Fellowship Around the Table
Great conversations about life, faith, and the Bible from Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (www.fbctulsa.org).
Fellowship Around the Table
The Book of Judges: Jephthah and Tragic Vows w/ Eric Johnson (Part 6 of 9)
What if the cycle of sin and redemption could teach us profound lessons about compassion and leadership? Tune in to this week's Fellowship Around the Table as we explore the fascinating narratives of Judges chapters 10 and 11. We dive into Israel’s recurring cycle of sin, their cries for deliverance, and God’s initial refusal, which powerfully reminds us of the importance of genuine repentance. This section is a poignant reminder of divine compassion and the transformative power of turning away from unfaithfulness.
As we transition to chapter 11, we delve into the complex and compelling story of Jephthah. From his troubled beginnings to his rise as a leader summoned by the elders of Gilead, Jephthah's journey is fraught with tension and controversy. We analyze his negotiation skills, his conditional acceptance of leadership, and his infamous vow, leading to a powerful discussion on whether he sacrificed his daughter or dedicated her to lifelong service. With deep insights into the cultural context and the moral complexities of his actions, this episode offers thought-provoking reflections on leadership, faith, and the weight of our promises. Join us for a captivating session that will leave you pondering the depths of biblical leadership and divine mercy.
You are listening to Fellowship Around the Table. Welcome back to another week of Fellowship Around the Table, where we endeavor to have great conversations about life, faith and the Bible. This is week six in the Book of Judges, with Eric Johnson.
Speaker 2:Hi, glad to be back.
Speaker 1:We finished up chapter nine last week and rolling into chapter 10. Get us going. Yeah, get us going.
Speaker 2:Eric, yeah, last week we talked about kind of the mess that Abimelech made of his own family and his hometown and his life, shechem, shechem, and, if you'll remember correctly, a woman killed him.
Speaker 1:Let's say it together and a woman killed him. That's right.
Speaker 2:So, moving on from there, we have a couple of notes at the beginning of chapter 10 about a couple of the minor judges. I don't have a ton of interest to say about those guys. I do think it's interesting that we find out that Jair the Gileadite had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys. Yeah, what do you make of that? I just think it's interesting. They felt the need to specify the number of donkeys. They tried 25 donkeys and it didn't work, and they tried 37 donkeys and it was too complicated and so they just settled on 30.
Speaker 1:Seems to fit with 30 people. Yeah, I was like are donkeys rare? Is that like a sign of wealth?
Speaker 2:Could be that it could be. I've heard someone speculate that donkeys were like the thing you wrote on in peacetime, so maybe it's just that there was peace at the time. I don't know for sure. Yeah, I just enjoyed the little bit about the specifying the number. Yeah, it's not obvious how many donkeys they had, apparently without them saying it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we get into the rest of chapter 10 where we kind of start the cycle over again.
Speaker 2:So, starting in verse six, you have the people of Israel again. It was evil in the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines which is quite the selection this time and they forsook the Lord and did not serve him. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and the Ammonites and they crushed and oppressed the people of Israel. That year, for 18 years they oppressed all the people of Israel who were land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead, and the Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight also against Judah and Benjamin in the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was severely distressed. So we have kind of the beginning of the cycle again and it goes into a little more specifics about the actual sin, and you have multiple sources of oppression coming in this time, and so you remember what the next step in the cycle is.
Speaker 1:Well, so the people rebel, God is angry, there's oppression by enemies and the people cry out or repent, and then God raises up a judge or a deliverer.
Speaker 2:God raises up a judge and what's the step after that. So we can go through the whole thing before we get into the story.
Speaker 1:A time of peace.
Speaker 2:So God raises up a judge, they're delivered from their oppression and there's peace in the land, right. And then, generally, the next generation kicks the whole thing off again, right, alright. So we've gone through the first couple steps, which is sin and punishment. And so in verse 10, we pick up again and it says the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, saying we have sinned against you because we have forsaken our God and have served the Baals. And the Lord said to the people of Israel Did I not save you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites, from the Ammonites and the Philistines? The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites and the Manites oppressed you and you cried out to me and I saved you out of their hand. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore, I will save you no more. Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen. Save you in your time of distress.
Speaker 1:God said no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have the next step, which is Israel cries out to God for help and God says no, this, this is enough times. We've gone through this. What? Four or five times? At this point and they never, they never changed permanently it's, it keeps going into the same thing. And so God this time just says, no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let those gods you, you know you go after.
Speaker 2:You've gone after other gods. See if they'll help. Yeah, because I'm done. So I will have you take verses 15 and 16, and we'll see what we find in there.
Speaker 1:The sons of Israel said to the Lord we have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day. So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord, and he could bear the misery of Israel no longer.
Speaker 2:I like that phrasing yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's different translations of the phrase that differently, but I really liked the way that that one was put. So what do you see as the sequence of events here?
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting, Like at the point I remember with Gideon they weren't even trying to put away the foreign gods and the idols. And all that Exactly yeah, we saw with Gideon, like it said, israel had cried out for help to such and such that God had sent a prophet to talk to them about it. And yet, when God calls Gideon, there's still an altar to Baal in Gideon's backyard.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he goes to tear it down and the people in the town get all mad at him, right. And so here we see it again. We see, you know, israel cries out for help, god says no, and then Israel puts away their foreign gods.
Speaker 1:So they hadn't done it yet, right, they hadn't done it yet, but they do do it. And then it says they put them away and they served the Lord, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think it's telling. There's kind of an assumption that in that part of the cycle you have the sin and then the punishment and then the cry out for help. I think you can read that and assume that they turn from their sin and cry out for help, and I don't think that's true based on what we've seen in Gideon and in Jephthah.
Speaker 1:I think Right.
Speaker 2:And I suspect that it hasn't been true a lot of the time in the other stories.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It just says they cry out to God for help and then God sends someone to help them. They may not have turned from their sin when crying out for help Right In the other stories and they certainly hadn't here until after God said no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you can be sad about the consequences that sin have caused in your life and not repent of them. Not have a change of mind that you're going to put that away and turn right. I think all humans have experienced that on some level. There's a difference there, right, between just being sad about the consequences of sin and actually having repentance. That leads to change. That leads to a change of mind.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's a New Testament passage about that 2 Corinthians 7, 8 through 10. Let's look at that together here. Paul says for though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that the letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while. I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance, for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us, for the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely a difference there, and you see that in those stories where you have, sometimes they're just upset about what's happening to them. And sometimes they realize they're the cause of what's happening to them and turn around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you see that in your own life and people around you. You see people that are distraught because of the consequences of sin, but they aren't to the point of making a change Definitely yeah, all right, so we close out chapter 10.
Speaker 2:You have basically the men of Gilead, which is the territory on the east side of the Jordan River, which is two and a half tribes over there, and the people get together. The Ammonites are gathering up their army to attack again, and the people get together and say whoever starts fighting the Ammonites for us will be in charge. Basically, they're making just a decision that, as a reward for helping them out against the Ammonites, they're going to put whoever it is in charge of the group on that side of the Jordan.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So that segues nicely into chapter 11, where we get the introduction of our deliverer, starting in verse one. Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he would. He was the son of a prostitute, gilead was. So does Jephthah's origin story remind you of anyone?
Speaker 1:It does a little. I started to think about Abimelech.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite similar. I mean you have kind of the dispossessed son who's shipped off because he's not, you know, he's not the son of the wife, he's the son of the concubine, of the prostitutes, and he goes off and ends up kind of making his own way and surrounded by mercenaries, essentially. Yeah, I mean it even the polite way to put the worthless fellows who surround him, I think.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and you see the story several times in the Old Testament. I mean, it reminds me of Jacob and him having the children with the concubines, definitely. There's internal family tensions there that are kind of almost guaranteed to play out in that situation.
Speaker 2:So this guy's been kind of run off, run out of town by his own family. And then the Ammonites show up and start attacking and the elders of Gilead decide, hey, this guy who's got a bunch of mercenaries following him around might actually be useful all of a sudden. So, starting in verse 6, and they said to Jephthah Come and be our leader that we may fight against the Ammonites. But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, to Jephthah that is why we have turned to you now, that you may go with us and fight against the Ammonites and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead If you bring me home again to fight against the Ammonites and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head. And the elders of Gilead said so.
