this is the point. God is using sarcasm to do what? What is the function of the sarcasm? Does the sarcasm function to rebuke them? So he’s using sarcasm to rebuke them. You have got to pick that up from the context then.
Now, what happens? Jephthah goes out. He says, “Okay, I’ll fight for you guys. I will lead you. I’ll be the judge.” God makes him a judge. And then it says this: “The Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah.” This is chapter 11:2. “He crossed over Gilead. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord.” And this is the vow this is what Jephthah is most famous for: his vow. “Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: if you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” He goes out to battle against the Ammonites. The Ammonites are over here in Jordan. And what happens? He comes home. Who comes out to meet him when he comes home? His daughter comes out to meet him when he comes home.
So now this raises a question about vows. You have to be careful about taking vows before God. Ecclesiastes says some interesting things on this. Let me just read this. Ecclesiastes 5. There is great wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes, by the way. It says this: “Guard you steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” Jump down to verse four, “When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.” What does he say? “When you go into the house of God let your words be few.” I worry about sometimes about some of these youth rallies they had when I was younger. People would get up there and say, “do you commit yourself to reading three chapters of Scripture every day. How many of you will do that? Everyone stand up.” And they make a vow to read and things like that. What I’m saying is be very careful about doing that. God does not delight in fools. Just be careful about making vows before God.
Jephthah makes this vow, “whatever comes out the door of my house.” Now the question comes up, then, does Jephthah burn his daughter up? Does he burn her as a sacrifice? Let me just say this: Probably 80-90% of Old Testament scholars say that Jephthah burned his daughter up. Now what should that do? I’m going to tell you that I don’t think he burned her. But what should that put in the back of your mind? Hildebrandt’s the professor of this class, he’s got it right. No, no. Hildebrandt is most possibly wrong on this. But does he still think it’s right? What I’m saying is I know that most of my friends who are Old Testament scholars would disagree with me on this point. But let me tell you why I think that Jephthah did not burn his daughter up. I think he didn’t. It is a minority position. So what I’m trying to say is, do I have to admit that I can be wrong sometimes? Yes. And I may be wrong here. I just want to warn you that this is a minority position. He may have burned her up.
But here are the reasons why I think he didn’t. So first of all when she is told when Jephthah returned to his house and Mizpah who should come out to meet him but his daughter is dancing to the sound of tambourines. Her father’s come home from the war. It’s like a military guy coming back from Afghanistan. His kids come to welcome daddy home. Then it says, “She was his only child.” Why does it bring up that she was his only child? Just notice that “she was his only child. Except for her, he had neither son nor daughter.” So it makes it really, really explicit. “‘My father,’ she replied, ‘You have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised. Now the Lord has avenged on your enemies.’” She says, “Okay, I’m in with this too, father.” She says, “Give me two months.” She has one request from her dad. “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends.” Why? Because I’m going to be burned up. No. “Let me go two months to roam the hills to weep with my friends, because I will never marry.” Now, if you were getting burned up as a sacrifice on an altar would you be worried about the fact that you never married? Or would marriage kind of take a second place. If you’re going to burned with fire, isn’t that a little more important than being married? But notice here she says: “because I may never marry. You may go. And she went two months in the hills.” She and the girls grieve out on the hills. And why? Because she will never marry. “In two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed.” What is the next line: “and she was a virgin.” And you say: wait a minute, he just burned her up. Who gives a rip at that point if she’s a virgin or not? This guy just smoked his daughter up in the sacrificial fire. Why would it mention, “and she was a virgin”? Do virgins burn hotter? What’s the deal? I’m sorry. If he just burned her up, why would you mention right after you burned her up that she’s a virgin?
If something else happened, however, is it possible that what he says that he would offer up whatever came out the door of his house that there are two ways of taking this? Is it possible to read it like this? The Hebrew word for “and” can also be translated “or.” Is there a difference between “and,” and “or”? What if you take it this way? “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s or I will offer it as a sacrifice.” Now, the NIV says “will be the Lord’s and I will offer it as a sacrifice.” Is that different than saying “I will dedicate it to the Lord or I will offer it as a sacrifice”? That allows him to dedicate his daughter to the Lord.
By the way, is it important then that she’s a virgin, that she never married, that she’s dedicated to the Lord? What does that mean? Will she have any children? She will never have any children. That means that Jephthah will have what descendants? She is his only daughter. By the way, in the ancient world was it a big thing to have no descendants? Did your line end at that point? And that’s why she’s weeping, he’s weeping because his line is over. She is his last shot at having descendants and now it’s cut off. She’s dedicated to the Lord. She will never marry; she’s a virgin; she will have no children. Does that make sense? I think this is what happened. He dedicated her to the Lord.
By the way, if you go over to Numbers 8, and Dr. Hugenburger at Park St. Church, pointed this out, I think it was a brilliant observation. I never noticed it in the past. That’s why I love going to his church. Every time I go to his church I learned something new. He pulled this thing out of Numbers 8:11, check this out. Numbers 8:11, it says, “Aaron is to present the Levites before the Lord as a wave offering.” The Levites are to be presented as a wave offering. Does that mean that he kills all the Levites and waves them before the Lord as a sacrifice? No, it means he dedicates them to the Lord as a sacrifice.