Judges 12

Bible Passage:  Judges 12

At the beginning of the chapter, we see something familiar. The Ephraimites came forward to complain against Jephthah just like they did to Gideon in chapter 8. But this time they even threatened to burn Jephthah’s house with fire. Also, this time they were not turned away with a gentle reply, instead Jephthah gathered the Gileadites and there broke out civil war!

I still remember in RE classes we are taught to emulate Gideon, in the way that he was eloquent to turn away the anger of his brethren and evade from fight between brethren.

But Iooking at Gideon and Jephthah reminds me of this personality test I did during a church camp, i think it was separating the thinking versus the feeling. The activity was asking both groups what would we do if we are trying to tell a sports team member that has become obese to relinquish his position in the team. The thinking team will not think twice about putting out the facts that the team member has grown fat and unfit, bringing the rest down, while the feeling team was trying the find ways to talk in a roundabout way in order not to hurt the person.

Given my personality, I think I would have reacted more like Jephthah bringing out the facts and pointing out the fault of the Ephraimites! Though I certainly am not keen to bring about a war amongst brethren.

AquillofGod had reminded us that meeting anger with anger seldom, if ever, results in anything good. From this incident, let us learn not to be like the Ephraimites who stand by and watch when our brethren is in trouble or busy working on church event, and only murmur when the trouble or event is over.

“Shibboleth”- [noun]
a peculiarity of pronunciation, behavior, mode of dress, etc., that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons.

Here we also learn of the origin of an English word.

The Gileadites used this word to make the Ephriamites give themselves away, because of the way they pronounce the word.

I just watched a documentary called Escaping North Korea where the North Koreans have to smuggle themselves across the whole of China and then through Laos then to Thailand just so they can seek asylum as fugitives to be sent to South Korea. Throughout their journey through China they cannot speak to each other or speak at all in order not to give their identity away otherwise they may get caught and deported back to North Korea where they will be tortured or killed. What a fearful journey!

On the topic of speech, can people catch us from our words that will allow them to bring a charge against us or condemn us?

Recently there has been a lot of not so good news about certain so-called Christians. People who met these bad christians make use of the opportunity to criticise the religion. During this time there arise many voices, some Christians criticizing, some non Christians criticizing, and some die-hard fans defending their leaders. From the words they utter, you can tell how much they know or don’t know Jesus.

I wondered to myself how many people actually know the truth about Jesus if even Christians do not know Him. And how many people are misled or misunderstood inside and outside of Christianity?

There was once when we went to knock on doors to evangelize, a man got really angry just by hearing that we were Christians. Then someone ask if we should stop the work for time being. But now we are still enjoying the freedom to preach; there may come a day we will not be given such freedom. So I feel we cannot cease the work while the door remains open.

However we must watch how we speak. Can we bring the true gospel to the hearts of men? We are reaching out to people in peace, and we need to bring the message of peace across through our actions, our words, our expressions.

May our words manifest the knowledge of God instead of bring damnation to ourselves.