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Judges Chapter
Eleven
Judges 11
Chapter Contents
Jephtah and the Gileadites. (1-11) He attempts to make
peace. (12-28) Jephthah's vow. He vanquishes the Ammonites. (29-40)
Commentary on Judges 11:1-11
(Read Judges 11:1-11)
Men ought not to be blamed for their parentage, so long
as they by their personal merits roll away any reproach. God had forgiven
Israel, therefore Jephthah will forgive. He speaks not with confidence of his
success, knowing how justly God might suffer the Ammonites to prevail for the
further punishment of Israel. Nor does he speak with any confidence at all in
himself. If he succeed, it is the Lord delivers them into his hand; he thereby
reminds his countrymen to look up to God as the Giver of victory. The same
question as here, in fact, is put to those who desire salvation by Christ. If
he save you, will ye be willing that he shall rule you? On no other terms will
he save you. If he make you happy, shall he make you holy? If he be your
helper, shall he be your Head? Jephthah, to obtain a little worldly honour, was
willing to expose his life: shall we be discouraged in our Christian warfare by
the difficulties we may meet with, when Christ has promised a crown of life to
him that overcometh?
Commentary on Judges 11:12-28
(Read Judges 11:12-28)
One instance of the honour and respect we owe to God, as
our God, is, rightly to employ what he gives us to possess. Receive it from
him, use it for him, and part with it when he calls for it. The whole of this
message shows that Jephthah was well acquainted with the books of Moses. His
argument was clear, and his demand reasonable. Those who possess the most
courageous faith, will be the most disposed for peace, and the readiest to make
advances to obtain; but rapacity and ambition often cloak their designs under a
plea of equity, and render peaceful endeavours of no avail.
Commentary on Judges 11:29-40
(Read Judges 11:29-40)
Several important lessons are to be learned from
Jephthah's vow. 1. There may be remainders of distrust and doubting, even in
the hearts of true and great believers. 2. Our vows to God should not be as a
purchase of the favour we desire, but to express gratitude to him. 3. We need
to be very well-advised in making vows, lest we entangle ourselves. 4. What we
have solemnly vowed to God, we must perform, if it be possible and lawful,
though it be difficult and grievous to us. 5. It well becomes children,
obediently and cheerfully to submit to their parents in the Lord. It is hard to
say what Jephthah did in performance of his vow; but it is thought that he did
not offer his daughter as a burnt-offering. Such a sacrifice would have been an
abomination to the Lord; it is supposed she was obliged to remain unmarried,
and apart from her family. Concerning this and some other such passages in the
sacred history, about which learned men are divided and in doubt, we need not
perplex ourselves; what is necessary to our salvation, thanks be to God, is
plain enough. If the reader recollects the promise of Christ concerning the
teaching of the Holy Spirit, and places himself under this heavenly Teacher,
the Holy Ghost will guide to all truth in every passage, so far as it is
needful to be understood.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Judges》
Judges 11
Verse 1
[1] Now
Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an
harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.
Gileadite — So
called, either from his father Gilead, or from the mountain, or city of Gilead,
the place of his birth.
Son of a harlot —
That is, a bastard. And though such were not ordinarily to enter into the
congregation of the Lord, Deuteronomy 23:2. Yet God can dispense with his
own laws, and hath sometimes done honour to base-born persons, so far, that
some of them were admitted to be the progenitors of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
Gilead - One of the children of that ancient Gilead, Numbers 32:1.
Verse 3
[3] Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and
there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.
Of Tob —
The name either of the land, or of the man who was the owner or ruler of it.
This place was in, or near Gilead, as appears by the speedy intercourse which
here was between Jephthah and the Israelites.
Vain men —
Idle persons, who desired rather to get their living by spoil and rapine, than
by honest labour. These evil persons Jephthah managed well, employing them
against the enemies of God, and of Israel, that bordered upon them; and
particularly upon parties of the Ammonites, which made the Israelites more
forward to chuse him for their chieftain in this war.
Went out —
When he made excursions and attempts upon the enemy.
Verse 4
[4] And
it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against
Israel.
Made war —
The Ammonites had vexed and oppressed them eighteen years, and now the
Israelites begin to make opposition, they commence a war against them.
Verse 5
[5] And
it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders
of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob:
Went — By
direction from God, who both qualified him for, and called him to the office of
a judge, otherwise they might not have chosen a bastard.
Verse 7
[7] And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and expel
me out of my father's house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in
distress?
Expel me —
And deprive me of all share in my father's goods, which, though a bastard, was
due to me. This expulsion of him was the act of his brethren; but he here
ascribes it to the elders of Gilead; either because some of them were among
these elders, as is very probable from the dignity of this family; or because
this act, though desired by his brethren, was executed by the decree of the
elders, to whom the determination of all controversies about inheritance
belonged; and therefore it was their faults they did not protect him from the
injuries of his brethren.
Verse 8
[8] And
the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now,
that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be
our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.
Therefore —
Being sensible that we have done thee injury, we come now to make thee full
reparation.
Verse 9
[9] And
Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight
against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be
your head?
If, … — If
you recall me from this place where I am now settled, to the place whence I was
expelled.
Shall I, … —
Will you really make good this promise? Jephthah was so solicitous in this
case, either from his zeal for the public good, which required that he should
be so; or from the law of self-preservation, that he might secure himself from
his brethren; whose ill-will he had experienced, and whose injuries he could
not prevent, if, after he had served their ends, he had been reduced to his
private capacity.
Verse 10
[10] And
the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we
do not so according to thy words.
The Lord be witness —
The Lord be an hearer: so the Hebrew word is. Whatever we speak it concerns us
to remember, that God is an hearer!
Verse 11
[11] Then
Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and
captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the LORD in
Mizpeh.
All his words —
Or, all his matters, the whole business.
Before the Lord —
That is, before the public congregation, wherewith God was usually, and then
especially present.
Verse 12
[12] And
Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What
hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?
Messengers —
That is, ambassadors, to prevent blood-shed, that so the Israelites might be
acquitted before God and men, from all the sad consequences of this war; herein
he shewed great prudence, and no less piety.
What hast thou, … —
What reasonable cause hast thou for this invasion? In my land - He speaks this
in the name of all the people.
Verse 13
[13] And
the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah,
Because Israel took away my land, when they came up out of Egypt, from Arnon
even unto Jabbok, and unto Jordan: now therefore restore those lands again
peaceably.
My land —
That is, this land of Gilead, which was mine, but unjustly taken from me, by
Sihon and Og, the kings of the Ammonites; and the injury perpetuated by
Israel's detaining it from me. This land, before the conquests of Sihon and Og,
belonged partly to the Ammonites, and partly to the Moabites. And indeed, Moab
and Ammon did for the most part join their interests and their forces.
Verse 16
[16] But
when Israel came up from Egypt, and walked through the wilderness unto the Red
sea, and came to Kadesh;
The Red-sea —
Unto which they came three times; once, Exodus 13:18, again, a little after their
passage over it, and a third time, long after, when they came to Ezion Geber,
which was upon the shore of the Red-Sea, from whence they went to Kadesh; of
this time he speaks here.
Verse 17
[17] Then
Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass
through thy land: but the king of Edom would not hearken thereto. And in like
manner they sent unto the king of Moab: but he would not consent: and Israel
abode in Kadesh.
Abode —
Peaceably, and did not revenge their unkindness as they could have done.
Verse 19
[19] And
Israel sent messengers unto Sihon king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon;
and Israel said unto him, Let us pass, we pray thee, through thy land into my
place.
My place —
That is, unto the land of Canaan, which God hath given me.
Verse 20
[20] But
Sihon trusted not Israel to pass through his coast: but Sihon gathered all his
people together, and pitched in Jahaz, and fought against Israel.
Sihon fought — So
Sihon was the aggressor, and the Israelites were forced to fight in their own
defence.
Verse 22
[22] And
they possessed all the coasts of the Amorites, from Arnon even unto Jabbok, and
from the wilderness even unto Jordan.
The coasts —
Or, borders; together with all the land included within those borders.
Wilderness —
Namely, the desert of Arabia.
Verse 23
[23] So
now the LORD God of Israel hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people
Israel, and shouldest thou possess it?
So the Lord —
God, the sovereign Lord of all lands, hath given us this land; this he adds, as
a farther and convincing reason; because otherwise it might have been alledged
against the former argument, that they could gain no more right to that land
from Sihon, than Sihon himself had.
Verse 24
[24] Wilt
not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So
whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we
possess.
Wilt not thou — He
speaks according to their absurd opinion: the Ammonites and Moabites got their
land by conquest of the old inhabitants, whom they cast out; and this success,
though given them by the true God, for Lot's sake, Deuteronomy 2:9,19, they impiously ascribe to
their god Chemosh, whose gift they owned to be a sufficient title.
Verse 25
[25] And
now art thou any thing better than Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab? did
he ever strive against Israel, or did he ever fight against them,
Than Balak —
Art thou wiser than he? Or hast thou more right than he had? Balak, though he
plotted against Israel, in defence of his own land, which he feared they would
invade and conquer, yet never contended with them about the restitution of
those lands which Sihon took from him or his predecessors.
Verse 26
[26]
While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aroer and her towns, and in
all the cities that be along by the coasts of Arnon, three hundred years? why
therefore did ye not recover them within that time?
Three hundred years —
Not precisely, but about that time, either from their coming out of Egypt; or,
from their first conquest of those lands. He urges prescription, which is by
all men reckoned a just title, and it is fit it should be so for the good of
the world, because otherwise the door would be opened both to kings, and to
private persons, for infinite contentions and confusions.
Verse 27
[27]
Wherefore I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war
against me: the LORD the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel
and the children of Ammon.
I have not — I
have done thee no wrong.
Be judge —
Let him determine this controversy by the success of this day and war.
Verse 29
[29] Then
the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and
Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed
over unto the children of Ammon.
Spirit came —
Indued him with a more than ordinary courage and resolution.
Manasseh —
That is, Bashan, which the half tribe of Manasseh beyond Jordan inhabited.
Mizpeh of Gilead — So
called to distinguish it from other cities of the same name, having gathered
what forces he suddenly could, he came hither to the borders of the Ammonites.
Verse 33
[33] And
he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities,
and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the
children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.
Minnith — A
place not far from Rabbah, the chief city of the Ammonites.
Subdued before Israel — It does not appear, that he offered to take possession of the country.
Tho' the attempt of others to wrong us, will justify us in the defence of our
own right, yet it will not authorize us to do them wrong.
Verse 34
[34] And
Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to
meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her
he had neither son nor daughter.
His daughter — In
concert with other virgins, as the manner was.
Verse 35
[35] And
it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my
daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble
me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.
Trouble me —
Before this, I was troubled by my brethren; and since, by the Ammonites; and
now most of all, tho' but occasionally, by thee.
Opened my mouth —
That is, I have vowed.
Cannot go back —
That is, not retract my vow; I am indispensably obliged to perform it.
Verse 36
[36] And
she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do
to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the
LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of
Ammon.
Do to me — Do
not for my sake make thyself a transgressor; I freely give my consent to thy
vow.
Verse 37
[37] And
she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two
months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity,
I and my fellows.
Mountains —
Which she chose as a solitary place, and therefore fittest for lamentation.
Bewail —
That I shall die childless, which was esteemed both a curse and a disgrace for
the Israelites, because such were excluded from that great privilege of
increasing the holy seed, and contributing to the birth of the Messiah.
Verse 39
[39] And
it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father,
who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man.
And it was a custom in Israel,
Did with her —
Jephthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but only devoted to perpetual
virginity. This appears, 1. From verse 37,38, where we read, that she bewailed not her
death, which had been the chief cause of lamentation, if that had been vowed,
but her virginity: 2. From this verse 39, where, after he had said, that he did with
her according to his vow; he adds, by way of declaration of the matter of that
vow, and she knew no man. It is probably conceived, that the Greeks, who used to
steal sacred histories, and turn them into fables, had from this history their
relation of Iphigenia (which may be put for Jephtigenia) sacrificed by her
father Agamemnon, which is described by many of the same circumstances
wherewith this is accompanied.
Verse 40
[40] That
the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the
Gileadite four days in a year.
The daughter of Jephthah — It is really astonishing, that the general stream of commentators,
should take it for granted, that Jephthah murdered his daughter! But, says Mr.
Henry, "We do not find any law, usage or custom, in all the Old Testament,
which doth in the least intimate, that a single life was any branch or article
of religion." And do we find any law, usage or custom there, which doth in
the least intimate, that cutting the throat of an only child, was any branch or
article of religion? If only a dog had met Jephthah, would he have offered up
that for a burnt-offering? No: because God had expressly forbidden this. And had
he not expressly forbidden murder? But Mr. Poole thinks the story of
Agamemnon's offering up Iphigenia took its rise from this. Probably it did. But
then let it be observed, Iphigenia was not murdered. Tradition said, that Diana
sent an hind in her stead, and took the maid to live in the woods with her.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Judges》
11 Chapter 11
Verses 1-33
Jephthah the Gileadite.
Jephthah
It is common to regard Jephthah as one of the wildest
characters of the Bible--a rough and heedless man; alike rash in vowing and
heartless in fulfilling; one whom it is strange to find in the eleventh chapter
of Hebrews. Jephthah was neither a godless nor a selfish man. Not godless, for
we find in the brief annals of his life more copious recognition of God than in
the case of most of the other judges; and not selfish, because, forgetting his
private wrongs, he devoted his life to the service of his country, and, overcoming
his strongest feelings of natural affection, he did with his daughter according
to his vow. We shall be nearer the truth if we regard Jephthah as a good man,
sadly misguided; a man roughly trained, poorly educated, and very deficient in
enlightened views; wishing to serve God, but in great error as to what would
prove an acceptable service; a man in whose religion the ideas of his
neighbours of Moab and Ammon had a strong though unknown influence; one who,
with the deepest loyalty to God, had unconsciously come under the delusion that
Jehovah would accept of such an offering as the neighbouring nations offered to
their gods. In trying to estimate Jephthah aright it is necessary that we bear
his early history vividly in mind. He had the grievous misfortune to have a
wicked mother, a woman of abandoned character; and as in these circumstances
his father could not have been much better, his childhood must have been very
dreary. No good example, no holy home, no mother’s affection, no father’s wise
and weighty counsel. If Jephthah owed little to his parents, he owed less to
his brothers. If he knew little of the sunbeams of parental love, he knew less
of the amenities of brotherly affection. By his brothers he was, as we may say,
kicked out from his father’s house; he was driven forth into the wide, wide
world, to shift as he might; and this under the influence of a motive all too
common, but which in this case appears in all its native repulsiveness. It was
to prevent him from sharing in his father’s inheritance; to keep to themselves
the largest possible share. A wretched revelation truly of family spirit! None
of the dew of Hermon here. The life to which, in these circumstances, Jephthah
resorted was wild and rough, but was not considered immoral in those wild
times. He became a freebooter on the borders of Moab and Ammon, like many a
borderer two or three centuries ago in Cumberland or Wigton; carrying on an
irregular warfare in the form of raids for plunder; gathering to himself the
riff-raff of the country-side. The occupation was very unfavourable to a
religious life, and yet somehow (such is the sovereignty of grace) Jephthah
evidently acquired deep religious impressions. He was strong against idolatry,
and that not merely because it was the religion of his enemies, but because he
had a deep regard for the God of Israel, and had been led in some way to
recognise the obligation to serve Him only, and to be jealous for His glory.
And, partly perhaps through the great self-control which this enabled him to
exercise, and the courageous spirit which a living belief in such a God
inspired, he had risen to great distinction as a warrior in the mode of life
which he followed, so that when a leader was needed to contend with the
Ammonites, Jephthah was beyond all question the man most fitted for the post.
It is very singular how things come round. What a strange feeling Jephthah must
have had when his brothers and old neighbours came to him, inviting and
imploring him to become their head; trying as best they could to undo their
former unkindness, and get him, for their safety, to assume the post for which
not one of them was fitted! It is amazing what an ill-treated man may gain by
patiently biding his time. In every history there are parallel incidents to that
which now occurred in the ease of Jephthah--that of Coriolanus, for example;
but it is not every one who has proved so prompt and patriotic. He gave way to
no reproach over the past, but only made conditions for the future which were
alike reasonable and moderate. His promptness supplies a great and oft-needed
lesson for Christians; showing how ready we should be to forgive and forget
ill-treatment; to return blessing for cursing, and good for evil. But let us
now notice what was peculiar in Jephthah’s mode of accepting office. In
contemplating the prospect of the Ammonites being subdued, it is not he, but
Jehovah, whom he regards as the victor. (Judges 11:9); and after he has been made
head and captain he utters all his words before the Lord at Mizpeh (verse11).
And now it was that he made his fatal vow. He made it as a new pledge of his
dependence on God, and desire to honour Him. The strangest thing about the
transaction is, that Jephthah should have been allowed in these circumstances
to make such a vow. It was common enough in times of great anxiety and danger
to devote some much-valued object to God. But Jephthah left it to God, as it
were, to select the object. He would not specify it, but would simply engage,
if he should return in peace from the children of Ammon, to offer to the Lord
whatever should come forth from the doors of his house to meet him. It seemed a
pious act to leave to God the selection of that object. Jephthah’s error lay in
supposing that God would select, that God would accept the responsibility which
he laid upon Him. What followed we hardly need to rehearse. But what became of
Jephthah’s daughter? Undoubtedly the weight of evidence is in favour of the
solution that, like Iphigenia at Aulis, Jephthah’s daughter was offered as a
burnt-offering. It is a shocking thought, and yet not inconsistent with the
supposition that essentially Jephthah was a sincere and loyal servant of God.
We must remember that he was an unenlightened man, ill brought up, not
possessing the cool, well-balanced judgment of one who had calmly and carefully
studied things human and Divine with the best lights of the age, but subject to
many an impulse and prejudice that had never been corrected, and had at last
become rooted in his nature. We must remember that Gilead was the most remote
and least enlightened part of the land of Israel, and that all around, among
all his Moabite and Ammonite neighbours, the impression prevailed that human
sacrifices were acceptable to the gods. This remarkable narrative carries some
striking lessons.
1. In the first place, there is a lesson from the strange,
unexpected, and most unseasonable combination in Jephthah’s experience of
triumph and desolation, public joy and private anguish. It seems so unsuitable,
when all hearts are wound up to the feeling of triumph, that horror and
desolation should come upon them and overwhelm them. But what seems so
unseasonable is what often happens. It often seems as if it would be too much
for men to enjoy the fulfilment of their highest aspirations without something
of an opposite kind. General Wolfe and Lord Nelson dying in the moment of
victory are types of a not infrequent experience. At the moment when Ezekiel
attains his highest prophetical elevation, his house is made desolate, his wife
dies. The millionaire that has scraped and saved and struggled to leave a
fortune to his only son is often called to lay him in the grave. Providence has
a wonderful store of compensations. Sometimes those who are highest in worldly
position are the dreariest and most desolate in heart.
2. Another striking lesson of Jephthah’s life concerns the errors of
good men. It dissipates the notion that good men cannot go far wrong. But let
us learn from Jephthah all the good we can. He was remarkable for two great
qualities. He depended for everything on God; he dedicated everything to God.
It is the very spirit which the gospel of Jesus Christ is designed to form and
promote. Jephthah was willing, according to his light, to give up to God the
dearest object of his heart. One thing is very certain. Such sacrifices can be
looked for from none but those who have been reconciled to God by Jesus Christ.
To them, but only to them, God has become all in all. They, and they only, can
afford to sacrifice all that is seen and temporal. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
Why are ye come unto me
now when ye are in distress?--The elders of Gilead got into trouble, and
they said, “We are in distress; ‘we turn again to thee,’” etc. Jephthah mocked
them, and said, “If I fight for you and win ‘shall I be your head?‘” Who can
tell how suggestively he uttered the word “your”?--head of a mob of
ingrates--“your”: and his heart said, “Ha, ha! ‘Why are ye come unto me now
when ye are in distress?’ Why did you not come twelve months ago? Why did you
not come when the feast was on the table smoking hot? Why did you not ask me to
the dance and the revel and the high glee of Gilead? Here you are like a number
of whipped hounds coming to me in your poverty and weakness and humiliation;
you have come to the bastard.” It was not a resentful speech: it was the
eloquence of a noble man. Some people can only be taught when they are whipped.
These people belonged to that bad quality. Have we not here a revelation of
human nature? Can we boast ourselves against the elders of Gilead and say we
are of a higher quality? Are we not all guilty before one another in this very
respect? There are some men we never write to except when we want something.
They never received a friendly letter from us in their lives. The moment we
come into distress or difficulty then we write to those men and call them
friends. We pay our friends unconsciously a high tribute by going to them again
and again in our distress. Our going, being translated into language, means,
“We have come again; every other door is shut against us; this kind, hospitable
home-door was never thrust in our faces, it was always opened by some kindly
hand: the last time we came it was for help, we have come on the same errand
again.” This may be mean enough on our part, and yet there is an unconscious
tribute to the very friends whom we neglected in the time of our strength and
prosperity. See how this same question penetrates the whole warp and woof, the
whole web of life and thought. Sometimes it is the Church that asks the
question. The Church says to some applicants for admission, “’Why are ye come
unto me now when ye are in distress?‘ You never come in the summer-time you
never come in the fair weather: why are ye come to me now when ye are in
distress? What has brought you? Which of God’s constables has arrested you and planted you in this
prison? Trouble is your gaoler, and he has turned the key of the prison upon
you in Church.” There are people we use thus meanly, and the Church may be used
often on this low ground. We go when we are sad. But are we aware that here
also we are paying an unconscious tribute to the Church and to everything that
is centralised and glorified by that Divine emblem? The Church wants you to
come in the time of distress. The Church is not an upbraiding mother. She may
utter a sigh over you as she sees your ragged And destitute condition, but she
admits you all the same and tells you to go up higher. If our friends can ask the
question of Jephthah, if the Church can put the same inquiry, so in very deed
and in the fullest significance can the Bible. Who goes to the Bible in the
summer-time? The dear old Bible says to many of us, “What, you back again? What
has happened now? Some one dead? property lost? not well? What do you want with
me to-day? Tell me your case; don’t profess you love me and want me for my own
sake; tell me what it is you want before you begin, and I will open at the
place.” It is God’s book, because it is so lovely and so sweet and so large of
heart. So far we have taken an advancing line. We began with our friends, we
passed through the Church, then we went to the Bible, and now we go to God.
This is the Divine inquiry: “Why are ye come to Me now when ye are in
distress?” This is the great hold which God has upon us all. His family would
be very small but for the distress of the world. His heaven can hardly hold His
household because of this wearying trouble, this eternal want, this gnawing
worm of discontent. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Jephthah vowed a vow unto
the Lord.
Jephthah’s vow
I. How the Lord
suffereth good men and wise men to snare themselves, and bring needless sorrows
and woes on themselves by temerity and rashness (1 Samuel 25:34; Matthew 26:31).
1. The folly of man’s heart, which would walk at large, unconfined
within the rules of wisdom; this makes men rash even in the things of God, as
here.
2. God’s just desertion of good men, for their humiliation; and to
give them experience of themselves, and how their own wisdom will make them
befool themselves, as David did after his rash numbering of the people, and cleave
more close to God and His counsel, when they see their own counsels prove fit
for nothing but to cast them down. To be well advised in that we do or speak,
avoid temerity and rashness, by which, making more haste than good speed, men
do but brew their own sorrow. Consider--
1. That rashness doeth nothing well (Proverbs 15:22). “Without counsel
thoughts come to nought,” and the hasty man, we say, never wants woe. Herod
himself, as wicked as he was, was sorry for his rash oath; and yet how
mischievous was it, against the life of John Baptist! A man going in haste
easily slideth (Proverbs 19:2).
