THE elders of Gilead were the ones whom Israel sent to fetch Jephthah back home.
The word had gone out from the mouth of Yahweh, the command to bring back the warrior to lead the nation against the invaders.
Yes, Israel was more than ready to have the exiled man back with them. But much more inclined to have Jephthah restored to his place were Jephthah’s own people, the townsmen of Gilead.
Indeed, the Gileadites were the ones who exiled the battle champion. But they were also the ones who’d been haunted ever since by a burden of guilt.
So then, Gilead’s elders and sages picked themselves up one day and combed through Israel – searching desperately for a war king lost in one reckless moment.
No, they rode and roamed; they toured and called. Yet those elders couldn’t find the former warrior. Not anywhere in Israel.
Then soon, the men caught a tiny wisp of information that Jephthah didn’t stay within Israel when they exiled him from homeland.
They were told he left even the whole of Israel to settle in a distant country called Tob.
So again, the elders’ search began anew as they turned towards Tob, with a desperate hope that the lead they just got was correct.
Now as that weary dispatch came to Tob at last, they decided to try out their luck while they entered the city gate.
They chose to ask just everyone they saw about a foreigner called Jephthah. They agreed to start asking right from the city gate.
But it was from the first three attempts that the elders found their lead. The men asked the same questions to the first three people they found. And each person answered positively.
They informers acknowledged that they definitely knew Jephthah. Then they went on to boast about him:
‘Aw! Who wouldn’t know Jephthah in Tob?’
‘There’s only one Jephthah here. That’s the commander of a hundred huntsmen for the king.’
‘Even a toddler chants the name of that lion!’
Those were the words with which the guides praised the former warrior.
Then the search team learned that in those few years that had passed since they sent the great warrior away, Jephthah had gone forward to become a famed hunter in Tob, leading a hundred huntsmen for the king of that land.
Indeed, after the former soldier had gained a century for himself in his early years in the foreign land, he took on a new occupation as a hunter.
It was Jephthah’s approach to living responsibly in that land. To be able to feed himself, his right-hand four, as well as his new century and her commandant.
So the former warlord hunted vast wildernesses with a pack of hundred men. They killed legendary beasts and several wild things.
They brought home a sumptuous broil for themselves, then sold a countless more at the meat market.
Soon Jephthah’s fame spread far and wide as a legend hunter of a hundred pack. People praised him with names but he simply faced his work life.
And then, as a man’s gifting will make a highway for him, the famed hunter was soon noticed by the king of that land. So he was offered to be bought by the kingdom of Tob, alongside his century of hunters.
Yet Jephthah refused that offer and called the shots himself.
He negotiated the deal, demanding to be paid as a mercenary hunting troop. It was to be a contract appointment where he retained the ownership rights over his men.
The deal was tough but Jephthah was no common man by then. And so the king signed the pact with that foreigner’s condition binding fast.
This success story that Jephthah had become in Tob, it was the long tale the elder’s last informer yarned to assert that he wasn’t “a certain foreigner.”
So, when that search party had fully explained who they were and why they were looking for that great hunter, their guide led them to the house of a city official to have them report themselves.
And that official, seeing how serious their case was, took them to the house of Jephthah Commander of a Hundred Huntsmen.
It was at the courts of the palace of the king.
Comments
Post a Comment