A Sin-Marred Victory

The story of Jephthah does not end with the tragic death of his daughter because of his rash vow. Pride now leads to intertribal warfare that further mars the deliverance God has given to His people.

The people of Ephraim, we are told, come to Jephthah to complain that he did not summon them when he went to war against Ammon. The tribe made the same complaint when it missed out on Gideon’s conquest of the Midianites (Judg. 8:1–3). The status conferred upon Ephraim (Gen. 48:1–19), the younger of Joseph’s two sons, seems to have placed an enormous chip on this tribe’s collective shoulder, particularly in regard to Manassehites such as Gideon and (probably) Jephthah. But the Ephraimites do not just chastise Jephthah; they threaten to burn his house around him. Jephthah does not take kindly to that. “He did not endeavour to pacify them, as Gideon had done,” Matthew Henry writes. “The Ephraimites were now more outrageous than they were then and Jephthah had not so much of a meek and quiet spirit as Gideon had.” He informs the Ephraimites that he did summon them and they did not respond. Therefore, he went to war without them, “ ‘and the Lord delivered them into my hand.’ ” The victory was God’s; there was no glory in it for Jephthah or for any man, Ephraimites included. But the Ephraimites respond by insulting the Gileadites (Transjordanian Israelites) as “ ‘fugitives,’ ” or second-class citizens. Thus, “[Jephthah] took care both to defend himself from their fury and to chastise their insolence with the sword, by virtue of his authority as Israel’s judge,” Henry says.

So war breaks out between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, and the Gileadites prevail. The Ephraimites thus become the true “fugitives” of this story. The tactic of seizing the fords of the Jordan to cut off an enemy, twice used by Ephraim (3:27–28; 7:24), is now used against it. The wily Gileadites, employing a difference in tribal accents, ask retreating Ephraimite soldiers to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites’ inability to pronounce the word dooms them at the fords, and some forty-two thousand of them are killed.

All in all, this is a tragic day for Israel. The deliverance from Ammon should have united the nation. Instead, the unity of the tribes dissolves into conflict—because of sin.