Saying the Right Thing. Judges 8-15

Those were crazy days. Days when flesh was flailed with thorns for a non-supportive answer to a rampaging king. Days when a man can scheme with the leaders of a town to kill seventy of his half-brothers. Days when millstones dropped out of towers make effective (but not instant) killing weapons. Days when rather than popping off to the mall to collect clothes, you strike down thirty men and take theirs instead. Days when it was considered just revenge for your wife being given to your best man to tie the tails of 300 foxes together and set them alight. But there's one thing nobody knows... What did the foxes say?

One thing that stood out for me was the importance of saying the right thing. For the Ephraimites, pronunciation was a matter of life and death; Whether they could articulate the difference between /s/ and /ʃ/ (the "esh") decided whether they could live or die. Luckily for me, my experience trying to get my tongue around the sounds of Korean hasn't put me in such a position (so far). But the conflict with the Ephraimites could have been avoided by wise speaking in the first place.

The Ephraimites always seem to feel jealous at being left out of battles. In chapter 8 they complain to Gideon Why didn't you call us to battle Midian? Gideon's words calm them down, reminding them that they had been called, and had been successful, even more successful that Gideon by himself. Compare this with a similar situation in chapter 12 when the Ephraimites complained to Jephthah about not being asked to fight the Ammonites. Jephthah did not try to calm them down or seek peace, and so the tribes of Israel were warring among themselves.

But perhaps the most tragic example of unwise words was Jephthah's vow. He promised God that he would sacrifice whatever or whomever first came out of his house when (if) he returned victorious from battle. So he had to follow through and sacrifice his precious daughter, his only child. I don't know what he was thinking or expecting to emerge, but surely he could have worded it better if he wanted to give up an animal. But this shows up that God takes our words and our vows seriously, and I suppose that means that we should take them seriously too.