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.
Today’s passage starts out with Jephthah, whose brothers drove away because, while he had the same father, his mother was a prostitute. He went elsewhere (the passage tells us he went to the “land of Tob”, but we don’t really know where that was). While there he became a leader of men, probably bandits and raiders. The passage tells us that his followers were worthless rebels. However, here is the key difference between Jephthah and Abimelech: Jepthah’s men followed him because he was a leader, Abimelech’s men followed him because he paid them. Or to put it another way, Abimelech wanted to be a leader, so he went out and found some followers. Jephthah’s followers chose him as their leader. Jephthah’s power came from the fact that people wanted to follow him, if he stopped looking out for his followers, his power would go away. Abimelech’s power came from the fact that he could hire men to enforce his will. If they stopped following him, he could hire others.
I want to be clear that in what I am writing next I am not comparing any modern leaders to either Jephthah or Abimelech. Instead, I am using them as examples of howleaders are chosen and how they should be chosen. Abimelech was chosen as a leader because he wanted to be a leader. No one asked if he had demonstrated an ability to be a good leader. Jephthah was chosen as a leader because he had demonstrated leadership skills. While either type of leader can go wrong, the former is more likely to abuse power than the latter. In the Church today, too many of our leaders are chosen because they wanted to be leaders in the Church. They went to college to study Bible, then went to seminary to become a pastor or other Church leader. There is nothing inherently wrong with someone who senses God’s calling into Church leadership from a young age following that path, but more of our leaders should come from among those who have demonstrated leadership in the Church before they had any titles or authority.