A news item recently caught my attention. "A 10 year old Nicaraguan girl, Hazel Borge, could soon die because her parents devout Jehovah’s Witnesses are refusing to allow doctors to give her a blood transfusion." [January 20, 2000 MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters)]
“The committee in charge of evaluating special cases held an urgent meeting at the hospital to evaluate this special case,” said Ramiro Lopez, a director of The Velez Hospital in Managua. “The committee decided that a blood transfusion is necessary, because otherwise the girl will die. We told this to the girl’s parents, and they came here with legal representation from the Jehovah’s Witness Organization. They signed a document in which the parents are absolutely opposed to the blood transfusion,” said Lopez. The girl was in a car accident on January 10 in which both her legs were fractured and she lost a lot of blood. But Jehovah’s Witnesses have deep religious convictions against accepting whole blood, red blood cells and white blood cells.
In spite of the parents’ wish not to give the child a blood transfu¬sion, doctors at the hospital went ahead with the procedure to save the girl’s life after she went into shock. Doctors at the hospital have warned that unless further surgery is performed on the girl, she could once again go into shock and could possibly die. She requires urgent surgery to amputate one of her legs, which would require more blood transfusions a procedure her parents are against. “Doctors have spoken with us, and . . . the blood is not going to repair my girl’s leg. The blood is not the solution. The solution is to repair her leg,” said Maria Felix Bermudes, the girl’s mother.
The case has drawn great public interest. “The state must protect children and teen agers who are in risky situations. In this situation, it is obvious that the girl is in danger due to the parents’ decision,” said children’s court Judge Venicia Venegas. I have not been able to find out her eventual fate. Only that first news report appears when I Google her name.
What goes through your mind when you read of such cases? Do you think, “The state ought to do something to force the parents to let their child be treated” or do you think, “It’s lucky we have laws which prevent the state from interfering with parents’ decisions about how to raise their children”? Do you admire the parents’ faith, which keeps them obedient to their understanding of God even when their child is at risk? Even when authority figures pressure them to change their mind? Or do you censure them for being so foolish as to think that God might not want them to take advantage of everything modern medicine has to offer?
It’s a hard call, isn’t it? I think they’re wrong, of course, in their interpretation of God’s requirements. I’m not sure I want a government that has the right to force them to violate their beliefs. There are some things that are worth dying for, and obedience to God’s commands is one of them. But what about when the life of a child is at stake? The open question is, whose God? Whose interpretation of God? Whose understanding of what God actually commands us to do? These are very tricky questions indeed, in a religiously pluralistic society.
I think the Jehovah’s witnesses are wrong, just as I think the Christian Scientists are wrong when they reject medical treatment in favor of prayer alone. But there are a lot of things that you and I as orthodox Christians believe that non-believers find just as incomprehensible, that we wouldn’t want the government to ban. When Utah was admitted to statehood, our society held enough beliefs in common for the government’s ban on polygamy to hold, but I don’t think we could do it nowadays.
It’s a crazy world, isn’t it. . . people who think nothing of aborting an unwanted child think that spanking a rebellious child is cruel and unusual punishment. The same people who think that inconvenience or financial pressure or embarrassment outweigh the life of a child cannot understand that obedience to God might also outweigh a life.
Aren’t we lucky that our God doesn’t ask us to choose between our children’s lives and our call to follow Christ? Aren’t we lucky that we know with perfect clarity that our God always comes down on the side of life? How astonishingly blessed and free we are to know that YHWH God has not called for the death of a child since Abraham was let off the hook 3,500 years ago.
And how sad it was that Jephthah had not been taught the law of Moses, hadn’t grown up knowing that YHWH’s people were supposed to be different from the surrounding culture. How tragic that he didn’t know what God really wanted. If Jephthah had been properly taught, this terrible story would not be part of our Scriptures.
And it is a terrible story. The book of Judges is one of the most difficult in the entire Bible. Not difficult the way Leviticus and Numbers are, with incomprehensible rituals and interminable genealogies, but ugly, filled with blood and pain and betrayal and murder. Why on earth do we have stories like this in our sacred writings? How can people like Jephthah possibly be listed in Hebrews as one of the great heroes of the faith, along with Gideon and David and Samuel? [Heb 11:32]
It may surprise you to know that the more I read and studied for this sermon the more I admired Jephthah. As an abused outcast from a highly dysfunctional family, I started out thinking that he was probably horribly maladjusted, very likely unable to bond, prone to violence and clearly deserving to lose his only daughter as a result of an intemperate outburst. But that is not so. Jephthah was a good man.
Let’s look at the text again.
"Now Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute, was a mighty warrior. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. Gilead’s wife also bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah away, saying to him, 'You shall not inherit anything in our father’s house; for you are the son of another woman. Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Outlaws collected around Jephthah and went raiding with him." [Judg 11:1-3]
A couple of points to note here: the Hebrew word clearly means harlot, not concubine, although it might mean a cult prostitute - that is, someone whose sexual activities was part of the worship of the local fertility goddess - rather than the images that would be likely to come to the modern mind of streetwalker, hooker or call girl. But either way, how did Jephthah come to be brought up in his father’s house? Who brought him up? It looks as though Gilead may have favored him; at least he accepted responsibility, and his wife put up with him, since it was only after his brothers grew up that he was thrown out. The obvious assumption is that they were now in charge since their father had died. What a lonely boyhood Jephthah must have had, living with that kind of hostility.
If his mother had been a cult prostitute, there are two ways Gilead could have gotten the boy. First, it might be that the cult in question prohibited the priestesses from raising boys on the grounds. That happened, in some Mediterranean fertility religions. So Jephthah’s mother might have given him up voluntarily, as soon as the child was born. The second possibility is that both mother and child were brought into Gilead’s household, which would mean that she was probably in charge of his religious upbringing, and the source of his misinformation about YHWH and his standards.
However he came to be brought up in Gilead’s household, he was thrown out for what looks like no fault of his own, and he took up an alternative career as a sort of brigand-chieftain over a group of assorted outcasts and social misfits. And before you start thinking too harshly of him for this, that’s exactly what David did when Saul’s jealousy drove him out into the wilderness. There was not much in the way of career opportunity in those days for a young man with no family behind him.
At any rate, by the time the Ammonites came a-raiding on Israel’s borders, Jephthah had acquired quite a reputation. Like Joseph before him, when sold into slavery by his brothers, what man had meant for evil, God had turned to good. Jephthah received the best possible training for military service at the time of Israel’s need.
Again like Joseph, Jephthah’s half-brothers were eventually driven by need to seek help from their once despised brother. Unlike Joseph’s brothers, however, they knew who it was they were seeking help from. The text says “the elders of Gilead” came to get him; apparently his brothers had gotten backing from the tribal leaders when they expelled him. But Jephthah doesn’t show any anger or bitterness. Caution, yes - and who can blame him? But his response is really quite mild. Listen to them.
“Are you not the very ones who rejected me and drove me out of my father’s house? So why do you come to me now when you are in trouble?” “Nevertheless, we have now turned back to you, so that you may . . . fight with the Ammonites, and become leader over us. . . ” “If you bring me home again to fight with the Ammonites, and YHWH gives them over to me, I will be your leader.” “YHWH will be witness between us; we will surely do as you say.” [Judg 11:7-10]
The elders had swallowed their pride to ask him for help; he was realist enough to know that this was his one chance of not only being accepted but of succeeding in society. The word for head, or leader, is more than just a military leader; Jephthah was essentially going to be a sort of baron, with judicial as well as military functions. They really need him, and so they seal the deal at the local temple. Another thing to note is that Jephthah appears to have a strong faith: he makes it quite clear that it is YHWH who will give the victory.
And Jephthah proves worthy of the task. He conducts negotiations with the Ammonites with all the diplomatic finesse of a seasoned Foreign Service officer. He recites Israel’s history, proving that Ammon has no right to the disputed territory. When Ammon refuses to back down from their claims, he prepares for battle. And this is where he blows it. “The Spirit of YHWH came upon Jephthah”, the Scripture says, preparing him for the victory, but for Jephthah this isn’t enough. He has to add something of his own, in order to ensure that YHWH will come through on the deal. He offers God a bribe.
“If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be YHWH’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” [Judg 11:30-31]
This was the kind of thing the Moabite gods expected, the kind of price the Ammonite gods demanded in return for victory. It was Jephthah’s tragedy that he didn’t know enough about YHWH to realize that he didn’t need to be paid.
And you know the end of the story. After the victory, when Jephthah returned home, it was his daughter, his only child, who ran out to greet him. That’s what Hebrew women did, after a great victory; Miriam led the women in dancing and singing after Pharaoh’s armies were drowned in the Red Sea, the women ran out to greet David when he defeated the Philistines. Think of the way the Parisians greeted the Allied forces when they liberated Paris in 1944. Jephthah had won a great victory, and so the women of his house ran out to honor him. And the victory turned to ashes in front of him.
Poets have sung of Jephthah’s daughter throughout the ages, from Chaucer to Handel to Byron. The agony of a man torn between duty to God and love for daughter makes for high drama; his daughter’s filial piety in submitting to her death with hardly a murmur doesn’t win much admiration in this self-centered age, but other cultures have recognized the beauty and worth of her nobility, and applauded it. It is to our shame that we see only the waste.
But make no mistake about it, it was a terrible, unnecessary waste.
The Mosaic law did not need to have things added to it, as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees who had expanded beyond reason the simple requirements of Sinai, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not need anything added to it, as Paul pointed out to the Galatians.
What God has given to us is enough. There aren’t any hidden catches in fine print, or extra perks for the imaginative deal-maker. There is no call for the hostile challenge thrown at the prophet Micah, when he criticized the people of Jerusalem for disobedience.
“With what shall I come before YHWH, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will YHWH be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” [Micah 6:6-7]
The part of that passage that we are most familiar with is the next verse: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does YHWH require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [Micah 6:8]
Jephthah did the best he could. But through ignorance, he not only destroyed his child, but also his hope for immortality. Because that was the Hebrew’s immortality, that their name would live on through their descendants. It was Jephthah’s ignorance that killed his daughter.
How many of us damage our children through ignorance, through failure to teach them what the Lord requires? It isn’t just the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists who get it wrong. Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics who don’t know their Bible, or fail to teach their children, have just as much to answer for. And the altars we sacrifice our children on may not be set up for burnt offerings, but too many of our children are sacrificed nonetheless.
“What does YHWH require of you? to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” We’re not bad at the justice and mercy part. . . But walking humbly with God requires intention, and dedication. It requires us to use the light he has given us, to actively seek his wisdom to discern the path we should walk, to know him, his character and word, well enough to navigate the waters of our society without running upon the rocks, and to equip our children to do the same.