2. A note of a man fearing God is to carry his matters with
discretion (Psalms 112:5). “The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of true wisdom.”
3. The law rejected a blind sacrifice; the gospel requireth a
reasonable (Romans 12:1); and all sacrifices must be
seasoned with the salt of discretion.
4. Rashness and temerity
lays us bare and naked to the lashes of God, of men, and of our own
consciences. Rules of direction to avoid this sin of rashness, attended with so
much sorrow.
First, watch carefully against thine own rashness in--
1. Judgment.
2. Affections.
3. Speeches.
4. Actions.
5. Passions.
Secondly, arm thyself with the rules of Christian prudence to
avoid this sin, and the sorrow of it; as knowing that it is not enough to be a
faithful servant, but he must be wise too.
II. The Lord
commonly exalting His servants with some high favour, brings some stinging
cross with it, to humble them.
1. The Lord spies in us a lewd nature and disposition, even like that
of the spider, which can turn everything into poison. There is in the best a
root of pride and vanity which in prosperity and warm sunshine sprouteth and
grows wonderfully stiff. Paul himself is in danger to be exalted out of measure
by abundance of revelation; and therefore the Lord, as a wise physician, adds a
dose of affliction to be an antidote to expel the poison of pride, and with a
prick lets out the wind of vainglory.
2. This height of honours, success, etc., easily gaineth our
affections and delights, and so draws and steals away our delights in the Lord.
We are prone to idolise them, and to give them our hearts, and therefore the
Lord is forced to pull our hearts from them, and by some buffetings and cooling
cards, tells us in what sliding and slippery places we stand, and therefore had
need still keep our watch about us, and not pour out our hearts upon such
momentary pleasures.
3. We are as children in our advancements who, having found honey,
eat too much. If the Lord did not thus sauce our dainties, how could we avoid the surfeit
of them? Alas! how would we dote upon the world if we found nothing but
prosperity, who are so set upon it for all the bitterness of it.
4. The Lord spies in us an unthankful disposition, who, when He
honours us, and lifts us up that we might lift up His name and glory, we let
the honour fall upon ourselves.
III. God doth often
turn the greatest delights and earthly pleasures of His servants to their
greatest sorrow.
1. From the transitoriness of all outward comforts; here below there
is never a gourd to cover our head, but a worm to consume it. And therefore
what a man doth chiefly delight in the fruition, he must needs be most vexed in
the separation and want of it.
2. From the naughty disposition of our hearts.
3. From the jealousy of God who hath made all His creatures,
ordinances, gifts, His servants as well as ours, and cannot abide that any of them should
have any place but of servants with us; His zeal cannot abide that they should
gain our hearts, or souls, or any power of them from Him, and therefore when
men go a-whoring after the creatures, and lay the level of their comfort below
the Lord Himself, then He shows the fervency of His zeal, either in removing
the gift or them from the comfort of it.
IV. All promises to
God or man lawful and in our power must be religiously and faithfully
performed; of all which, thou openeth thy mouth to the Lord, or before the
Lord, thou mayest not go back.
1. I say, all lawful promises, for no promise may be a bond of
iniquity, and the performance of such is but tying two sins together, as Herod
tied to a wicked oath, murder of John Baptist.
2. All promises in our power, for nothing can tie us to impossibilities,
as when the
bishop makes the priest vow perpetual continency--a thing out of his power and
reach.
3. To God or men.
And of the heathen given up to a reprobate sense it is said, they
were truce-breakers (Romans 1:30).
4. They must be performed religiously and faithfully. To a
conscionable performance three things are required.
Different views held as to Jephthah’s vow
Among Jewish paraphrasts and commentators, the more ancient are
mostly of opinion that Jephthah did actually sacrifice his daughter. They
censure the rashness of his vow, but they do not appear to doubt that the
sacrifice of the maiden was actually made. Some later Jewish writers, however,
of great authority, have contended that Jephthah’s daughter was not slain, but
devoted to a life of virginity; being shut up in a house which her father built
for the purpose, and there visited four days in each year by the maidens of
Israel as long as she lived. Among Christian writers, perhaps all during the
first ten centuries--certainly the exceptions, if any, were few and far
between--believed that the maiden was sacrificed. Later Christian writers have
not been so unanimous. Many, perhaps the majority, of those who have treated
upon the subject, hold the opinion which, as we have seen, was universal in the
early Church. Many others, of equal learning and eminence, have maintained that
Jephthah’s daughter was not offered by her father as a burnt offering, but that
she was permitted to live; among these, there are some who believe with the
modern Jews just mentioned, that she was shut up by her father and devoted to a
life of seclusion; while others suppose that she was devoted to the Lord’s
service in a life of celibacy, and was numbered during the remainder of her
life with the “women who assemble at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation,” performing duties of sacred service in connection with the
worship at Shiloh That Jephthah was “hasty in opening his lips before God” is
generally admitted; although this rashness is singularly in contrast with his
cautiousness and skill in negotiating and arguing with the Ammonite, and shows
how elements the most opposite may exist in the same character. That he
deliberately contemplated as possible the sacrifice of a human being is a
supposition scarcely to be entertained of one who is spoken of in the New
Testament as a man of faith. Yet that human sacrifices were familiar to him
cannot be doubted; and it is possible that familiarity with the rites of the
Ammonites, on whose borders he dwelt, and with whom human sacrifices, as is now
the case in many parts of Africa, were religious rites of daily occurrence, may
have blunted his feelings, and have caused him to forget how odious such offerings
were in the sight of God. The excitement of the occasion, however, seems to
have bewildered him, so that he forgot everything not immediately connected
with his forthcoming expedition. His vow was utterly rash. He did not take time
to consider, for example, that if an ass or a dog had first met him coming out
of his house on his return, to offer it to the Lord would have been an
abomination. Had he bestowed that thought upon the matter which reason itself
would teach us to be necessary when we open our lips to our Maker, he could not
have failed to reflect that it was possible, nay, likely, that his only and
beloved child would be the first to greet him on his return. It was natural
that he should offer a vow to the Lord; strange that he should have done it
with such impulsive rashness . . . The peculiar expression of the sacred text,
that “her father did with her according to his vow which he vowed, and she knew
no man,” may lend plausibility to the opinion, that she was devoted to a virgin
life. But against this view there lie three objections, which, when taken
together, compel us to adopt the opposite view. The first is, that a celibate
life formed no part of her father’s vow. The second is, that the great distance
at which Jephthah
was from Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, and the absence of any allusion in
all his history to its existence, render the theory of his daughter being
transferred thither improbable. The third is, that the misfortune of his birth
would alone have prevented such an arrangement. If the sons of a bastard,
according to the law of Moses, could not enter into the congregation of the
Lord to the tenth
generation, it is scarcely probable that Jephthah’s daughter could have secured
admission among the privileged women who rendered service about the tabernacle. We
therefore look upon the maiden as having been sacrificed. Upon the gloom of
this painful history, however, an ethereal brightness shines. What can be more
beautiful, more wonderful, than this pure and lovely maid, brought up among
bandits, and far from the tabernacle of God, thus freely and sweetly giving up
herself as a thank-offering for the victories of Israel? And who can fail to
see, in the story of the meek and self-sacrificing maid, “a marvellous and
mysterious adumbration of a better sacrifice of another soul, of an only child,
perfectly free and voluntary, and of virgin holiness and heavenly purity, the
sacrifice of Christ, who gave His spotless soul to death for our sakes”? (L.
H. Wiseman, M. A.)
I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.
Retreat impossible
I. what we have
done. “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord.”
1. We have opened our mouths before the Lord, first, “by confessing
our faith in Jesus Christ.”
2. We have also avowed and declared before the living God that we are
Christ’s disciples and followers.
3. We have opened our mouth to the Lord, next, because as we believe in
Jesus Christ, and take Him to be our Master, so we “have admitted the
Redeemer’s claims to our persons and services, and have resolved to live for Him alone in our
days.” We have made a dedication of ourselves to His service, declaring that we
are not our own, but bought with a price.
4. We have cast in our lot with His people.
II. What we cannot
do. “I cannot go back.” Having once become Christians, we cannot apostatise
from the faith. We cannot go back, even by temporary turnings aside.
1. If we did go back, we should show that we have been altogether
false until now.
2. We should incur frightful penalties. To go back is death, shame,
eternal ruin.
3. It would be so unreasonable. If you give up the religion of Jesus
Christ, what other religion would you have? If you were to give up the
pleasures of godliness, what other pleasures would you have? “Oh,” says one,
“we could go into the world.” Could you? If you are a child of God you are
spoiled for the world.
4. I have no inclination to go back. The man who is married to a good
wife thinks to himself, “If I had to marry again to-morrow morning, she should
be the bride, and happy would we be.” And so, if we had our choice to make
again, we would choose our dear Lord over again, only with much more eagerness
and earnestness than we did at first.
5. We have opened our mouth to the Lord, and we cannot go back
because we are so happy as we now are. A man does not turn his back upon that
which has become his life and his joy; he is bound to it by the bliss which he
derives from it. Can the Swiss forget his country when he listens to the home-music which
he heard as a child amidst his native hills? Does not the home-sickness come over him so that he longs
to be among the Alps again? Does not the Englishman, wherever he wanders,
whether by land or sea, feel his heart instinctively turn to the white cliffs
of Albion, and does he not say that with all her faults he loves his country still? Who would
cease to be that which he loves to be?
6. And then, besides that, we cannot go back from what we have said,
for Divine grace impels us onward. There is a secret power more mighty than all
other forces called the force of grace, and this has captured us.
III. Something which
we must do. If there is a present sacrifice demanded of us, we must make it
directly. If there is anything in your business, and you cannot be a Christian
if you do it, abjure it at once and for ever. If you are to do this, however,
you must ask for more grace. One other admonition to Christian people is
this--burn the boats behind you. When the Roman commander meant victory he
landed his troops on the coast where he knew there were thousands of enemies,
and he burned the boats, so as to cut off all chance of retreat. “But how are
we to get away if we are beaten?” “That is just it,” said he; “we will not be
beaten; we will not dream of such a thing.” “Burn the boats”--that is what you
Christian people must do. “Make no provision for the flesh.” Let the separation
between you and the world be final and irreversible. Say, “Here I go for Christ
and His Cross, for the truth of the Bible, for the laws of God, for holiness,
for trust in Jesus; and never will I go back, come what may.” (C. H.
Spurgeon.)
No trifling with God
“We have opened our mouth unto the Lord.” It is not what we
promised the Church, though in becoming members of it we have promised to
fulfil the mutual duties of Christians. It was not what we promised to the
minister, though, in the very fact of becoming members of a Church of which he
is the pastor we have a Christian duty towards him. It was not what we promised
one another, though we all owe something to each other. But we have opened our
mouth to the Lord. If a man must trifle, let him trifle with men, but not with
God. If promises to men may be lightly broken--and they should not be--yet let
us not trifle with promises made to God. And if solemn declarations ever can be
forgotten--which they should not be--yet not solemn declarations made to God.
Beware, oh! beware of anything like levity in entering into covenant with the
Most High. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Do to me according to that
which hath proceeded out of thy mouth.
A sacrifice of the world to high principle
Never in any age, or among any people, was there a more ready or
thorough sacrifice of the world to high principle and duty than was made by the
daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. It was made, too, in most trying
circumstances. If ever the world seemed bright to her, it must have been when
she went forth with timbrels and dances to meet her father. The land of Israel
they had so longed for was to be their home--they were to dwell there in peace
and honour, high in rank, great in power. It would seem to the daughter of
Jephthah as if life were but beginning; the night seemed past and the morning
breaking--a morning without cloud. She could not but anticipate a long bright
day for her father and herself; and it would be all the more welcome that they
had sighed for it so often, and watched for it through a night so dark and so
long. It was in these most trying circumstances that the daughter of Jephthah
heard from her father’s lips that he had opened his mouth unto the Lord and could not go
back. Yet without one word of reproach or complaint, and without hesitation,
she said unto him who had vowed that rash vow, “My father, if thou hast
opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me,” etc. Think of her, that child of an
outcast--brought up in a heathen land and in a camp--think of her, how pure,
how unworldly, how unselfish, how noble in spirit! Think of her patriotism,
think of her self-sacrifice, that you may abhor all that is mean and selfish,
and worldly and untruthful; and that you may cease to grudge the sacrifices
your Father in heaven requires in love and wisdom, and for your own deliverance
and safety. (M. Nicholson, D. D.)
Let me alone two months,
that I may.., bewail my virginity.--
The wail of Jephthah’s daughter
It is this wail of Jephthah’s daughter that rises from every
generation of this world’s history. What we are all of us called upon to see
with our own eyes, and judge with our own hearts, is a similar, or much more
grievous waste of all that is good in human nature, of devotedness to country
and family, of fine feeling, of the best intellect. Again and again, in our own
society, we see the most splendid mental abilities squandered in the quest of
what can never be discovered, the truest eloquence and highest moral feeling
consecrated to a cause that is not worth lifting a finger to defend. Who has
not seen the most precious human feelings wasted, you would say, on worthless
people, while they might have fertilised and enriched responsive natures--the
noblest devotedness sacrificed to a mere lie, or deception, or mockery? Two
months was not too long to weep over the dreadful misguidedness of human actions,
and the consequent waste or outward unprofitableness of what is best in human
nature. Still, there is a compensating element even here. These companions who
sympathised with their friend, and at last decked her as if for her bridal, and
gave her into her father’s hands, must no doubt have felt to the close of life
that a world in which anything so tragic could happen was a blighted,
melancholy world. Still, as they themselves passed through the various womanly
duties that fell to them, and felt still the hold that event had taken; as they
told the story of the noble maiden to their own children, and found how it
moved and controlled them, and how many, through that example, were urged to
more self-sacrificing deeds, and to higher thoughts about what is beautiful and
good in life; must not these women sometimes have thought that possibly the
real children of Jephthah’s daughter, those who had truly succeeded to her
nature, were more and better than could have been hers, had she lived? If then
by family circumstances, or in any other way, we are called upon to sacrifice
our own will to what seems a very needless, provoking, and rash plan, what we
have to do is to seek to have something of the spirit of Jephthah’s daughter,
and accept our position without a murmur; knowing that, though we do not see
how, any more than she did, this may, and will, by God’s blessing, result in
such development of our own character, and such enlargement of our usefulness,
as could not otherwise be attained. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Did with her according to
his vow.--
Modern Jephthahs; or, parental immolations
In Jephthah’s vow we see two things--
1. A good feeling overcoming the judgment.
2. A sense of right leading to an enormous crime.
I. Jephthah
sacrificed his daughter to the true God. But what are many modern parents
doing? Why, offering up their children to false gods!
1. The god of idleness. Indolence is ruin.
2. The god of worldliness.
3. The god of ambition.
II. Jepthah
sacrificed only the body of his daughter. But parents in these modern times are
found immolating the souls of their children; they are made to prostrate their
powers, and to yield the Divine sentiments of their nature to idleness, pelf,
vanity, fashion.
1. Soul immolation is more gradual.
2. Soul immolation is more mischievous. It is the ruin of the whole
man.
III. Jephthah
sacrificed his daughter from a noble impulse. No such high feeling prompts
parents in these days to sacrifice the souls of their children even to the
false and ignominious divinities. They do it either from the spirit of custom,
vanity, greed, or ambition. It is a cold-blooded, soulless immolation. If there
is any feeling, it is the mere lust of the eye and pride of life.
IV. Jephthah
sacrificed his daughter with a terrible regret. But modern parents lay the
souls of their children on the altar of worldliness, vanity, and sin, not only
without any compunction, but with an utter indifference. They see the souls of
their daughters running into grubs, butterflies, swine, and heave no sigh of regret.
V. Jephthah
sacrificed his daughter with her full concurrence. Were worldly parents to say
to their daughters at the dawn of their intelligent and moral life, “We intend
to take all the innocency from your young loves--all the sensibility from your
young consciences--all the religious poetry from your young natures--and to
make you the dolls of fashion, the devotees of a sham life, the victims of a
pampered animalism, and thus rifle you of your birthright as immortals”--this
would be honest; this would bring the question so thoroughly home to the young
heart as would, we think, rouse opposition to the fiendish plan. (Homilist.)
The vow performed
To Jephthah and his daughter the vow was sacred, irre- vocable.
