Sermons Topics Themes Library
And when Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no son or daughter besides her.
Sermons
Jephthah's Vow | A.F. Muir | Judges 11:30, 31, 34-40 |
Jephthah's Vow | W.F. Adeney | Judges 11:30-40 |
A Sacrifice of the World to High Principle | M. Nicholson, D. D. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Did with Her According to His Vow | Marcus Dods, D. D. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Jephthah's Payment of His Vow | M. Nicholson, D. D. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Modern Jephthahs; Or, Parental Immolations | Homilist | Judges 11:34-40 |
No Trifling with God | Spurgeon, Charles Haddon | Judges 11:34-40 |
Retreat Impossible | Spurgeon, Charles Haddon | Judges 11:34-40 |
The Vow Performed | R. A. Watson, M. A. | Judges 11:34-40 |
The Wail of Jephthah's Daughter | Marcus Dods, D. D. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Typical Aspect of Jephthah's Vow | Arthur Ritchie. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Vows Which Should not be Kept | Marcus Dods, D. D. | Judges 11:34-40 |
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
Jephthah's Vow
Judges 11:30, 31, 34-40
A.F. Muir
What it involved has been much disputed. But the wording of the vow certainly admits of an interpretation consistent with the highest humanity. The object is expressed neutrally, as being more comprehensive; but there is a distinction introduced into the consequent member of the sentence which shows that regard is had to a dual possibility, viz., of the object being either personal or otherwise. If the former, he or she was to be "Jehovah's," an expression unnecessary if it was to be made a burnt offering, and which could only mean "dedicated to perpetual virginity or priesthood." If the latter, he would "offer it for a burnt offering." It bears out this that his daughter asks for two months "to bewail her virginity." The inference is imperative. It was not death, but perpetual virginity, to which she was devoted. In this vow we observe -
I. THE SPIRIT OF CONSECRATION IT EVINCED. Its meaning was evident. Jehovah was the true Judge and Deliverer of Israel. His, therefore, should be the glory when Israel returned in victory. There was to be no diverting of honour from him to Jephthah. A sacrifice, therefore, should be made before all men to acknowledge this. But as Jephthah is the person most in danger of being tempted to forget God's claim, he himself gives anticipatively of his own, and of his own, especially, which might be considered as specially for his honour. It was a "blank form" to be filled up by Providence as it would.
II. THE UNEXPECTED FORM THE SACRIFICE ASSUMED. How it astonishes men when God takes them at their word! Not that they do not mean what they say, but they do not realise all it implies. God ever does this that he may educate the heart in loving sacrifice, and reveal the grandeur and absoluteness of his own claim upon us.
III. THE GRACE THAT INVESTED IT from -
1. The mutual love of parent and child. They both sorrow because she is an only child, and they are all in all to one another. It was a keen, real sacrifice.
2. The unquestioning and cheerful obedience of the child. Like Isaac and Christ.
3. The unwavering fidelity of Jephthah to his vow. It was the wisest course, and the one that proved best the fidelity and infinite love of God. There was sorrow, but who will say that there was not a compensating blessedness in the act, and a "more exceeding weight of glory" in the ages to come? This is what God expects. Have we ever vowed to him? If so, have we paid our vows? Negligence in this matter will explain much that distresses and perplexes us. Honesty towards God - how few practise it! Yet this is the true proof of him (Malachi 3:10).
IV. HOW AN ABSOLUTE PERSONAL SACRIFICE MAY BECOME A NATIONAL IDEAL AND ATONEMENT. The circ*mstances were such that all Israel sympathised with the act of self-devotion. It fell in with the national mood and carried it to heroic pitch. The "custom in Israel" shows how profoundly the spirit of the people had been touched. The maiden offered to Jehovah is adopted as the offering of her people, a vicarious sacrifice of their repentance and faith. So does the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, become the world's atonement (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15). - M.
Biblical Illustrator
I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.
Judges 11:34-40
Retreat impossible
I. WHAT WE HAVE DONE. "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord."
1. We have opened our mouths before the Lord, first, "by confessing our faith in Jesus Christ."
2. We have also avowed and declared before the living God that we are Christ's disciples and followers.
3. We have opened our mouth to the Lord, next, because as we believe in Jesus Christ, and take Him to be our Master, so we "have admitted the Redeemer's claims to our persons and services, and have resolved to live for Him alone in our days." We have made a dedication of ourselves to His service, declaring that we are not our own, but bought with a price.
4. We have cast in our lot with His people.
II. WHAT WE CANNOT DO. "I cannot go back." Having once become Christians, we cannot apostatise from the faith. We cannot go back, even by temporary turnings aside.
