I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 11-13.

    There is a lesson in the story of Jephthah that I have not heard anyone speak about (although that is not surprising since he is rarely the topic of sermons). In yesterday’s passage we had Abimelech, the illegitimate son of Gideon, who was a bad ruler. In today’s passage we have Jephthah, the illegitimate son of Gilead, who was a good leader (or, at least, not a bad ruler). We could easily make the mistake of thinking that Abimelech should not have been trusted because of who his mother was. Yet, if the Israelites had done the same with Jephthah, they would never have trusted him (and to be perfectly honest, that is exactly what they initially did). We should judge people on the basis of what they do, not on the basis of who their parents were.

    There is another thing we begin to see here, or, at least, that I begin to see every year at about this point in the Book of Judges. During the time of the Judges the Israelites were not a unified people. Abimelech ruled over Schechem and the surrounding areas, but not over all of Israel. Jephthah ruled over Gilead, the land the Israelites controlled east of the Jordan River. As you look through the other judges, they also seemed to only rule over several tribes and not all of them. Here under Jephthah and earlier under Gideon we even see conflict between the tribes.