Then the children of Ammon were gathered together, and encamped in Gilead. And the children of Israel assembled themselves together, and encamped in Mizpeh.

And the people and princes of Gilead said one to another, What man is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon? he shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour.

And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah.

And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head?

And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words.

Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the LORD in Mizpeh.

And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?

And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah, Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again peaceably.

And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon. [And they rehearsed unto him how the land had been taken from Sihon king of Heshbon.]

Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

*

Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

COMMENT.-Nothing but distress brought this stubborn people to God, and He bade them turn to the idols they loved, and seek deliverance from them! Yet when they had put away their strange gods, "He was so merciful that He forgave their misdeeds, and destroyed them not." There was some hope among them when they met at Mizpeh (where Jacob had made his covenant with Laban), and prepared to fight against the Ammonites, but they greatly wanted a leader until the Gileadites bethought them of

Went through collecting men.

Jephthah, a mighty man of valour, who was living a wild sort of outlaw life at Tob, on the borders of Syria. Before he would consent to lead the army, he required that he should be appointed head and captain at least of the two tribes and a half on the east of Jordan; and this being granted, he sent an embassy to the king of Ammon, demanding the cause of the war. The king of Ammon replied by laying claim to the whole land of Gilead, and to this Jephthah answered (at greater length than is given in our lesson) by rehearsing the history of the campaign against Sihon and Og, in which Gilead had been conquered from the Amorites-not the Ammonites, who now demanded it.

However, the king of Ammon continued his hostilities, and Jephthah became inspired with the Spirit of the Lord. Every power is a gift of God and the Holy Ghost, and His gift of the Spirit of Might came to make Jephthah a successful captain in war, by faith, no doubt, for he is mentioned in the 11th chanter of Hebrews, but it was faith in the Lord as giving the victory; it was the Spirit of Victory that led him forth, and his whole character, that of a fierce impetuous man, remained untamed. He had had little training in the law, and had become infected with the temper if not with the worship of the heathen, and it was in that vehement temper that he made his wild vow to offer up unto the Lord the first thing that should meet him on his return.

LESSON XXXVII.

JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER.

JUDGES xi. 32—40; xii. 1—7.

So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.

And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

And Jephthah came to Mizpeh* unto his house, and, behold, his daughter

* The Watch-tower.

came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me : for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.

And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me : let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.

And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed. it was a custom in Israel,

And

That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

And the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together, and went northward, and said unto Jephthah, Wherefore passedst thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? we will burn thine house upon thee with fire.

And Jephthah said unto them, I and my people were at great strife with the children of Ammon; and when I called you, ye delivered me not out of

their hands.

And when I saw that ye delivered me not, I put my life in my hands, and passed over against the children of Ammon, and the LORD delivered them into my hand wherefore then are ye come up unto me this day, to fight against me?

Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim; and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites : and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth : * and he said Sibboleth : for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

And Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then died Jephthah the Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

COMMENT.-Having made his rash vow, in hopes in his ignorance and vehemence to secure his victory from God, Jephthah gave

* A stream.

battle to the Ammonites, and utterly routed them, driving them far back into their own country, and taking twenty cities from them, reaching from Aroer to Minnith, and breaking their strength for many years to come.

Then he returned in triumph to his home, the watch-tower of Gilead. Alas! the first creature that met his eye was his daughter, his only child, leading the triumphant dance of maidens, singing and clashing their timbrels, like Miriam or Deborah. His vow had turned joy into bitter grief; and at this time, so much had the training of the law been lost, that no one seems to have perceived that the command not to offer up son or daughter in the fire (Deut. xii. 31) ought to have come before the keeping of the vow. Jephthah wept and lamented, but the heroic maiden herself would not so much as even beg him to break his vow, but only asked for two months' respite, to wander with her companions on the wooded hills of Gilead, and mourn that she could never be a mother in Israel, nor share in the ancestry of the Seed of the Woman.

Then she freely returned, and her father “did with her according to his vow." Some few tender hearts have hoped that she lived a dedicated life like a nun; but there is no probability in this—no one even thought of so explaining it till modern times. Jephthah had lived untaught among the heathen, and learnt their customs, even while he worshipped the Lord. Had the right system of the law been carried out, he would have redeemed her by other offerings, after presenting her before the Lord in Shiloh, as the firstborn was redeemed; but a Jewish tradition says that the reigning high priest of the line of Phinehas was deposed, and Eli, the descendant of Ithamar, Aaron's younger son, put in his place, in consequence of his having allowed this unhappy deed. But this is not certain, and it rather seems as if Jephthah, in his remote hills, consulted no priest, but "did that which was right in his own eyes.”

In the meantime, the tribe of Ephraim, which always claimed to be the first, became mad with jealousy at the outlaw Jephthah having presumed to make war against the national enemies, and, crossing the Jordan in arms, threatened to ravage and destroy his house. He answered that the Ammonites invaded, there was no help in Ephraim, and he had been forced to take the command;

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but as this did not silence their jealousy, he was obliged to give them battle-routed them-and as they fled to cross the Jordan, they found the fords already held by his men. It seems that the Ephraimites could not pronounce the sound sh, so that to know friends from foes, the Gileadites made every one who tried to cross utter the word shibboleth, which means a stream," and, if he only said "sibboleth," slew him as an Ephraimite fighting not against the foes, but against the defender, of his country. This battle established Jephthah as Judge of Israel, but he only lived six years, a much shorter time than any other of the Judges. Could his life be cut short by sorrow for the loss of his daughter? He has left us this lesson-that to act after our own judgment instead of by rule leads to deadly error, and that a wrong promise must not be kept.

LESSON XXXVIII.

HANNAH'S PETITION.

I SAMUEL i. I-20.

Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim,* of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite:

And he had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there.

And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions:

But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; † for he loved Hannah : but she had no child.

And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret.

* Ramah of the watchmen or the prophets. Parts of the peace-offering on which they feasted. was to enable her to give to the widow, the poor, and the at these feasts.

Most likely the large quantity fatherless, who received portions