1. If we did go back, we should show that we have been altogether false until now.
2. We should incur frightful penalties. To go back is death, shame, eternal ruin.
3. It would be so unreasonable. If you give up the religion of Jesus Christ, what other religion would you have? If you were to give up the pleasures of godliness, what other pleasures would you have? "Oh," says one, "we could go into the world." Could you? If you are a child of God you are spoiled for the world.
4. I have no inclination to go back. The man who is married to a good wife thinks to himself, "If I had to marry again to-morrow morning, she should be the bride, and happy would we be." And so, if we had our choice to make again, we would choose our dear Lord over again, only with much more eagerness and earnestness than we did at first.
5. We have opened our mouth to the Lord, and we cannot go back because we are so happy as we now are. A man does not turn his back upon that which has become his life and his joy; he is bound to it by the bliss which he derives from it. Can the Swiss forget his country when he listens to the home-music which he heard as a child amidst his native hills? Does not the home-sickness come over him so that he longs to be among the Alps again? Does not the Englishman, wherever he wanders, whether by land or sea, feel his heart instinctively turn to the white cliffs of Albion, and does he not say that with all her faults he loves his country still? Who would cease to be that which he loves to be?
6. And then, besides that, we cannot go back from what we have said, for Divine grace impels us onward. There is a secret power more mighty than all other forces called the force of grace, and this has captured us.
III. SOMETHING WHICH WE MUST DO. If there is a present sacrifice demanded of us, we must make it directly. If there is anything in your business, and you cannot be a Christian if you do it, abjure it at once and for ever. If you are to do this, however, you must ask for more grace. One other admonition to Christian people is this — burn the boats behind you. When the Roman commander meant victory he landed his troops on the coast where he knew there were thousands of enemies, and he burned the boats, so as to cut off all chance of retreat. "But how are we to get away if we are beaten?" "That is just it," said he; "we will not be beaten; we will not dream of such a thing." "Burn the boats" — that is what you Christian people must do. "Make no provision for the flesh." Let the separation between you and the world be final and irreversible. Say, "Here I go for Christ and His Cross, for the truth of the Bible, for the laws of God, for holiness, for trust in Jesus; and never will I go back, come what may."
( C. H. Spurgeon.)
No trifling with God
"We have opened our mouth unto the Lord." It is not what we promised the Church, though in becoming members of it we have promised to fulfil the mutual duties of Christians. It was not what we promised to the minister, though, in the very fact of becoming members of a Church of which he is the pastor we have a Christian duty towards him. It was not what we promised one another, though we all owe something to each other. But we have opened our mouth to the Lord. If a man must trifle, let him trifle with men, but not with God. If promises to men may be lightly broken — and they should not be — yet let us not trifle with promises made to God. And if solemn declarations ever can be forgotten — which they should not be — yet not solemn declarations made to God. Beware, oh! beware of anything like levity in entering into covenant with the Most High.
( C. H. Spurgeon.)
Do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth
A sacrifice of the world to high principle
M. Nicholson, D. D.
(M. Nicholson, D. D.)
Let me alone two months, that I may.., bewail my virginity
The wail of Jephthah's daughter
Marcus Dods, D. D.
(Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Did with her according to his vow
Modern Jephthahs; or, parental immolations
Homilist.
In Jephthah's vow we see two things —1. A good feeling overcoming the judgment.
2. A sense of right leading to an enormous crime.
I. JEPHTHAH SACRIFICED HIS DAUGHTER TO THE TRUE GOD. But what are many modern parents doing? Why, offering up their children to false gods!
1. The god of idleness. Indolence is ruin.
2. The god of worldliness.
3. The god of ambition.
II. JEPTHAH SACRIFICED ONLY THE BODY OF HIS DAUGHTER. But parents in these modern times are found immolating the souls of their children; they are made to prostrate their powers, and to yield the Divine sentiments of their nature to idleness, pelf, vanity, fashion.
1. Soul immolation is more gradual.
2. Soul immolation is more mischievous. It is the ruin of the whole man.
III. JEPHTHAH SACRIFICED HIS DAUGHTER FROM A NOBLE IMPULSE. No such high feeling prompts parents in these days to sacrifice the souls of their children even to the false and ignominious divinities. They do it either from the spirit of custom, vanity, greed, or ambition. It is a cold-blooded, soulless immolation. If there is any feeling, it is the mere lust of the eye and pride of life.
IV. JEPHTHAH SACRIFICED HIS DAUGHTER WITH A TERRIBLE REGRET. But modern parents lay the souls of their children on the altar of worldliness, vanity, and sin, not only without any compunction, but with an utter indifference. They see the souls of their daughters running into grubs, butterflies, swine, and heave no sigh of regret.
V. JEPHTHAH SACRIFICED HIS DAUGHTER WITH HER FULL CONCURRENCE. Were worldly parents to say to their daughters at the dawn of their intelligent and moral life, "We intend to take all the innocency from your young loves — all the sensibility from your young consciences — all the religious poetry from your young natures — and to make you the dolls of fashion, the devotees of a sham life, the victims of a pampered animalism, and thus rifle you of your birthright as immortals" — this would be honest; this would bring the question so thoroughly home to the young heart as would, we think, rouse opposition to the fiendish plan.
(Homilist.)
The vow performed
R. A. Watson, M. A.
(R. A. Watson, M. A.)
Jephthah's payment of his vow
M. Nicholson, D. D.
(M. Nicholson, D. D.)
"Did with her according to his vow"
Marcus Dods, D. D.
(Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Vows which should not be kept
Marcus Dods, D. D.
(Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Typical aspect of Jephthah's vow
Arthur Ritchie.
(Arthur Ritchie.).
People
Abel, Ammonites, Amorites, Balak, Chemosh, Israelites, Jephthah, Manasseh, Sihon, ZipporPlaces
Abel-keramim, Ammon, Arnon, Aroer, Edom, Egypt, Gilead, Heshbon, Jabbok River, Jahaz, Jordan River, Kadesh-barnea, Minnith, Mizpah, Moab, Red Sea, TobTopics
Alone, Behold, Beside, Besides, Child, Choruses, Dances, Dancing, Daughter, Daughters, Except, Home, Jephthah, Meet, Meeting, Mizpah, Mizpeh, Music, None, Returned, Save, Sons, Tambourines, TimbrelsOutline
1. The covenant between Jephthah and the Gileadites, that he should lead12. The treaty of peace between him and the Ammonites is in vain
29. Jephthah's vow
32. His conquest of the Ammonites
34. He performs his vow on his daughter.
Dictionary of Bible Themes
Judges 11:345287dance
5387leisure, pastimes
5421musical instruments
5740virgin
Judges 11:28-40
8644commemoration
Judges 11:29-40
5468promises, human
Judges 11:30-35
5803carelessness
Judges 11:30-40
5741vows
Judges 11:34-35
5188tearing of clothes
6227regret
Judges 11:34-36
Library
Whether a Vow Should Always be About a Better Good?Objection 1: It would seem that a vow need not be always about a better good. A greater good is one that pertains to supererogation. But vows are not only about matters of supererogation, but also about matters of salvation: thus in Baptism men vow to renounce the devil and his pomps, and to keep the faith, as a gloss observes on Ps. 75:12, "Vow ye, and pay to the Lord your God"; and Jacob vowed (Gn. 28:21) that the Lord should be his God. Now this above all is necessary for salvation. Therefore …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica
Of Vows. The Miserable Entanglements Caused by Vowing Rashly.
1. Some general principles with regard to the nature of vows. Superstitious errors not only of the heathen, but of Christians, in regard to vows. 2. Three points to be considered with regard to vows. First, to whom the vow is made--viz. to God. Nothing to be vowed to him but what he himself requires. 3. Second, Who we are that vow. We must measure our strength, and have regard to our calling. Fearful errors of the Popish clergy by not attending to this. Their vow of celibacy. 4. Third point to be …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
A Cloud of Witnesses.
"By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a-dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when his end was nigh, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.... By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they had been compassed about for seven days. By faith Rahab the harlot perished not with them that were disobedient, …
Thomas Charles Edwards—The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews
Jesus Works his First Miracle at Cana in Galilee.
^D John II. 1-11. ^d 1 And the third day [From the calling of Philip (John i. 43). The days enumerated in John's first two chapters constitute a week, and may perhaps be intended as a contrast to the last week of Christ's ministry ( John xii. 1). It took two days to journey from the Jordan to Cana] there was a marriage [In Palestine the marriage ceremony usually began at twilight. The feast after the marriage was at the home of the bridegroom, and was sometimes prolonged for several days (Gen. xxix. …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel
Importance in Luke's History of the Story of the Birth of Christ
IT needs no proof that Luke attached the highest importance to this part of his narrative. That Jesus was indicated from the beginning as the Messiah -- though not a necessary part of his life and work, and wholly omitted by Mark and only briefly indicated in mystical language by John -- was a highly interesting and important fact in itself, and could not fail to impress the historian. The elaboration and detail of the first two chapters of the Gospel form a sufficient proof that Luke recognized …
Sir William Mitchell Ramsay—Was Christ Born in Bethlehem?
Judges
For the understanding of the early history and religion of Israel, the book of Judges, which covers the period from the death of Joshua to the beginning of the struggle with the Philistines, is of inestimable importance; and it is very fortunate that the elements contributed by the later editors are so easily separated from the ancient stories whose moral they seek to point. That moral is most elaborately stated in ii. 6-iii. 6, which is a sort of programme or preface to iii. 7-xvi. 31, which constitutes …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament
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