Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 11 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VIII (3)

Judges 11 – Jephthah (c. 1070), a Gileadite and son of a prostitute, is the one called to save them. He had been driven away from his home by two legitimate sons of his father and he had gone to the land of Tob, where outlaws gathered around him and went raiding with him (11:3). When the Ammonites threaten the land, the elders go and try to get Jephthah to help them but he spurns them at first.  He finally agrees to come back if they will make him head over them (11:9).

The fight between the Ammonites and the Israelites goes back to the exodus time and this story is retold briefly, and especially the part about how Israel came to occupy the lands belonging to King Sihon (Ammorite king).  Jephthah sees this conquest as a gift from Israel’s God, so he says to them, “Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess?  And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the Lord our God has conquered for our benefit?” (11:24)

Now 300 years have gone by.  The Israelites certainly are not going to return the lands now (11:26). They prepare for war, and in the process of preparing, Jephthah is overcome by “the spirit of the Lord.” He makes a vow and says, “If you [Lord] will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s to be offered up by me as a burnt offering” (11:30-31).

They fight, and Jephthah wins.  But when he returns it is his beloved daughter who is the first to meet him “with timbrels and dancing” (11:34).  He tears his clothes and rues his vow, but he must fulfill it. His daughter is pious enough to wish her father to keep his vow, but she asks to be given two months to go out and “wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity” with her companions.  She does and when she returns, she is sacrificed.  This story is the basis for an Israelite custom of girls going out for 4 days each year “to lament the daughter of Jephthah” (11:40).

What are we to make of this story?  It is full of contrariness of all kinds: apparently approbation of child sacrifice--or at least human sacrifice--by a judge called by God’s own spirit to serve his people and make such a vow. It rings also for me with the echoes of another familiar story, “Beauty and the Beast,” another story about a man who vows to offer up to the Beast whoever meets him on his return home. Eerdman’s point out that these “heroes” of Judges are praised in Hebrews 11:32 as men of faith in their day, so we must be thoughtful about consigning them to the spiritual waste-basket.

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VIII – On the Angels

3 – Origen believes “there is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil.” But he is not saying that just because rational beings CAN commit evil, that “every nature has admitted evil, i.e., has become wicked.” Even the devil, according to Origen, cannot be assumed to be “incapable of good.” There was a time when the devil had a CHOICE and “fell away from a virtuous course, and turned to evil with all the powers of his mind.”

“There is no nature, then, which may not admit of good or evil, except the nature of God—the fountain of all good things—and of Christ; for it is wisdom, and wisdom assuredly cannot admit folly; and it is righteousness, and righteousness will never certainly admit of unrighteousness; and it is the Word, or Reason, which certainly cannot be made irrational; nay, it is also the light, and it is certain that the darkness does not receive the light.”

In like manner the Holy Spirit, “being holy, does not admit of pollution; for it is holy be nature, or essential being.”

4 – He concludes this section and the treatise itself with the conclusion that the order of all things emanates from the moral order and that the moral order is rooted in the free choices of rational beings.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 10 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VIII (2)

Judges 10 – Tola is the next judge God raises up, a man of the tribe of Issachar, but nothing is said of the particulars of his 23-year rule.

Then comes Jair, the Gileadite.  He ruled 22 years.  He had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys and they had 30 towns in Gilead.

The Israelites backslide again, and the Lord sells them “into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, and they crushed and oppressed the Israelites. . .” in Gilead for 18 years (10:7-8).

They also crossed the Jordan and fought against the house of Judah and Benjamin.  The Israelites confess their fault—“they put away the foreign gods from among them and worshiped the Lord; and he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” (10:16).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VIII – On the Angels

2 – Some in Origen’s time believed that there was “a diversity of spiritual natures both among heavenly existences and human souls, and for that reason allege that they were called into being by different creators.” They thought it was irrational to assume that the One God created beings of such totally different natures – both good and evil; and Origen understands their problem, but is trying to show that the diversity of all that is in the creation, differences in moral state, differences in possession of power and responsibility are all things that flow from “merit” and “quality” that God recognizes and supports.

