Sunday Sermonette: Thuffering Thuccotash

Judges 12 describes what might be called the first civil war among the Israelites, though I ' m not sure that ' s really accurate since they don ' ' t have a central government and the religio-cultural unity created by the tabernacle and the pilgrimages seems to have vanished. Anyway, just to clarify the geography, the territory of Ephraim -- or I should say the putative territory, this is all fiction -- was in what is today central Israel on the west side of the Jordan. Jepthah and his army are based in Gilead, on the east side, in what is today Jordan. So what happens here is that the Ephraimites cross the river and end up getting trapped. Jepthah, having just arbitrarily murdered his daughter at God ' s command -- read that again if you like, that ' s what the Good Book says -- commands the mass murder of prisoners of war, fellow Israelites, then he dies. Then some other guys come along. Then they die. The last one followed the popular custom of having sons and in this particular case also grandsons on donkeys. They each had exactly one donkey. This is important, for some reason. 12 The Ephraimite forces were called out, and they crossed over to Zaphon. They said to Jephthah, “Why did you go to fight the Ammonites without calling us to go with you? We’re going to burn down your house over your head.”2 Jephthah answered, “I and my people were engaged in a great struggle with the Ammonites, and although I called, you didn’t save me out of their ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs