Judges 8-12 - on civil wars and kids as collateral

The readings - Days 80 and 81 - Judges 8-12

Hooray! All caught up!

*one small note, because it may give insight into why I get behind in this thing. When I started this post (yes, the one link and that one line) it was around 10:45 p.m. and I was ready to go. I then spent the next two hours reading about pirates on the Internet. I will now type a sentence that is simultaneously genuine/heartfelt and bitter/sarcastic. Thanks a lot, Internet.

So... Judges, eh? Israel still generally sucks at remembering/following the rules, which by now shouldn't come as a huge surprise. However, what does come as something of a surprise (although maybe this shouldn't either) is how bad they seem to be at just getting along with each other. Once you get borders and factions involved in a nation, there's bound to be conflict, I suppose, but it just seems like the whole country is one or two tequila shooters away from ripping itself to pieces in a civil war.



Chapters 8 and 12, for instance, start with the guys from the tribe of Ephraim throwing hissy fits that they weren't invited to recent wars, and both times they come out of it looking like knobs.

First, they complain to Gideon that they weren't invited to the battle against Midian. Yeah, the same Gideon who was just returning from routing two entire armies with a band of 300 men - a band that God Himself had trimmed from tens of thousands down to 300 before leading them into battle.

Gideon responds in a sort of sycophantic way, praising Ephraim for all their accomplishments and basically just downplaying the whole thing as something that a great tribe like Ephraim wouldn't have wanted to bother about.

In other circumstances, this might make a man appear weak-kneed and a bit of a pushover.

Then Gideon goes through some other lands, in pursuit of the two kings whose armies he's just defeated, and asks for some bread and water. Those guys make fun of him and say no, so he tells them that when he's done with the two runaway kings, he's going to come back and beat them all severely and burn down their stuff. So he does.

Gideon = hardcore.

The second instance of Ephraim being kind of a jerk to other Israelites comes, as I said, in chapter 12, where they confront Jephthah (a man who had just suffered incredibly at the hands of his own bad luck and ridiculousness) and tell him that they're going to burn down his house with him inside because he didn't invite them along to his conquest. Then Jephthah points out that he did actually ask for their help, but they didn't offer it. Classy, Ephraim. Classy.

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And about Jephthah. So far the judges called by God to liberate Israel from its latest punitive period of servitude to its neighbours have been generally upstanding people, but Jephthah seems to maybe have a screw loose or something.

If you haven' read that far, he basically strikes a bargain with God. A bargain that sees him looking to secure victory in his upcoming campaign. Which God specifically chose him for already (which seems to me to be a pretty strong endorsement, based on previous examples).

His proposal is that if God helps him defeat the Ammonites, he'll turn whatever comes out of his house first when he gets back into a burnt offering.

Now, I don't necessarily think that I'm any more intellectually gifted than anyone else, but this seems like a stupid thing to say. And then he's surprised and crestfallen when its hid daughter that he "has to" burn as a sacrifice.

If you had to make a list of things that might come out of the front door of your house to meet you after you'd been away at war for a while, your only child should probably be pretty high up there.

Insert a LOT more Picard-face-palm images throughout this whole story.