There is no biblical commentary on Jephthah’s vow and its consequences, but he is included in the “hall of faith” (Hebrews 11:32). Everyone agrees that, while Jephthah's faith and obedience may have been exemplary, this bizarre episode in his life should not be emulated.
Jephthah himself instantly regretted his rashness when it resulted in a circumstance he apparently had not foreseen. He had asked God to help him defeat Ammon and in return would offer “as a burnt offering” the first thing that came out of his house.
It’s not hard to imagine the shock and dismay he felt upon seeing his precious daughter—his only child—coming out to meet him “with tambourines and dancing.” Many paintings, such as the one above by Edmond Long, portray the scene in which victory became an occasion for intense sorrow and a song of intense joy turned tragic.
The idea Jephthah was required to kill his daughter in fulfillment of his vow glosses over many factors in the larger biblical context. His vow was a serious mistake, one that he could not treat lightly, but I do not believe he sacrificed her as a burnt offering to the Lord.
Here’s my train of thought:
1. As covered in our previous post, this is not an offering that YHWH would accept. Child sacrifice was prohibited in the Mosaic law. God hates the very idea of it, let alone its practice. And it is an act that separates people from God. God would never find honor or glory in such an offering.
2. The Spirit of the Lord was resting on Jephthah at the time he made this vow (Judges 11:29). It should never be surmised that the Holy Spirit inspired or authorized Jephthah to consider or perform an act that is so out of line with God’s will.
3. Jephthah seemed to have a good grasp of Israel’s history and God’s dealings with the nation, as demonstrated in Judges 11:14-27. In particular, he knew the parts of the conquest that took place during Moses’ time, and God’s part in all of it. It follows that he had a working knowledge of the Mosaic law and its intention for preserving Israel’s distinctiveness among the nations. That law strictly forbade idol worship and child sacrifice, two of many offensive practices that caused God to replace the inhabitants of Canaan with the people of Israel. If Israel adopted those very same pagan ways, they would be polluting the land and inviting expulsion from it (Leviticus 18:24-25).
4. Even if Jephthah didn’t know the law, he surely knew of how God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac on an altar. Abraham’s willingness to do so sufficiently proved his fear of God (Genesis 22:12-14).
5. From the account of Abraham and Isaac, and from Moses' law, Jephthah would have known that God provides substitutes and accepts payment for redemption of precious animals or people (Exodus 13:11-13).
6. As weird as the period of the judges was, and as many atrocities would be committed during that time, we presume the priesthood still functioned somewhat. Before a knife could be raised or a fire lit, before a human being could be offered on an altar, one hopes that a priest or Levite would have stopped him and educated him about proper substitutes (see Lev. 27:1-8).
7. There was only one proper place for burnt offerings in Israel—the altar at the tabernacle which was attended to by priests. It would be out of line for Jephthah to build his own altar and perform his own animal sacrifices (Lev 17:3-4). When it comes to human sacrifice, there's no question it would have desecrated God’s altar, the priesthood, the entire tabernacle complex.
8. There were two months between Jephthah’s victory and the moment of enacting his vow… plenty of time for reason to prevail. His vow had been rash, but its fulfillment need not be.
9. Jephthah seemed to want to act within the parameters of God’s will, invoking YHWH in accepting his leadership role (Judges 11:9-11). Yes, he was a flawed leader, as were the others named alongside him in Hebrews 11:32-34—Gideon, Samson, David—but he expressed great faith and allegiance to God in becoming “mighty in war” and putting “foreign armies to flight.”
10. Jephthah had suffered as a result of his half-brothers not fulfilling their brotherly duty as stipulated in God’s law; he became a “valiant warrior” because of their abuse (Judges 11:1-3). Thus, he knew what it was like to bear the brunt of law-breaking.
11. In Judges 13, we learn more of what it was like to live in a lawless period. After Jephthah became a judge, Israel functioned about as well as it could for 31 years, but then Israel returned to its evil ways (Judges 13:1). During the run-up to Samson, the next judge, some people still feared the Lord and sought to obey Him (Judges 13:22-23). For instance, Samson’s parents knew enough of the law to understand what it meant to take a Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1-8, Judges 13:5).
12. When Jephthah had come on the scene, the people of Israel were in a period of revival. They had put away idols to serve God, and humbly asked for His help against their enemies (Judges 10:16). At this time, it was unlikely they were participating in child sacrifice.
13. God was working because the people had repented of their idolatry (Judges 10:10,16). God would not show Himself to be compathic to their misery if they were still indulging in pagan practices. This being the case, God would never require anyone to do something as hideous as child sacrifice in return for His grace.
14. The vow Jephthah made was extraneous. He was in the will of God. God’s plan was in the process of being fulfilled. God was already helping His people. Since, the making of vows was strictly voluntary, all that was required of Jephthah was to say, “Yes, Lord.” (Deuteronomy 23:21-23, Matthew 5:37).
The next three points tie this all together.
