And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

So I read the above sentence and immediately thought “oh no!”. But before I rant about Jephthah, I’ll have a little natter about the other bit in Judges that caught my eye.

I liked Caleb’s bit part. It’s such a random little extra bit which seems to have no impact on the rest of the book. Obviously someone at the time thought it was significant, but failed to tell us why. Random.

The tent peg massacre was interesting. I could just imagine that going oh so wrong: “Sisera then awoke, as the tent collapsed”. Surely she had a kitchen knife or something a bit less guesome than a tent peg? I guess it was a case of plausible deniability in case he woke up… “No, I’m not about to cave in your head, I’ve got some tents to put up…”

At sunday school Gideon is the superhero of all kids, along with David (vs Goliath), except we can believe that we are Gideon because he is small and scared and owns a fleece. But he ain’t all good. There’s a bit of me that is glad about that. But I shouldn’t be.

Anyway back to Jephthah. Why?!? Why would he vow that? Why? What did he expect? ( Wonders if he was looking for a way out of a bad marriage, or whether he didn’t like the pet cat ) But why? The photo above represent the greating I tend to get when I get home. My little girl (age 14 months) knows I’ll be coming in that door. And she looks out for me. I love it! Surely Jephthah should have known the first thing out of the house to meet him would be a person, and probably his only child or his wife.

What I don’t get is why he seems so surprised. Perhaps he didn’t expect he would defeat the Ammonites, and was said the vow out of desparation to save his own life. Then if he lost he wouldn’t have to go through with it. But in that instance I’d want to loose – I wouldn’t want to save my own life in exchange for my daughter’s. So bizarre. Can’t understand that.

Perhaps he kind of hoped it would be the Abraham/Isaac thing, and was desparately looking around for a ram in a bushes? But God was testing Abraham – this guy just made a foolish vow. Now he may have hoped the ram thing would have happened but he can’t have been thinking/expecting that when he made the vow.

I don’t get it. Why would he make that vow? I can only think that he wasn’t really thinking. I pray that God protects me from ever making foolish promises – particularly concerning my daughter.

The photo

This is the sight that greets me when I get home, normally minus the off-camera SB800 strobe.

31mm @ f4.0 1/15s – SB800 ttl mode off-camera

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

Numbers is full of rather dense people. I think Balak excels himself in believing that God is going to change his mind depending on the mountain he and Balaam stand on. The most significant moment for the Isrealites isn’t really there stupidest, to be fair. Having sent out spies to check out the land which God has said he is going to give them, they decide that it’s a bit scary and they don’t want to play that game. To be fair to most of the Isrealites, all they are hearing from the spies is doom a gloom about how big and butch the chaps in that land are.

Today’s photo is a tribute the Caleb-the-spy. He struck me as a glass-half-full kind of person. I’m sure he’d seen the same scary natives but he choses to focus on the rewards for victory and says “We can do it”. Sadly he doesn’t attribute the “we can do it” part to God, because then I’d have more reason for having picked him as my subject for today. I think I chose him because he did stand out in the Book of Numbers as someone positively doing the right thing. Balaam does pretty well mostly, Aaron is a good chap, but gets it wrong a couple of times and even Moses messes up. Caleb is one of the two over-twenty-when-the-Isrealites-started-wandering to make it into the promised land. Joshua was the other one, but he gets “bigged up” in children’s bibles/songs etc. and I might get to talk about him later. So I picked the Caleb.

The really “duh” moment comes a bit later when having grumbled and been told by God that they’ve blown it, the Isrealites then decide to have a go at taking the land by force and get properly whooped. I wonder if God ever considered trying reverse-physcology on them to get them to do what he really wanted?

The photo

I wasn’t really thinking. I guess this should have been a glass half-full of milk. But I got myself a port instead, of which this is a half-full glass. I did try lighting it on a table, but decided the black material base would be easier for the effect I wanted. Note to self: Must clean the glass next time.

SB-800 strobe off camera, manual mode, 1/2 power with a cardboard&drinking straw snoot. 70mm @ f10 1/60s ISO 200