Thursday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 22:1-14

In our readings we have jumped from chapter 20 to chapter 22 and read another Kingdom Parable, not unrelated to yesterday’s, about the workers in the vineyard.

Yesterday it was a question of resentment at God’s generosity to latecomers in his Kingdom. Today it is rather sadness over the Jewish leaders’ refusal to accept Jesus as Messiah and Lord. The parable is a kind of potted history and is more like an allegory than a parable.

The king (God) gives a wedding banquet (the happiness of the Messianic age) for his son (Jesus the Messiah). But when he invites people (the Jews) to attend, they refuse to come and make all kinds of excuses. Others actually attack the king’s servants and messengers (the prophets and the early Christian evangelisers).

The king became angry and:

…sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.

This is surely a reference to the Roman army under the emperor Titus which sacked and destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. The Temple, the heart of Judaism, was also destroyed and plundered and has never since been rebuilt. Today an Islamic mosque stands on the site.

Because the invited guests will not come, the servants (the Jewish disciples of Jesus) are instructed to go out and bring in anyone they can find:

Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

All are called—both the good and the sinful.

The climax of the story at first seems somewhat unfair. People have been pulled in from highways and byways, and now one is condemned for not wearing a wedding garment! But the parable has in fact moved to the final judgement. In fact, Matthew may be combining what were originally two original parables into one.

The wedding garment clearly stands for faith and baptism combined with a lived-out commitment to the gospel, something necessary to be accepted into the eternal happiness of the Kingdom.

As Jesus says at the end:

For many are called, but few are chosen.

Many were called and invited to attend the banquet, but more than that was expected of them. They had to answer the call by saying an unqualified ‘Yes’ to Jesus. Being baptised and having the label ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ is not enough. We have also to live out in our lives and relationships what we claim to believe in.

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Thursday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Judges 11:29-39

If anyone was looking forward to the story of Samson and his betrayal by his girlfriend, Delilah, during our readings from the Book of Judges, they are going to be disappointed. Our last reading from the book is, in many ways, a very disturbing one and one wonders why it was chosen. It reflects a rather primitive and superstitious society where life, especially that of women, comes cheap. It is a society, too, where—at least among the non-Hebrew religions—human sacrifice was not unknown.

The spirit of Yahweh was on Jephthah, who crossed Gilead and Manasseh, by way of Mizpah in Gilead into the territory of the Ammonites. Jephthah is one of the ‘lesser’ Judges. In the Old Testament, the unique empowering of the Spirit was given to an individual primarily to enable him to carry out the special responsibilities God had given him.

He made a vow to Yahweh:

If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever 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.

What or who he expected to greet him is not certain, but it would very likely be a human person.

Making vows was a common practice among the Israelites and they were not to be broken. While Jephthah clearly worships Yahweh, he seems to share some of the thinking of his non-Hebrew contemporaries. The text clearly implies that Jephthah was prepared to vow a human sacrifice, according to the custom of his pagan neighbours. Human sacrifice was forbidden by the Law, but made its way into Israel through Canaanite influence. The author merely records the fact, but was not likely to have approved the action.

Jephthah did enter the Ammonite territory and was victorious:

He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and…the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

As he returned to his house at Mizpah, his daughter came out to meet him, dancing to the music of tambourines. It was customary for women to greet armies returning victoriously from battle in this way. So Miriam, the sister of Moses, together with the other women danced and played tambourines to celebrate the defeat of the Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds (Exod 15:20). A similar scene played out when David came back after defeating the Philistines (1 Sam 18:6).

Now this girl was Jepthtah’s only child—he had no other son or daughter. On seeing her, he tore his clothes and cried out:

Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.

Tearing the clothes was a common practice for expressing extreme grief. His vow, too, even in this situation he sees as irrevocable.

The daughter replied with extraordinary equanimity:

My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.

She puts her life on a lower level than his vow and his military victory. We need, of course, to remember that in such societies, the individual counted for very little, as would also be the case in authoritarian societies in much later times.

She then made a request to her father:

Let this thing be done for me: grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.

In other words, she will never be a mother. To be childless was considered a misfortune and, for a woman, a disgrace. At this time, a man married a woman for the primary purpose of having children, especially sons. And a woman existed to become the mother of children, preferably sons. To be kept from marrying and rearing children was a bitter prospect for an Israelite woman. Hence Jephthah’s daughter now asks permission to spend two months mourning the fact that she will be put to death before she can bear children. The very reason of her existence is to be denied.

The father granted his daughter’s request. And, when the two months were over she went back to her father and—as the reading euphemistically expresses it—he treated her as the vow had required him to do. In other words, she was burnt to death as a sacrificial victim.

The words of the next sentence are poignant:

She had never slept with a man.

In the case of many Christian and Hebrew martyrs this was often a matter of glory, but here it is full of pain and tragedy. Jephthah’s daughter never became a mother. And perhaps there is in this comment a criticism of the whole story by the author. There was probably no greater contribution that could be made for the nation of Israel than to produce sons for it. That contribution had been denied here.

The story of Jephthah’s vow was apparently intended to explain an annual festival celebrated in Gilead, the real significance of which was unknown. It was observed by the daughters of Israel each year over a period of four days mourning the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

In plain terms, Jephthah immolates his daughter rather than break the vow he has made. Human sacrifice was always regarded with abhorrence in Israel. This is expressed in the scene where Abraham is prevented by God from sacrificing his son Isaac (Gen 22), but this story is told without any expression of blame, the emphasis apparently falling on the importance of fulfilling a vow once made.

In the Gospel, Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, teaches us not to make any vows or oaths of this kind. The disciple of Christ will be a person of such transparent integrity and reliability that his ‘Yes’ always means ‘Yes’ and his ‘No’ always means ‘No’. With such a person, a Jephthah situation will never arise.

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