Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: For those who are still interested, Judges 11-12. Jephthah and his daughter....

Chs. 11-12 tell the story of Jephthah. Like previous stories in Judges, it is rich with irony.

The Israelites had been unable (or perhaps just unconcerned) to ‘drive out’ the Canaanites from their land, which they had been repeatedly exhorted to do,...

...yet they were more than able to ‘drive out’ their brother Jephthah from Gilead (11.1-2), which they had *not* been told to do at all.

(Note: In what follows, I will employ the terms ‘Israelites’ and ‘Gileadites’ interchangeably; Judges’ individual episodes are microcosms of a bigger picture.)

The main reason why the Israelites expelled Jephthah was in order to exclude him from their inheritance,...

...yet the Israelites would later be forced to appoint Jephthah as their ‘head’ (in order to hire his services), which would presumably entitle him to the lion’s share of their inheritance.

A further reason why the Israelites expelled Jephthah (they claimed) was because he was the son of ‘a strange woman’ (אִשָּׁה אַחֶרֶת), yet the Israelites had not too long ago been happy to accommodate a number of ‘strange gods’ (אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים per 10.13) in Israel.

As a result, the Israelites would need to turn to ‘the son of a harlot’ in order to deliver them from the very gods with whom they had ‘played the harlot’ (8.33 w. 2.17).

The Israelites are not the only party to behave in an ironic manner in chs. 10-12. Jephthah’s whole character and story are laced with similar ironies and inconsistencies.

On the one hand, Jephthah seems to be a careful individual. He spoke persuasively to the king of Ammon, and wanted his words to be remembered ‘before YHWH’ in case the Israelites tried to take their promise back (11.10-11).

Yet Jephthah would later give voice to words which he would be desperate to take back. (The problem was caused by a particular combination of what came forth from (לצאת + מ) his mouth and what came forth from (לצאת + מ) the doors of his house: 11.31, 34, 36.)

His words--like those of the Ephraimites who said ‘Sibboleth’ instead of ‘Shibboleth’--would mean the difference between life and death (to be discussed later).

#SibilantsMatter

Jephthah’s vow therefore brought about the opposite of its intended effect. It was intended to secure his future in Gilead (by means of his victory over Ammon), but his vow actually put an end to his future in Gilead insofar as it left him without an heir.

As such, Jephthah’s vow robbed him of victory. What should have been a time of celebration for him became a time of lamentation, which is symptomatic of the later judges’ reigns more generally.

Even the judges’ victories came at a cost, and were invariably tinged with defeat and sorrow.

Samson was hindered by what he allowed to enter into his eyes (14.3, 7), and his victory hence came at the cost of his life; meanwhile, Jephthah was hindered by what came out of his mouth, and his victory hence came at the cost of his daughter,...

...which may be hinted at in Jephthah’s name. The primary sense of ‘Jephthah’ (יפתח) is most likely ‘(YHWH) has opened the (womb)’ (possibly from Amor. PN /Ipteḫ/, since the Heb. for ‘to open the womb’ involves the root פטר rather than פתח),...

...but other things are also ‘opened’ in ch. 11--namely, the doors of his house and his mouth--, which together make up the root of Jephthah’s problem.

A linguistic aside: The text of 11.35 involves a certain amount of wordplay. Initially Jephthah ‘tears’ (קרע) his clothes, the verbal root of which (קרע) is exchanged for the homonym כרע when Jephthah says ‘You have brought me low (כרע)’,...

...which is then rearranged when Jephthah refers to his daughters as one who troubles (עכר) him.

The text also employs an inf. abs. coupled with an additional form of the same verb (הַכְרֵעַ הִכְרַעְתִּנִי), which strikes me as very common in the *speech* reported in Judges. In total, I have noted 20 similar constructions in Judges (tho may have missed/mis-parsed some),...