Speaker 2:Jephthah went to the elders of Gilead and the people made him head and leader over them and Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah. So I'll say upfront my thoughts on Jephthah. Like Jephthah is a challenging story for me, it's probably the one I have the least firm grasp on out of the stories of the major judges. For what it's worth. People can evaluate how strong my grasp was on any of the other ones as we go through this.
Speaker 2:Jeff thought I've kind of struggled with a lot because of what happens at the end of the story, yeah, and I think the best thing I've been able to come up with which I was not able to sell my class on a few years ago, but we'll see if it comes off better this time Okay Is kind of to contrast Jephthah with Barak back in the story of Deborah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, if you remember, we had Barak. Deborah summons him up and says hey, you're going to go deal with this problem. And Barak says well, I don't want to go on this. You go. And Deborah says, okay, I'll come along, but then you won't get the glory, it'll go to a woman, Right? And what happens after that?
Speaker 1:He seems to be okay with it. He faithfully does what he's called to do still.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had the moment of doubt. There were consequences of the moment of doubt. He accepts the consequences and he moves on and does the work anyway, and and does the work anyway. And you see, at the end of the story he happily gives the glory to JL for being responsible for the death of Sisera.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And here I think there's a little bit of contrast there, which is that the elders and this was not Jephthah's idea, right? So it's not like he came up with the idea that you have to put me in charge or else it's not going to happen. The elders of Gilead we saw at the end of chapter 10 had the idea originally that whoever helps us out will be put in charge. But Jephthah seizes on it. He's like okay, yes, this sounds good.
Speaker 1:Once it was offered, he was like oh yes that's what I want.
Speaker 2:I want to be in charge, make it official and the people are going to confirm it, not just the elders. And like he, he jumps on that opportunity. You can tell like he he definitely wants that.
Speaker 1:So I'm picturing him somebody with some leadership capability and qualities, surely, and he's kind of an outcast and he raises up a little gang or army and I mean they're formidable. I mean they, they nobody really challenges them. And I mean they're formidable, I mean they, they nobody really challenges them. And the elders look at and go you know what we could use them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like I'm here, let's do sold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's like I'm here, but he's also like, well, he, he kind of starts it off as what's in it for me, cause you guys kicked me out, like why would I help you out now, right, and then they give him something, they give him a reason to do that, and then he jumps on it. Okay, I think there is a contrast to the other judges who have been. It feels like he's kind of putting conditions on his help.
Speaker 1:Well, isn't there a contrast to, I know not, maybe with the judges that just have two or three sentences, but the longer ones, there seemed to be a very much clearer calling of God on that person, and you don't really get that background here.
Speaker 2:That's true and we'll we'll kind of see how that comes in later in the story. Okay, but it definitely is not in the initial exchange. Okay, it is the people this time deciding who they want to have as the leader, and it's not someone who's selected initially by God and recruited by God to to go do the work. So the next step from there we go through this whole diplomatic exchange between Jephthah and the king of the Ammonites where they go back and forth about why are you attacking us?
Speaker 1:And the Ammonites kind of give their excuse for attacking.
Speaker 2:Which is well, you stole our land 300 years ago. And Jephthah says, no, he didn't. We stole someone else's land. It was never yours to begin with. What are you talking about? And it's interesting. When I first went through this, I had thought Jephthah gets the story pretty much spot on, and then I read another commentator who indicated that he got it like. Jephthah got the story completely wrong.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so I went back and checked and he's not perfect the way Jephthah tells it. The Israelites, before they took their promised land, came up to the Edomites and said let us pass through your land, we won't bother you, we just want to pass through Right. And the Edomites said no, that part is correct. Yeah, that's in, I think, numbers 21. Yeah, and then Jephthah says they went to the Moabites and said the same thing. That part is wrong. They did not go to the Moabites. So he is wrong about that. And it does kind of cause a little geographical mishap in his telling of the story, because if they were coming from the Moabites they'd be coming from a different direction. They do have a confrontation with the Moabites later in Numbers, but it's not at that moment. But as far as I can tell, pretty much everything else Jeff Thaw says is correct.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So he makes us. I'm not sure how big of a mistake it is Like. For someone who lives in that area and knows where the Edomites and Moabites live, it might feel like a bigger mistake. For me, looking back on it 3,000 years later, it feels like a medium to small mistake.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So he's not flawless in his recollection, but it's pretty good and the rest of it is pretty well accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it's in the vicinity, it's directionally of what happened.