15. The reason Israel had been miserable before Jephthah’s judgeship was that it had forsaken YHWH for other gods. They had been worshiping the gods of Philistia and Ammon, among others, and so God handed them over to be oppressed by Philistia and Ammon. Ammon’s god was Molech, and Molech was the god to which children were sacrificed (Leviticus 18:21, Judges, 10:6; 1 Kings 11:7).
16. It would be unseemly and absurd for Jephthah to go to battle for God against idolatry—with its system of child sacrifice—only to return home to worship YHWH in a pagan manner and make his child a burnt offering. It would be extremely perverse for God’s chosen leader, in this moment of revival, to resort to one of the very actions for which Israel had been under punishment. Against the backdrop I’ve constructed, it simply makes no sense.
Jephthah’s daughter being put to death would imbue the story with even more irony. Why?
17. God had put the people living in the land “under the ban.” They had all been slated for death because their wickedness had finally reached its full measure (Genesis 15:16). As it conquered the land, Israel was supposed to kill all the inhabitants. Instead they allowed some people to live, and made them their slaves. Idolatry was outlawed in Israel but, as predicted, idolaters became a snare to the Israelites. If Jephthah’s daughter were to be killed at a point of such great victory over idolatry, it would mean that an innocent young woman of Israel had herself been put under the ban.
So what does it mean?
What happened to Jephthah’s daughter? Why did she, her friends, and her father lament so sorrowfully? Why did Israeli women annually mourn her sacrifice? What was the sacrifice?
For all the above reasons, I believe the sacrifice was marriage and family. She was to be given to the Lord, not to a husband. She would remain childless and, because she was his only child, her father would have no progeny. This was a heavy burden in Israel. It would mean Jephthah had no heirs, no one to inherit his land, and ultimately would leave no one to remember his having belonged to Israel.
It would be as though Jephthah and his daughter never existed. The tragedy of it all would be that he had saved Israel from its enemies but would own no perpetual piece of it. All the joy of victory was removed.
At least, that's what everyone would have believed at the time. Neither he nor his daughter nor their relatives and neighbors or the larger community of Israel could know that they would be remembered, that both would be considered heroes of faith, that we would still be talking about them today.
Childlessness was considered a very great burden. To be childless by choice would be highly unusual. Given what they knew, Jephthah's daughter and friends did not lament her death, but her virginity. It is mentioned three times in the passage.
The father’s vow could not be fulfilled by giving her to a husband. She had to be devoted solely to the Lord for the rest of her life.
The only people who could be devoted irrevocably to YHWH and killed were enemies of God, people of the land that Israel replaced. They were devoted to destruction. These are the people spoken of in Leviticus 27:28-29 who must die under the ban.
This is in direct contrast to the rules in Leviticus 27:1-8 for “difficult” or “special” vows, words that are associated with Nazirite vows (Numbers 6:1-8). A person dedicated to the Lord in this sense could be bought back—redeemed—on a sliding scale of valuation.
As we see in the narratives about Samson and Samuel, parents can make such a vow for their children, and they can be lifelong (Judges 13:3-7; 1 Samuel 1:10-11, 22-28). A similar example is found in the prophet Anna who, during Jesus’ early life, “never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying” during her long widowhood (Luke 2:36-38).*
Samson, Samuel, and Anna were not “bought back” but lived in service of YHWH. Taking these examples and all the previous factors into consideration, I presume the same was true for Jephthah’s daughter. At least, there seems to be room in the law and in the larger biblical context for being confident that Jephthah did not violate the pro-life ethic.
Next: Who is my brother?
__________________________
*Two other women appear to have remained childless for a different reason. Dinah and Tamar were raped, and as a result it seems they never married or had children (Genesis 34, 2 Samuel 13:12-20). Such sad stories are cause for mourning, unmitigated by any sense of purpose.
Image credit: Jephthah's Vow: The Return, 1885–1886, Edwin Long, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/jephthahs-vow-the-return-58652
Hi Michele,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your good work on these topics: child sacrifice and the question of Jephthah's daughter. I appreciate the view you developed and supported: she was devoted fully to the LORD for the rest of her life which meant that she did not marry and have a family. Truly this was a hard path that her father asked her to follow given the value placed on children. Perhaps both Jephthah and his daughter can be contrasted with `everyone [else who] did what was right in his own eyes' in the book of Judges. Jephthah and his daughter made hard choices that went against their deepest desires and feelings; they demonstrated by their actions that they took living before the LORD very seriously.
Anyway, thank you for your posts on child sacrifice and all the research you did about the practices of Moloch worship and other practices throughout history and around the world.
Thank you for your insights! I at least hope I made a case for the view that Jephthah didn't sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering, enough to give someone pause for thinking that. It can be proven absolutely, but I think there is enough in the larger context to argue the point. It was a dark period in Israel's history, but as the book of Ruth shows there were people who tried to follow God, and when the people repented of their sins there was a significant alteration in the society. Never perfectly, but at least there was a measure of restoration to godly practices and attitudes.
Delete