Theological Commentary: Click Here
No good deed
ever goes unpunished. I’ve found that’s
a pretty true saying in my life. When
you compliment one person, others around you get jealous of why they didn’t get
a compliment. When you invest in the
life of another, other people wonder why you didn’t invest in their life. When you buy a small gift for another person,
people wonder why you didn’t get one for them or even ask them to so in on the
gift and make it from a whole group. It
seems like no matter what good we do, there is always a place that others can
be critical should they seek to find such a place.
That’s not
too far from what happens to Jephthah here. Jephthah goes out and frees the
people from the Ammonite oppression.
When he comes back, the people of Ephraim are angry that they don’t get
to participate in the glory. Rather than
celebrate the freedom from oppression, their worried about the fact the others
might notice that they didn’t help out.
Jephthah feels the brunt of their wrath because they didn’t come out to
help when called.
What’s worse
is that this feeling escalates to war between the people of God. Thousands of people die over a matter of social
standing. People die over a dispute of
who gets honor and glory. People die
because Jephthah is the son of a prostitute who became a leader and did a great
thing and others were unable to accept it as God’s hand of salvation at
work. People die because others are
blind and ignorant.
Human
jealousy is a terrible thing. Our own
envy can cause us to taint our perspective of God’s hand at work. Our own envy can infect other people and
bring them into destruction. As I said,
no good deed ever goes unpunished. When
we do good, we are just as open to criticism and strife as when we do
evil. The sad part is in that case it is
for all the wrong reasons.
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