Jephthah’s Character Sketch

Jephthah: A Warrior with Faith

I chose Jephthah as my person of interest in the character sketch bible study. He was a son of a prostitute in Gilead who became a warrior (Odell, p. 66). His father had other sons who chased him out of the house and ended up in Tob.

At one time, the Ammonites started a war against the Israelites and which forced Jephthah to come back to Gilead because the elders of that region begged if he could lead them to war. Jephthah resisted for a moment because of the harsh treatment he received before but later agreed to lead them. He sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites to enquire why he was attacking the Israelites. The king responded that the Israelites took away his land when they arrived from Egypt. Jephthah tried to negotiate with the king of the Ammonites which forced them to go to war which involved other cities and nations that were fighting against the Israelites (Leiter, p. 203). He accomplished a lot of things through God, thus, he surrendered everything to the Lord. Jephthah even granted the wish of his daughter to be left alone for two months to mourn over her virginity. In all his activities, he proved that having faith in God can help in fighting wars and other trials in life.

Important Lessons from Jephthah’s Story

According to this story, we learn that it is important to keep promises, thus, Christians should not make promises that they cannot fulfill. Additionally, we learn that we can suffer because of the sins of other people. For instance, Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute, and this was considered an act of infidelity on his father’s part. It means that Jephthah was seen as an illegitimate son and this forced his brothers to chase him out of the house. There, Christians should not judge people before going deep to investigate the cause of their suffering (Odell, p. 93). As believers, we should be close to God at all times unlike the brothers of Jephthah. They saw him as a barrier to get their inheritance and chased him away, but, went back to Jephthah when they were attacked by the Ammonites. Therefore, the story of Jephthah brings a lot of inspiration to Christians to face different challenges in life.

Work Cited

Leiter, Yechiel. John Locke’s Political Philosophy and the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Odell, Joseph R. Faith Is Not Blind: Learning to Love the Lord with All of Our Mind. WestBow Press, 2018.