Judges: The Best Stories (and the saddest)

Judges deals with the fact that Israel seems to suffer from constant short term memory loss, or maybe its longterm. I don't know. Either way they are some of the most forgetful people that I've ever even heard of. Basically, here is the pattern:

1. People forget to worship God.
2. God sends nation x to conquer Israel.
3. People pray to God for forgiveness.
4. God sends judge (aka man or woman that totally kicks ass) to save Israel.
5. Rinse and repeat.

The entire book of Judges deals with the fact that Israel constantly turns from God and then remembers that he's the one who actually got them to where they are in the first place. Eventually God sends someone to save his people and while that person is alive the Israelites are good, but once he or she dies they instantly revert to their old "heathen" ways like they just forgot the fact that they had prosperity while they were following God.

While the pattern and repetition become rather tedious after about five or six judges, the stories themselves are anything but. From Deborah who is the first powerful woman since probably Ziporah to Ehud, the guy that Plotz calls the left handed assassin to Samson, all of the judges deal with the oppressors in different and often violent ways.

However, none of these stories is more heartwrenching than the story of Jephthah's daughter. Jephthah, as the current judge of Israel, is in a war with the Ammonites and in order to assure victory he asks the lord for favor in exchange for the sacrifice of the first thing that greets him when he returns home. He wins, of course, and returns to his house only to be greeted by his daughter whom he must now sacrifice. In a show of faith unlike almost anything I have ever read the girl accepts her fate. She asks only that she may go and morn the fact that she is a virgin for one year, which her father grants. (Gee how nice of him.)

At this point I have to stop and admit that I thought for sure that God would show back up and save her just as he had done for Isaac when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. After all, how can a loving God ask for the only child of his most faithful servant of the time? Surely he will step in as he did before and release Jephthah from his bond.

Sadly that reprieve does not come, and I was forced to read in horror as the girl was killed in honor of battle. There is no crying mentioned, no condolences given, just a young girl murdered in honor of all the killing that had been done a year ago.It is a tale that disturbs me more than any other in the entire Bible if only because there is no dissent given. Where are the kind hearted individuals that follow a kind-hearted God? What is this bloodthirstyness that seems to crop up so often? And what of the law that says there shall be no sacrifice of children because that is abhorrent? If it's so disgusting to you than stop it. God saves a male child but not a girl, where is the fareness in that?

Before I go off and decide to ramble on this forever, I thought that I would connect it to another form of daughter sacrifice that many of us have seen before when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order that his ships might sale to Troy. Both are virgins. Both accept their fate meakley and with a courage that I find hard to fathom and both are sacrificed by fathers who love their only child more than anything to gods that seem to not give much of a damn.

We've already talked at length about the rest of the book so I won't go into that, but if you haven't read Judges, do so. There are some very good if sad stories that you can enjoy.