Speaker 2:I mean it's wrong about the Moabites, but they did ask to go through and the people said no, I mean that's yeah, and then the retelling of the rest of it, which is the conquest of the eastern part of the Israeli territory from Sihon and Og, is pretty well correct. And he's also correct that they left the Ammonites alone at the time and the Ammonites had different territory.
Speaker 1:Right and remind everybody when you look at the Edomites, the Moabites, ammonites this is distant family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Moabites and Ammonites are both descended from Lot. The Edomites are descended from Esau, right, that's why they were told to leave them alone.
Speaker 1:That's right, because they were family, that's.
Speaker 2:The Amorites and the Canaanites and all these other people were not related to them anywhere near as closely, and so they were fair game. But God told them to leave the closer family alone.
Speaker 1:God did tell them to leave them alone, and they did leave them alone, and you'll see later on through the minor prophets. The minor prophets bring forth God's judgment on those three families.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:For not helping Israel and their brother, definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so from there, I mean, jephthah sends this whole they have kind of an initial exchange between Jephthah and the Ammonites and Jephthah sends this whole long response that goes through like a three-part argument about why, no, israel is in fact entitled to this land, and the Ammonites just ignore it. Like it reads basically like they were just looking for an excuse and they came up with the first thing they could think of, which is these people whose name kind of sounds like us used to have this land and so it's really ours.
Speaker 1:Basically, but isn't that interesting that that's literally what is happening in our time today?
Speaker 2:Oh, of course.
Speaker 1:Israelites are arguing about the land and there's people in the land saying that's not your land.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, it's not unique to Israel either. It happens a lot in Israel, but it also happens other places, like it's the same thing with Russia and Ukraine, where it's like well this is really our land. No, it's really our land. We're an independent country. No, it's really our land historically. So we're just going to come take it.
Speaker 1:But you're right, it does happen in multiple places and, frankly, it's complicated, and even in the US and arguing about borders and land and who has what, and when for sure.
Speaker 2:So from there we go into verse 29, where we start to have the actual military conflict. And so in verse 29 it says the spirit of the Lord was upon Jephthah.
Speaker 1:So we do have God's endorsement of him at this point, okay.
Speaker 2:And he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord's and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them and the Lord gave them into his hand and of Mineth, 20 cities and as far as Abel Karamin, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. I probably should have just left that out and said and then he won.
Speaker 2:So I wouldn't have had to say so many weird names, or I should have asked you to read that part, please. No, so we have the spirit of the Lord. Comes on Jephthah. We have him making this vow, and then he wins. He wins very decisively, so much so that, like the writer doesn't recap the battle at all, it's just they win the whole lot and they completely subdued the Ammonites.
Speaker 1:So if you'll pick us up in verse 34, when Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing. Now, she was his one and only child. Besides her, he had no son or daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low and you are among those who trouble me, for I have given my word to the Lord and I cannot take it back.
Speaker 1:So she said to him my father, you have given your word to the Lord, do to me as you have said, since the Lord has avenged you of your enemies and the sons of Ammon. And she said to her father Let this thing be done for me, let me alone two months, that I may go to the mountains and weep because of my virginity, I and my companions. Then he said to her Go. So he sent her away for two months and she left with her companions and wept on the mountains because of her virginity. And at the end of the two months she returned to her father, who did to her according to the vow which he had made and she had no relations with the man. Thus it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went yearly to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in the year.
Speaker 2:That's pretty rough.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I'm understanding it there. Honestly, I know.
Speaker 1:These vows tragic vows I'm thinking of Saul, yeah Thinking of really just silly rash vows that were just not necessary.
