Jephthah's promise to the Lord

In the book of Judges, chapters 10-11, we come upon the tale of Jephthah.

Jephthah was a soldier, and born of a prostitute.  His father was Gilead, and his siblings rejected him at an early age.

But when he grew older and the Israelites needed a leader to defeat the Ammonites, they turned to Jephthah.  He tried to reason with the Ammonite king, to see the error their ways in worshipping other gods other than the Lord.

In the end, Jephthah promised God that if He was to help achieve them victory, the first person to come out of his home he will offer as a sacrifice to the Lord.  The Ammonites were quickly defeated, and upon Jephthah's return home he saw his daughter--his only child--come out of the house.  He told her what he had promised to God, and she agreed to be sacrified, although wished for it to be delayed two months while she went away with her friends.

He agreed.

And in two months time, she returned and she was sacrificed just like he promised.

The destruction of sexual immorality

Proverbs 7, in my Good News Bible, is titled The Immoral Woman.  But it could just as well be titled The Immoral Man too.

Not just any morals, mind you.  Sexual morals.

In verse 3, it says to follow God's teachings as if you were protecting your own eyes--this is something I personally know about, for my wife has had major complications following a stem cell transplant over 2 years ago due to her leukemia illness.

Verses 6 through 23 spell out a tale of a young man who finds a seductive woman walking near the corner of the street and invites him into her home, for her husband is away for two weeks.  Even though the focus is on the woman being the seductive one, it could very easily be the man too.  In the final verses of the chapter, it spells out that following such a desctructive path is like leading one to their death.

A victorious God

Psalms 18 is quite lengthy at 50 verses--it spans almost two full pages in my Bible.

This Psalm tells of David proclaming victory over his enemies with the help of God as his protector.  In the first verse, he says, "Lord!  You are my defender."

David recalls enemies coming at him like waves and God coming down like a huge thunderstorm, raining hailstones and lightning down on His enemies.

God gave him strength to defeat his enemies.

Because David was faithful to God, He protected him and his descendents forever.

The strange tale of Abimelech

Abimelech was a son of Gideon--one of roughly 70 such sons Gideon fathered.  His mother was a concubine, and by many of his brothers, was not worthy to carry the family name.

He went to the town of Shechem, where he asked everyone if they wanted to be ruled by his 70 brothers or just him.  They wanted just him, so he had all of his brothers killed.

All except Jotham, Gideon's youngest son.

It's a bit of a complicated story--and a long chapter at best, with close to 60 verses.  As punishment for killing his 70 brothers, God had Abimelech rule for three years before his people started turning on him.  Then, as his people attacked the city of Thebez, he set the temple on fire when a women threw a stone down and fractured his head.  He ordered one of his male people to kill him, for he wanted to die by a man's hand instead of a woman's.  The man did as he was told and they all went home.