Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Praise God Who Saved the Nation

For the director of music. A song of David.

Jephthah’s Promise

²⁹ Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Jephthah. Jephthah passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He came to the city of Mizpah in Gilead. From there, Jephthah passed through to the land of the Ammonites. ³⁰ Jephthah made a promise to the Lord. He said, “If you will let me defeat the Ammonites, ³¹ I will give you a burnt offering. I will sacrifice the first thing that comes out of my house to meet me when I return from the victory. It will be the Lord’s.”

³² Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites. The Lord helped him defeat them. ³³ Jephthah defeated them from the city of Aroer to the area of Minnith. He defeated them as far as the city of Abel Keramim. He defeated 20 cities in this area. The defeat was great. So the Ammonites were defeated by the Israelites.

³⁴ When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter came out to meet him. She was playing a tambourine and dancing. She was his only child. Jephthah did not have any other sons or daughters. ³⁵ When Jephthah saw his daughter, he tore his clothes to show how upset he was. He said, “My daughter! You have made me so sad! This is because I have made a promise to the Lord, and I cannot break it!”

³⁶ Then his daughter said, “Father, you made a promise to the Lord. So do to me just what you promised. The Lord helped you defeat your enemies, the Ammonites.” ³⁷ Then she said, “But let me do one thing. Let me be alone for two months to go to the mountains. I will never marry. So let me and my friends go and cry together.”

³⁸ Jephthah said, “Go.” He sent her away for two months. She and her friends stayed in the mountains. There they cried for her because she would never marry. ³⁹ After two months she returned to her father. Jephthah did to her what he promised to the Lord. Now Jephthah’s daughter had never had a husband.

So this became a custom in Israel. ⁴⁰ Every year the women of Israel would go out for four days. They did this to remember the daughter of Jephthah from Gilead.

Paul Shows That Peter Was Wrong

¹¹ When Peter came to Antioch, I was against him because he was wrong. ¹² This is what happened: When Peter first came to Antioch, he ate with the non-Jewish people. But then some Jewish men were sent from James. When they arrived, Peter stopped eating with the non-Jewish people and separated himself from them. He was afraid of the Jews who believe that all non-Jewish people must be circumcised. ¹³ So Peter was a hypocrite. The other Jewish believers joined with him and were hypocrites, too. Even Barnabas was influenced by what these Jewish believers did. ¹⁴ I saw what they did. They were not following the truth of the Good News. So I spoke to Peter in front of them all. I said: “Peter, you are a Jew, but you are not living like a Jew. You are living like the non-Jewish people. So why do you now try to force the non-Jewish people to live like Jews?”