The deliverance of Israel by so signal and complete a victory left no
alternative. It would have been well if they had known God differently; yet
better this darkly impressive issue which went to the making of Hebrew faith
and strength, than easy, unfruitful evasion of duty. We are shocked by the expenditure
of fine feeling and heroism in upholding a false idea of God and obligation to
Him; but are we outraged and distressed by the constant effort to escape from
God which characterises our age? And have we for our own part come yet to the
right idea of self and its relations? Our century, beclouded on many points, is
nowhere less informed than in matters of self-sacrifice; Christ’s doctrine is
still uncomprehended. Jephthah was wrong, for God did not need to be bribed to
support a man who was bent on doing his duty. And many fail now to perceive
that personal development and service of God are in the same line. Life is made
for generosity, not mortification; for giving in glad ministry, not for giving
up in hideous sacrifice. It is to be devoted to God by the free and holy use of
body, mind, and soul in the daily tasks which Providence appoints. The wailing
of Jephthah’s daughter rings in our ears, bearing with it the anguish of many a
soul tormented in the name of that which is most sacred, tormented by mistakes
concerning God, the awful theory that He is pleased with human suffering. The
relics of that hideous Moloch worship which polluted Jephthah’s faith, not even
yet purged away by the Spirit of Christ, continue and make religion an anxiety
and life a kind of torture. I do not speak of that devotion of thought and
time, eloquence and talent to some worthless cause which here and there amazes
the student of history and human life--the passionate ardour, for example, with
which Flora Macdonald gave herself up to the service of a Stuart. But religion
is made to demand sacrifices compared to which the offering of Jephthah’s
daughter was easy. The imagination of women especially, fired by false
representations of the death of Christ, in which there was a clear Divine
assertion of self, while it is made to appear as complete suppression of self,
bears many on in a hopeless and essentially immoral endeavour. Has God given us
minds, feelings, right ambitions, that we may crush them? Does He purify our
desires and aspirations by the fire of His own Spirit and still require us to
crush them? Are we to find our end in being nothing, absolutely nothing, devoid
of will, of purpose, of personality? Is this what Christianity demands? Then
our religion is but refined suicide, and the God who desires us to annihilate
ourselves is but the Supreme Being of the Buddhists, if those may be said to
have a god who regard the suppression of individuality as salvation. Christ was
made a sacrifice for us. Yes; He sacrificed everything except His own eternal
life and power; He sacrificed ease and favour and immediate success for the
manifestation of God. So He achieved the fulness of personal might and royalty.
And every sacrifice His religion calls us to make is designed to secure that
enlargement and fulness of spiritual individuality in the exercise of which we
shall truly serve God and our fellows. Does God require sacrifice? Yes,
unquestionably--the sacrifice which every reasonable being must make in order
that the mind, the soul may be strong and free, sacrifice of the lower for the
higher, sacrifice of pleasure for truth, of comfort for duty, of the life that
is earthly and temporal for the life that is heavenly and eternal. And the
distinction of Christianity is that it makes this sacrifice supremely
reasonable because it reveals the higher life, the heavenly hope, the eternal
rewards for which the sacrifice is to be made, that it enables us in making it
to feel ourselves united to Christ in a Divine work which is to issue in the
redemption of mankind. (R. A. Watson, M. A.)
Jephthah’s payment of his vow
Jephthah paid his vow. At a frightful sacrifice he gave up what he
had promised. When he gave up his daughter he gave up his all. Did Jephthah
open his mouth unto the Lord? and have not you who are parents--have not you
dedicated your children to the Lord, and vowed that they shall be His? Not
rashly, not hastily, but with due deliberation you did so, and that in a holy
ordinance appointed by God for the very purpose. Your vow is registered in
heaven; is it to be forgotten on earth? You have opened your mouth unto the
Lord; will you go back? God asks your children to be presented to Him not as slain, but living
sacrifices. You have vowed; are you paying your vows? Do you pray for your
children? Do you teach them to pray? Do you speak to them of God and of Jesus,
and lead them in the way of holiness? And when your vows require that you
should exercise discipline, and when faithfulness to God requires that you
should lay upon your children what for the present is not joyous but grievous,
do you shrink from it? To spare your feelings, do you shrink from it? Oh,
remember Jephthah when you are thus tempted; and think, if you were under such
a vow as he was, how you would act. And you children, think of Jephthah’s
daughter. Let her spirit take possession of you. Think how she lived above her
own personal and selfish interests; think how she honoured her father and
honoured God. (M. Nicholson, D. D.)
“Did with her according to his vow”
If he did not offer
her as a burnt-offering, then he did not do with her according to the vow.
Moreover, why all this wailing and anguish if, after all, all that was going to
happen to her is what happens to thousands who seem to stand in little need of
compassion? Then, again, why did she ask for the one favour of a respite of two
months to bewail her virginity, if she was to have thirty or forty years with
leisure for that purpose? And, lastly, if the mere fact of her remaining
unmarried fulfilled even that part of the vow which specified that she was to
be the Lord’s, then what objection can we make to other young women giving
themselves to the Lord in the same way? If Jephthah’s daughter became a nun,
and if this was judged a fulfilment of his vow, if by being a virgin she was
somehow more the Lord’s than by being a married woman, a stronger foundation
need not be sought for the establishment of nunneries. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Vows which should not be kept
Two men are very foolish or stubborn who fulfil an agreement which
they both see to be disadvantageous, and wish to fall away from. No duty
whatever compels them to fulfil it, and if they do so they are justly the
laughing-stock of their acquaintances. Now, this is precisely the case in which
a man finds himself who has vowed to God what turns out to be sinful, for God
can never wish him to fulfil a contract which, he now sees, involves sin. A man
swears to do a certain thing because he thinks it will be pleasing to God, but
if he discovers that, instead of being pleasing, it will be hateful to God, to
perform his vow, and do that vowed but hateful thing, is to insult God. By the
very discovery of the sinfulness of a vow, the maker of it is absolved from
performing it. God shrinks much more than he can do from the perpetration of
sin. Both parties fall from the agreement. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Typical aspect of Jephthah’s vow
See in the tragic tale a foreshadowing of the Cross of our Lord
Christ. He took upon Himself our human nature, and having vowed it as the
ransom of the guilty world He never hesitated, despite the awful cost, to keep
His vow. Gladly did He make voluntary oblation of His own spotless humanity, a
vicarious sacrifice to set the whole race free from the spiritual children of
Ammon, the followers of the evil one. That it was a costly sacrifice He offered
we know full well from the story of Gethsemane; nevertheless He did only cry,
“Not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” then held His peace. Do we think it is true
that He bewailed His virginity with His fellows on the mountains before His
death? Yet we know that from the human standpoint our Lord’s ministry of three
years and a half was almost fruitless. Multitudes followed Him to see His
miracles; they crowded about Him bringing their sick folk to be healed; but
they did not become His disciples, and accept heartily His Word. To His human
nature this must ever have been a grief and sore trial. Once He said to the
Twelve, “Will ye also go away?” We know that not even His own relations believed on Him. (Arthur
Ritchie.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》