This week we
shall continue the study of the Book of
Judges of the Old Testament.
(1) In introducing us to the next two judges of Israel, the Bible makes no mention of their special deeds or spiritual leadership, except to state their names, origin and length of their leadership. What can you surmise as to the conditions of Israel given the facts that they still needed to be “saved” and that Jair’s sons were noted for their riding of 30 donkeys and not horses?
(2) Apparently, Tola and Jair were able to keep the Israelites from blatant rebellion against the Lord, but after their deaths, the sins of the people seemed to have compounded. How does v. 6 describe their compounded sins? How can one make sense of such a spiritual condition of God’s Chosen People?
(3) Did Israel not adopt the gods of the Philistines and Ammonites? Why then would the Philistines and Ammonites oppress the Israelites who now identified with their culture and religions? What lesson(s) can we learn from the failure of the Israelites?
(4) With no mention of a prophet, the exchange between the Israelites and the Lord must have taken place through the High Priest of the time. What was God’s initial reply to their cry?
(5) What happened that changed the mind of the Lord?
(6) Upon their repentance, was there any change one can detect in their approach to face the threat of their enemy?
(7) Pause and reflect on the main message to you today. How may you apply it to your life?
(1) In what way(s) did Jephthah resemble the fate of Ishmael? (Genesis 21:10ff)
(2) What does the choice of Jephthah as a “bastard” driven out by his half-brothers speak to anyone who might be born an “illegitimate” child?
(3) Why would the elders (likely the sons) of Gilead turn to Jephthah for help—the one they despised and drove away in the first place? What then can we surmise from the response to the call made in 11:9?
(4) What made Jephthah trust the words of the elders and what did he do to ensure that they would keep their word?
(5) What did Jephthah do before he resorted to an armed conflict with the Ammonites?
(6) What does this say about Jephthah as a leader of his people?
(7) What was the reply of the king of the Ammonites? If it was true, was his claim justified? Why or why not? (See Note below)
(8) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Note:
It is true that God had forbidden Israel to take the land from Edom, Moab or Ammon in battle because the first was Jacob’s brother, and the last two were the sons of Lot (Deut. 2:5, 9, 19). However, when they defeated the king of Sihon, the Amorite king, they took his land which was land that was taken from the Ammonites, and that part of the land had been allotted to the tribe of Gad by Joshua (Jos. 13:25).
(1) In explaining to the king of the Ammonites, Jephthah recounted the relevant events of Exodus “in exact agreement with the accounts of the Pentateuch respecting the matter in dispute” and in particular, “Vv. 19-22 are almost verbatim the same as Numbers 21:21-25” (Keil & Delitszch, 275-6). Given the spiritual condition of Israel during much of the period of Judges, can you explain how Jephthah had such an accurate knowledge of the Pentateuch and what does it speak to his own spiritual condition?
(2) Armed with this historical fact, what were the three reasons that Jephthah used to prove that the Ammonites were wrong in trying to retake the land in vv. 23-27?
(3) What do you think of the first reason he gave, saying that it was God who enabled them to drive out the Amorites (King Sihon) and gave them their land—as a result the Ammonites (who lost their land to Sihon a long time ago) did not have the right to take it over? (v. 23)
(4) What do you think of the second reason in that the king of Moab (Balak) only tried to bribe Balaam to curse Israel without laying claim to or fighting for the land which he had conquered previously from the Amorites (Numbers 22)?
(5) What do you think of the third reason in that the land was taken about 300 years ago? What do you think about this comment by Clericus, “if no prescriptive right is to be admitted, on account of length of time, and if long possession gives no title, nothing would ever be held in safety by any people, and there would be no end to wars and dissension”? (K&D, p.277)
(6) How then should we look upon the claim by Palestinians (the word “Palestine” derived from the word Philistia in Greek to denote all of Canaan, according to Jean-Pierre Isbouts, The Biblical World, p. 164) of the land occupied by Israel today?
(7) How did the king of Ammon respond to the words of Jephthah and why?
(8) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
(1) As the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord before he launched his campaign against the Ammonites.
a. In what way might his vow be pleasing to the Lord?
b. In what way might his vow be grieving to the Lord?
c. With the Spirit of the Lord having come upon him, did he really have to make a vow? Why or why not?
(2) The sacrifice of a person as a burnt offering is explicitly prohibited by the Lord (see Deut. 12:31), why then did Jephthah still entertain such a notion?
(3) As much as it was a great tragedy and the Lord certainly would not want Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter nor hold him to a vow that did not please Him, how did the honoring of his vow to the Lord signify the kind of person that Jephthah was?
(4) Did his daughter seek to dissuade his father? Why not?
(5) What lesson can you learn from the mistake of Jephthah?
(6) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
(1) The tragedy of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter was quickly overshadowed by a greater tragedy, the strife and division within the people of God.
a. What was the complaint by the men of Ephraim?
b. What do you think was the real reason behind the complaint? (Compare this complaint with their last complaint in chapter 8.)
c. How did threat of violence signify what kind of men they were and the real reason for their complaint?
(2) What did the reply by Jephthah reveal?
(3) Why couldn’t Jephthah resort to a similar reply to appease the Ephraimites this time?
(4) How many Ephraimites were killed in this battle? Were both sides not the people of God? Did they not both belong to the people of Israel? Apart from the complaint mentioned in v. 1, what else was mentioned almost as the cause of this conflict in vv. 4-6?
(5) In this “war of words”, why did the Gileadites feel so insulted? (See Note below)
(6) How did they repay the Ephraimites through their “accent”?
(7) What does this “war of words” highlight?
(8) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Note:
The putting down of the Gileadites as renegades, perhaps, had more to do with the past of Jephthah as a leader of a group of renegades (Jdg. 11:3) than any historical facts on which scholars could speculate. But such an insult was enough for the Gileadites to take to heart in striking down the Ephraimites.
(2) God seems to like raising His chosen servant from a couple who was barren. What might be the particular challenge for a once barren couple to yield their son to serve the Lord?
(3) In the choosing of Samson, his parents were to raise him as a Nazirite:
a. What is a Nazirite according to Numbers 6?
b. Why did this child have to be a Nazirite? And
c. How did this reflect the heart of the Lord toward the ones He chooses to be used by Him?
(4) If you were the wife of Manoah, how would you respond to such an encounter with the Angel of the Lord? Why didn’t she ask more of the Angel of the Lord?
(5) What was the response of Manoah upon hearing his wife’s story? How did he repeat his question to the Angel of the Lord when he appeared again? What does it reveal about Manoah?
(6) How did the Angel of the Lord answer him? What was the focus of His answer? Why?
(7) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?
Note:
The Philistines were rather different from the rest of the Canaanites in that they arrived from Greece and were fair-skinned. For more information, read the Meditative Article of Judges 11:14-28 (Year 2, Week39, Day 269).
(1) Why did the Angel of the Lord refuse Manoah’s meal of goat, but suggested that he should make a burnt offering instead?
(2) With his mind fixed on rewarding or thanking this Angel of the Lord as a person, Manoah asked what His name was. His reply was, in essence, that His name was “Wonderful”. What does this name remind you of? (See Isa. 9:6)
(3) What did the Angel of the Lord do with his offering?
(4) Having witnessed this miraculous sight, Manoah feared that he would die. Why?
(5) Did he die? Why not?
(6) How did Manoah’s wife interpret the event?
(7) Who is this Angel of the Lord?
(8) What is the main message to you today and how may you apply it to your life?