Speaker 2:Definitely. So there's a couple things to kind of talk about here, okay. So there's a couple things to kind of talk about here, okay. There is some level of disagreement among commentators about whether he actually offers her as a burnt offering or not.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:What's your take on that? I'm curious.
Speaker 1:I find it curious that the text leaves it kind of ambiguous, and so I don't. When the text is ambiguous, I tend to not have a strong conviction, and that's probably where I stand, but I'm trying to make sense of they. It became a custom and then it became like an annual tradition to commemorate her.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah it's. The phrasing is is kind of odd. So I mean, if you go back to the law, there are specific things that you're not supposed to do. One of them, obviously, is child sacrifice. That's very strongly forbidden in multiple passages.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And kind of going back to the commentator who thought that Jephthah got the story entirely wrong. In terms of his history he also took that as evidence that Jephthah didn't know the law very well and therefore he might not have been aware that child sacrifice was not allowed.
Speaker 1:It's not surprising.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean given the context in which he grew up. But at the same time I think he got the history mostly correct. That's a good point and so I feel like he probably knew the law well enough to have caught at least one of the passages where it says don't sacrifice your children.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there are also provisions in the law about giving people into God's service versus giving animals or other things into God's service. If it's an animal, you sacrifice it. If it's a person, they just, you know, work for the Levites for a while, or something along those lines.
Speaker 1:So can we go back to the vow he makes? When he makes that vow, is he make it in the context, like I'm going to be offering up the first animal we see as the burnt offering?
Speaker 2:I have to think that's what he expects. He wouldn't have thought that, because when his daughter comes out he's distraught, he's instantly miserable after winning this great victory Right. The Bible Project video on Judges has a little section on Jephthah, of course, because it goes through the whole book Sure, and it treats Jephthah as like this kind of person who's basically indistinguishable from a Canaanite who just gleefully offers his own daughter as a sacrifice. And that's clearly not what happens here, he's extremely upset.
Speaker 2:He does not want to do that at all. His daughter has to kind of talk him into it, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think about her.
Speaker 2:She's like.
Speaker 1:It's hard to wrap your mind around this story.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, Jephthah's clearly just completely floored and horrified by seeing his daughter as the first thing that comes back, so I have to think he's expecting something else to happen there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whether it's an animal or.
Speaker 1:But it says whoever comes out of the doors to my house to meet me. I mean that's actually says whatever.
Speaker 2:So it could be, could be an animal.
Speaker 1:Yeah Again. And he uses burn offering Cause like going back to that, he just basically not going to have an heir and end his line and she's going to be a permanent virgin and just offer it up to the Lord of service. But he says burnt offering.
Speaker 2:Right. So if he had left it as whatever comes out, I will offer you know she'll be the Lord's yeah, then he'd be fine. He can give her into God's service, like the law allows, yeah, but that's not what he says. He says that and I will offer it up as a burnt offering. And so the other kind of point of contention there is the, the focus on the fact that she remained a virgin, which is kind of an odd thing to focus on if she's going to be offered as a sacrifice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of the other thing that people seize on there, which is that maybe she just didn't get married and she just lived in God's service the whole time. I'm kind of with you ultimately, in that I'm not a hundred percent confident one way or the other, but I do lean toward the interpretation that, yes, he probably did actually offer her as a sacrifice? Yeah, I know, but I don't know. I hope he didn't, but I'd lean toward saying that he probably he probably did end up putting himself in that position?
Speaker 1:Why?
Speaker 2:Why? But even in the favorable interpretation, like where he doesn't do it and she's just in God's service forever, she's still his only child. He still has no grandchildren, which was still a huge deal culturally Huge deal, yeah. So coming off of that, in which Jephthah has gone from this enormous peak and high point in his life to an enormous low point in his life, the Ephraimites come back and start making trouble again.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we've seen them a few times.
Speaker 2:They were the people that Ehud summoned to go fight the Moabites. And then, once Gideon had thrown the Midianites into panic, the Ephraimites showed up and started yelling at him for not inviting them to come along. And Gideon kind of plays, plays it diplomatic and smooth things over with him. Jeff, that was not in the mood, which is completely understandable, like he's just had to go through this whole miserable experience. And then the Ephraimites are like, oh, how come you didn't come ask us to fight? Like what's wrong with you? We're going to come bother you about this. And Jeff says what's wrong with you? We're going to come bother you about this.