“[T]he cause of the diversity and variety among these beings is due to their conduct, which has been marked either with greater earnestness or indifference, according to the goodness or badness of their nature, and not to any partiality on the part of the Disposer. But that this may more easily be shown to be the case with heavenly beings, let us borrow an illustration from what either has been done or is done among men, in order that from visible things we may, by way of consequence, behold also things invisible.”

He looks at Paul and Peter and the two terrible things they did: Paul and his persecution of the earliest Christian followers of Jesus; and Peter in his denial of Christ when Christ was taken into custody. How is it possible “that these—who, according to those persons of whom we speak, were spiritual beings—should fall into sins of such a nature, especially as they are frequently in the habit of saying that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits?” These people [deemed heretics by Origen and others at the time] resorted to the thinking that it wasn’t REALLY Paul or Peter who did these bad things but some “other individual in him” who did them. But if this is true why would Paul say “’I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God?’ Or why did Peter weep most bitterly, if it were another than he who sinned?”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 9 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VIII (1)

Judge 9 – Abimelech goes to Shechem to get his mother’s clan’s support for going up against the 70 legitimate heirs of Gideon (Jerubbaal).  They give him money with which he hires “worthless and reckless fellows, who followed him” (9:4). Then he goes and kills all his brothers.  Only one survives the massacre—Jotham.   

When Jotham learns that the “lords of Shechem” are gathered “by the oak of the pillar at Shechem” (9:6) he goes up Mount Gerizim and cries out to them a kind of parable about trees that go out “to anoint a king” over them—they ask an olive tree to be kind but he says, “Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honored, and go to sway over the trees?”  They ask a fig tree, but he says, “Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?” They ask the vine, but he says, “Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?”  So, finally, finding no one useful who will agree to reign, they go and ask the “bramble.” He says, “If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon” (9:8-15). Then he pours down sarcasm on them—if they have “acted in good faith and honor” (9:16) and treated Gideon’s house as it deserves (seeing the great service Gideon did for them in his life) in raising up Abimelech (son of the slave woman), then they should rejoice in Abimelech (embrace their bramble whole-heartedly).  But if not, then let them get fire and destruction from him to devour them.  Then he runs away.

Sure enough, in the three years Abimelech rules, an “evil spirit” comes between Abimelech and the lords of Shechem (9:23). The lords set up ambushes on the mountains and rob those who pass by. Then they gather together and plot a revolt against him under a man named Gaal.  They fight but Gaal is defeated and chased out of the land. Then in revenge on the men of Shechem who had provoked the rebellion, he “Fought against the city,” took it, “killed the people that were in it, and he razed the city and sowed it with salt” (9:45). 

Then he and his followers set the Tower or stronghold of Shechem on fire—thus fulfilling the prophetic message of Jotham. He goes on to the city of Thebez, but here he meets his doom.  A woman in the tower of this city throws a millstone onto his head and crushes his skull.  He gets his armor bearer to kill him so he won’t have the shame of having been killed by a woman to bear.  So the curse of Jotham came to be realized.

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VIII – On the Angels

1 – He turns to the question of “angels” – what they are, what kind of nature and purpose they have in the grand scheme of things. Angels were believed to have particular “gifts” or purposes [LIKE THE TREES IN JOTHAM'S PARABLE]– the angel Raphael, “the work of curing and healing”; Gabriel, “the conduct of wars”; Michael, “the duty of attending to the prayers and supplications of mortals.”

He does not think they came by these jobs “otherwise than by their own merits, ad by the zeal and excellent qualities which they severally displayed before this world was formed; so that afterwards in the order of archangels, this or that office was assigned to each one, while others deserved to be enrolled in the order of angels, and to act under this or that archangel, or that leader or head of an order.”

Origen believes that beings – corporeal and incorporeal” – are assigned works “according to deserts, in accordance with [God’s] own approval and judgment.” If this is true of us, it must also be true for the “incorporeal beings” that are so much a part of the religious tradition Christianity is built on. They are placed in the scheme of things “by God, the just and impartial Ruler of all things, agreeably to the merits and good qualities and mental vigor of each individual spirit.”