So when we call pain a problem, we claim we do not deserve it. We are even prepared to scuttle God to maintain our own innocence. We will say that God is not able to do what He would like, or He would never permit persons such as ourselves to suffer. That puffs up our egos and soothes our griefs at the same time. “How could God do this to me?” is at once an admission of pain and a soporific for it. It reduces our personal grief by eradicating the deity. Drastic medicine, indeed, that only a human ego, run wild, could possibly imagine.
John Gerstner

Bible Reading: MAR15: Judges 10-12

MARCH 15

Chapter 10 covers two more judges of Israel–Tola and Jair.
No record of achievement is given for Tola, and very little for
Jair. Tola judged Israel for 23 years and Jair judged for 22 years.
Jair had thirty sons, heads of thirty villages, called Havoth-Jair,
which means, “the tent villages of Jair.” Their riding on ass colts
(verse 4) indicated their high social status.

Verses 6-18 record the children of Israel departing again
from the Lord. As a result, God sold them into the hands of the
Philistines and Ammonites. We see Israel’s cry of distress unto the
Lord, their repentance, and their continual chastening.

In chapters 11 and 12 we read of Jephthah, the ninth Judge.
He was a man of great valor, but of blemished birth, in that he was
the son of a harlot. He was of Mizpeh, in Gilead. The Ammonites,
whose power had been broken by Ehud, one of the earlier judges, had
again become strong, and were plundering Israel. God gave Jephthah a
great victory over the Ammonites and delivered Israel. The pitiful
thing in the story of Jephthah is the sacrifice of his daughter.