Speaker 2:And Jephthah says forget you guys. Hey, I did come ask you to fight and you didn't show up. We don't actually know the truth of that. It could be they were invited. It could be they weren't, but Jephthah's just not in the mood for any nonsense right now. And so they go and attack the Ephraimites, the men of Gilead go attack their own people, people, basically. And so we go through this whole bit where they identify the Ephraimites by apparently a tribe-wide speech impediment and then they kill over 40,000 Ephraimites. And so what was the last step in the cycle?
Speaker 1:again, that there's peace in the land.
Speaker 2:There's peace in the land, if you read 12, verse 7.
Speaker 1:Jephthah judged Israel. Six years Then Jephthah the Giladite died and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.
Speaker 2:Is there anything missing from there?
Speaker 1:Peace.
Speaker 2:There's no peace in the land. Wow, and you can tell there's not because we just talked about having a civil war.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:So that part of the cycle is gone. It's gone.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:So, going back to kind of the beginning of the story, what did Jephthah want out of all of this?
Speaker 1:Power, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he wanted to be in charge of the Gileadites. Did he get to be in charge of the Gileadites? He did. How long did it stick?
Speaker 1:Six years.
Speaker 2:Six years that's less than a two-term presidency, and the cost of that, ultimately, was his family, his legacy, wow. So he got what he asked for. It did not end up actually being what he wanted.
Speaker 1:Well put. Wow, man, it's tragic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a happy story.
Speaker 1:No, Going back. I mean, we know the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare tragedies, but, man, this is some really OG content. Yeah, oh yeah. This predates all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah. This predates all of that, and it does. It's a tragedy to match any of them. Oh wow, all right, so we get at the end of chapter 12, a few more notes on minor judges. We have Ibsen of Bethlehem who has 30 sons and 30 daughters and marries all outside the clan. I assume that's mentioned because it's maybe unusual. I think marriages within the clan were probably more common.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and Bethlehem, I mean that's significant. It's a small city but it's going to be a major player here in the next generation.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Yeah, and then we have Elon the Zebulonite and we have Abdon the Parathanite, who has 40 sons and 30 grandsons, which is an odd combination of numbers. You'd think if you have 40 sons you'd have more than 30 grandsons. I mean, they rode on 70 donkeys, so they managed to get the numbers to match up again there.
Speaker 2:Still don't understand the donkey and then kind of the interesting thing there is between Jephthah and the other three guys, I believe you get a total of 31 years for their combined tenure. If you go back to the beginning of chapter 10, you have two judges and they last a total of 45 years. So they're kind of getting shorter. It's becoming more and more unstable as you go along.
Speaker 1:Right, do you think too, this is maybe happening around the same time as, like Jephthah's stuff, but that was in the north, and now we're talking about tribes in the south.
Speaker 2:It's possible. Oh, I think Zebulun is is up north.
Speaker 1:No, that's right, Zebulun is. I'm thinking of Bethlehem and Judah, but yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I don't actually know what a Parathanite is. That could be anywhere, for all I know.
Speaker 1:I don't either, but it just hits on the fact that we're still regional, tribal.
Speaker 2:It's not a United nation yet, definitely, and you know, almost everyone you run into in the book is identified with their tribe. So it's this person was from the tribe of, you know, Ephraim, or from Zebulun, or from Naftali or what have you. And so it. It definitely is not a United nation really in any sense of the word. And of course we just saw a civil war at the end of Jeff's story.
Speaker 1:Any other final thoughts this week?
Speaker 2:Nothing comes immediately to mind.
Speaker 1:All right, great stuff. What do we have on tap next week, eric?
Speaker 2:Next week we're going to jump ahead in the book again a little bit, but I think back in time We'll kind of talk about the timing of the next part.
Speaker 1:But we're going to jump to the second of the two crazy stories that is told at the end of the book as kind of a general piece of context for how things are going in Israel around this time. Okay, I'm looking forward to it. See you all next week.
