Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / September 17, 2026 - Judges 12 & Proverbs 15:9-12

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September 17, 2026 - Judges 12 & Proverbs 15:9-12 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bob Reading Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength with God's word lighting the way.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Listen intently to the God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Judges twelve.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: The men of Ephraim were called to arms, and they crossed to Zephon and said to Jephthah Why did you cross over to fight against the Ammonites and did not call us to go with you?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: We will burn your house over you with fire.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Jephtha said to them, I and my people had a great dispute with the Ammonites, and when I called you, you did not save me from their hand.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when I saw that you would not save me, I took my life in my hand and crossed over against the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into my hand.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then Jetha gathered all the men of Gilead and fought with Ephraim.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and Manasseh.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites, and when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, Let me go over, the men of Gilead said to him, Are you an Ephraimite?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: When he said no, they said to him, Then say, Shibaleth, and they said, Sibeleth, for he could not pronounce it right.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: At that time forty-two thousand of the Ephraimites fell.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jetha judged Israel six years.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then Jethah the Gileadite died and was buried in his city in Gilead.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: After him Ibzon of Bethlehem judged Israel.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: He had thirty sons and thirty daughters he gave in marriage outside his clan, and thirty daughters he brought in from outside for his sons, and he judged Israel seven years.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then Ibzon died and was buried at Bethlehem.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: After him, Elon the Zebulanite, judged Israel, and he judged Israel ten years.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Then Elon, the Zebulanite, died and was buried at Ahajalon in the land of Zebulun.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: After him, Abdon, the son of Hilel, the Perathanite, judged Israel.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys, and he judged Israel eight years.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Perathanite, died and was buried at Piraton in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs fifteen, verses nine through twelve.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but he loves him who pursues righteousness.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: There is severe discipline for him who forsakes the way.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever hates reproof will die.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sheol and Abadin lie open before the Lord.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: How much more the hearts of the children of man.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: A scoffer does not like to be reproved.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: He will not go to the wise.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to clarify something that I said yesterday on the podcast, because to be honest, Jetha is kind of a confusing judge.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord helps him, of course, to secure the victory that's even reiterated here in Judges 12.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you seem like it seems like there's some positive things going on.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the vow that he made, I mentioned on the podcast yesterday that that was a good thing, that he kept the vow.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my mind was going to Numbers 30, that whole chapter that's reiterated in Deuteronomy, that talks about the seriousness of making a vow to the Lord, and essentially that the binding nature of a vow, that if you made a vow to the Lord, you were expected to keep it, unless there would be actual punishments involved in breaking it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I just in my mind thought, okay, that's what Numbers 30 says, that's what Deuteronomy says, that was a good thing.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: But then the more I thought about it, of course, what was the actual vow that he made that he was gonna take the first thing that came out of his house upon his return and sacrifice it to the Lord as a burnt offering.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as the story goes, it was his daughter that was the first thing, the first person that came out of his house.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so on first glance, you think, okay, he's affirming the law, he's he's made a vow.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: His daughter even encourages him to keep the vow because they seem to understand the seriousness of vows.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then when you think about it further, you you realize that child sacrifice is explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament law, in the old covenant.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Tyler, you had mentioned even before we started uh recording that you can see, of course, at this point, we've seen the surrounding pagan nations influence Israel on any number of fronts, adopting their gods, worshiping their false idols.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so this this was something that was, of course, a common practice with other religions, child sacrifice to other quote-unquote deities.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh when you when you drill down into this, you realize no, this was actually a clear violation of the law.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so Jephthah, he does some things right, and God uh helps him in some ways, but then he does this weird vow thing where he offers his own daughter as a burnt sacrifice to the Lord, and that's something that, again, God explicitly says is forbidden, and so that's not a sacrifice that honors the Lord.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what's interesting about that is he affirms one part of the law, Numbers 30 as an example, of making vows, while denying and rejecting and breaking a different part of the law.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And even just that whole concept, I think, is is honestly uh very common today when it comes to the scripture as a whole.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of Christians, uh, even well and meaning it, well-intended Christians, can affirm one aspect of scripture uh while denying another aspect.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And typically they're trying to kind of weave those things together, and um, there's different kinds of motivations that could go behind that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I just think it's just a good warning that we can actually, by upholding one aspect of scripture, can very well deny and uh reject another.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what Jeff did here.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so his sacrifice was not honoring to the Lord, that his burnt offering was not acceptable or pleasing, it was not a pleasing aroma because it was forbidden.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so, even though the vow was kept and that on the surface appears like a good thing, it actually was again a rejection of God.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And in that sense, Tyler, it was a rash vow, right?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which the scriptures talk often about the seriousness of rash vows and the sinfulness of rash vows.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So just wanted to clarify that.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we see the end here of Jeff and some of his bull-headedness, maybe I could say, as he uh interacts with Ephraim, the Ephraimites, and just even just this internal sort of family conflict among the clans, and they're actually killing each other rather than continuing to take the land and drive the surrounding nations out.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Jepha's certainly not a positive example by any means, uh, though God did uh help deliver some of his enemies and some of the battles that he had.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: God was uh protecting and providing in that sense.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but a lot of what Jephthah does is just a continuation of what we've already seen in Judges.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's only going to get worse from here on out, just that downward spiral.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, some things to note there.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a lot of this can be confusing because sometimes the text doesn't explicitly say if it's something is good or bad, uh, it just states it as this is what happened.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's good to kind of slow down and think critically about what we're seeing here with all these different judges and all the weird things that they end up doing.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people are continuing to do what is right in their own eyes and losing sight uh of the Lord and his ways.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And our proverb section today uh begins kind of in in step with that thought the way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, child sacrifice, wicked, evil, uh, an abomination to God.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But he who who loves him, who loves the Lord, pursues righteousness, pursues the path that the Lord sets before him.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there is uh severe discipline, moving on to verse 10.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: For him who forsakes the way, the way that the Lord uh makes clear, the way that the Lord establishes.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whoever hates reproof will die.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh those who are are rejecting, um, fighting back against uh correction, uh reproof, hey, this is the path, you're off of it, come back.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're wrong for what you're doing.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're you're not sacrificing, you're not making oaths, you're not, you're not honoring the Lord uh with the way that you are are living your life.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's this way leads to destruction.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're on the broad path.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Come back.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we see some some connections here to our our Old Testament um readings in Judges, and uh where we just continue to see that God's way is best, God's way uh is the way that He shows us.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a mystery to us, He makes it clear, He speaks to us, He He speaks to us through His Word and what a kindness that is.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're not left um groping, grasping in the dark without without a path to follow.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and as we transition to verse 11, it says, Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord, how much more the hearts of the children of man.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Sheol and Abaddon are both referencing essentially the place of the dead.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Abaddon means like destruction or to destroy or something like that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so Sheol and Abaddon again represent the place where people go when they die.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a recurring word that you'll see specifically Sheol, the place of the dead, kind of the lower regions of the earth is another translation, or sometimes it's said that way.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the point is that those are not places that Tyler, you and I have access to.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: We can't see into the place of the dead.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we know people die, of course, and biblically speaking, we know what happens to them when they die, but we can't, you know, we can't pull out spiritual goggles or binoculars and see literally the place of the dead where they are.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the Lord can see, he sees it all.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: It says those places that are far off from us, that are of course are even existing in a different plane, if you want to say it that way, the spiritual versus the physical, that they lie open before the Lord.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's true, if the Lord sees that, which of course we cannot, how much more the hearts of the children of man?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing that you and I can't see, but the Lord certainly does.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then the final proverb here in verse 12 a scoffer does not like to be reproved.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: We again have another proverb speaking about correction, and he will not go to the wise.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So someone who's a scoffer who's not serious, who just likes to be lighthearted and not actually heed counsel, doesn't want to grow in knowledge, does not like to be reproved.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that's a sign of a prideful heart.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: He will not go to the wise, he will not seek knowledge where it can be found.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: He rejects that altogether.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just another warning for us to have humble hearts where we want to, we want to go to the wise.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: We want to ultimately, of course, go to God's word.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: We want to have an increasing fear of the Lord that produces wisdom and knowledge in our own hearts.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bob Reading Podcast.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass bible sv.org.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.