...only 4 of which are not part of quoted speech (1.28, 7.19 x 2, 14.9), and the last of these 4 is strictly part of a different construction anyway, though I am not quite sure what to call it.

(וַיֵּלֶךְ הָלוֹךְ וְאָכֹל = ‘he ate as he went’, which is parallel to such constructions as הָלְכוּ הָלֹךְ וְגָעוֹ = ‘they mooed as they went’: 1 Sam. 6.12.)

A gematrial aside (of which I am far from convinced): 11.34 constitutes a pivotal moment in our text. Jephthah’s daughter is said to go out to meet Jephthah ‘with tambourines and dances’ (בתפים ובמחלות), which precisely mirrors the phrase employed in Exod. 15,

...where Miriam goes out to meet Moses בתפים ובמחלת = ‘with tambourines and dances’. (The only difference is an absent /vav/, which may be significant, as we will see.)

As such, 11.34 *should* describe a moment of victory, but it does not. It instead describes a moment of death (because of Jephtah’s vow), which is subtly hinted at the words בתפים ובמחלות.

The word בתפים has the gematrial value 532, which is also the value of the fatal word spoken by Jephthah in 11.31, viz. וְהַעֲלִיתִהוּ = ‘and I will offer it up’ (in sacrifice).

Meanwhile, ובמחלות has the value 492, which is the value of the fatal word spoken by the Ephraimites, viz. סבלת (‘Sibboleth’).

As such, the text of 11.34 hints at the awful consequences of what seems to be a simple celebration of ‘tambourines and dances’.

#IAmNotSureWhatToMakeOfThis

12.1. The events of ch. 12 seem to represent a decline in Jephthah’s skills and/or temperament. The Ephraimites confront him in a distinctly Abi-Melech-esque manner. (They threaten to burn his house down around him: 9.46-49.)

But, while Gideon turned aside the Ephraimites’ wrath with ‘a soft reply’ (8. cp. 8.1-3 Prov. 15.1), Jephthah fights fire with fire; to be more precise, he bluntly exposes the Ephraimites’ dishonesty and musters his troops in readiness to fight them.

(Are we to see these events as a further echo of Jotham’s parable: “Let fire come out from Abi-Melech and devour the men of Shechem,...and let fire come out from the men of Shechem...and devour Abi-Melech”?)

At any rate, Jephthah’s actions strike me as a retrograde step. When Jephthah was confronted by the Ammonites, he spoke to them with tact and sought to avoid war, yet now, confronted by the Ephraimites, he seems quite happy to go to war.

Perhaps the experiences of ch. 11 have left Jephthah resentful. Or perhaps the events of ch. 12 represent a deterioration in his way with words in the aftermath of his rashly-made vow. Either way, 42,000 lives are lost.

Ch. 12 closes with a list of judges, the names of whom may hint at the decline which is now in play (cp. previous).

For instance, ‘Ibzan’ (אבצן) may mean ‘tin’ (from Aram. אמץ), which, in comparison to Sisera’s ‘iron chariots’ is suggestive of softness and luxury (though I am not at all confidence of אבצן = ‘tin’).

Meanwhile, ‘Abdon’ (עבדון) may be connected with the notion of ‘servitude’ (from עבד = ‘to serve’), and Samson’s name (שמשון) could be rendered in a similar way (from שמש = ‘to serve’).

As noted before: Ibzan fetches thirty foreign wives for his thirty sons, which our chiasmus connects with Jair’s thirty sons, cities, and donkeys. As such, it poses an important question, with which we will do well to test our souls:

What do we really desire most in life: a good city, a good donkey, or a good wife?

(How do I delete a tweet in a chain without the rest also disappearing?)

#WhoSaysAChiasmusIsntAbleToIlluminate

Anyway, a possible moral of the story: Words are important. Tact can save an army from death, and a lack of tact can condemn thousands to death. People cam sometimes remember what we say to them for years or decades, for better or for worse.

Let us therefore choose our words carefully.

“For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.”

“The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!”