Jephthah’s Sacrifice in Judges 11

 

Introduction

Within the history of the church, the Bible has been an inspiration and source of hope for countless millions of Christians, and continues to be adored as the Word of God communicated to common man. Nevertheless, as the Word of God, the Bible contains several passages that pose ethical dilemmas for any serious student of the Bible. These passages include God striking down Uzzah for touching the ark of the covenant while trying to steady it from following (2 Sam 6:1-11), the command to slaughter the Canaanites in order to possess the promised land (Deut 20:16–17), and, perhaps one of the darkest moments in the entire Old Testament, the rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19. The focus of this study will be on an equally disturbing passage of Scripture in that it shows a victorious judge of Israel vowing to sacrifice his only daughter to the Lord. This paper will defend the unfortunate reality that Jephthah vowed to sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord, and fulfilled that vow. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to wholly examine the biblical text of Judges 11, as well as the various scholarly arguments and commentaries concerning this disturbing passage of Scripture. In doing this, hopefully some theological significance can be gleaned from this otherwise senseless passage of Scripture.

Examination of the Text of Judges 11

Although the text of Judges 11 concludes with Jephthah fulfilling his vow to the Lord, this chapter begins very differently as it explains the life and calling of the ninth judge of Israel. The opening verses of Judges 11 show that Jephthah was a skilled warrior who was driven from the land of his father’s house because he was the son of a harlot (Judg 11:1-3). Nevertheless, the people begged Jephthah to return and lead them in their fight against the Amorites. In fact, Jephthah’s victory is so well remembered, that it is included in Samuel’s address to the people of Israel. “Then the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Bedan and Jephthah and Samuel, and delivered you from the hands of your enemies all around, so that you lived in security (1 Sam 12:11). This is important to understanding the context behind Jephthah’s vow to the Lord. The people did not call upon Jephthah because he was a wise and proved leader, or a man of God. Rather, they wanted a warrior, and enticed him to fight for the people of Gilead with the promise of becoming their ruler (Judg 11:11). This context shows that while Jephthah may have been a committed believer of Israel’s God, he probably lacked the knowledge and understanding to know about God, or what He required of His people. Further, researchers such as Alice Logan argue that Jephthah would have been more familiar with Canaanite religion anyway, because he lived in Tob (Judg 11:5). She says, “There is a good deal of evidence that human sacrifice was accepted practice in Canaanite and Canaanite-derivative cultures… Among the earliest evidence is a cuneiform tablet unearthed at the Canaanite city of Ugarit recording a prayer to the god Baal in which he is promised the sacrifice of a firstborn child if he will deliver the city from a siege.”[1] It is with this background that the warrior Jephthah made his foolish vow to the Lord, saying, “If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering” (Judg 11:31).[2] The immediately following verses show that the Lord gave Jephthah and his warriors a quick and overwhelming victory over the Amorites, thus binding Jephthah to carry out his vow. As this well-known story goes, “When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing” (Judg 11:34).

Arguments that Jephthah Offered His Daughter as a Sacrifice

Although the text of Judges 11 specifically says that the first to greet Jephthah would be offered “…as a burnt offering” (Judg 11:31), many scholars and biblical commentators believe that Jephthah’s daughter was merely offered to the Lord as a living sacrifice, and relegated to perpetual virginity and service to God. Although she does not hold this view herself, Logan speaks to the prevalence of Lange’s view saying, “The notion of human sacrifice to YHWH has been so difficult to accept that certain scholars have proposed that the daughter, instead of being sacrificed, was consigned to a state of perpetual virginity, living out her life either in her father’s house or in some sort of Hebrew convent.”[3] One such commentary holding this opinion is the now out-of-date commentary by John Peter Lange. Speaking to this passage of Judges, Lange says, “Jephthah’s daughter does not die like one sacrificed to Moloch: she dies to the world… A virgin life is a nameless life, as Jephthah’s daughter is nameless in Scripture. But the happiness of this world is not indispensable; and… the unmarried woman can belong to her God…”[4] While this view softens the tragic and disturbing outcome of Jephthah’s daughter, it maintains little to no scriptural support. In his commentary on Judges 11, Block affirms the untimely death of Jephthah’s daughter saying, “Although the present story ends with the death of a young girl, her father is the tragic figure, presenting a pathetic picture of stupidity, brutality, ambition, and self-centeredness. Ironically, the one who appeared to become master of his own fate has become a victim of his own rash word.”[5] Block’s commentary represents that of the majority of modern scholarly commentators, and demonstrates that the Bible means what it says concerning Jephthah’s vow.

Adding to our understanding of Jephthah’s vow, Jewish scholar Moshe Reiss says, “The Mishnah… states that a vow to commit an act in direct violation of halakha is an invalid vow (Mishnah Nedarim 2:1). The Talmud states that Jephthah’s vow was invalid (JT Pesa- him 9:6) but assumes that nonetheless Jephthah sacrificed his daughter.”[6] Further still, the Hebrew word for “vow” used in this passage of Judges is נֵדֶר, which is defined as “a binding promise made to deity…”[7] Understanding the type of vow Jephthah made shows that even if he might have chosen to break a vow made to another person, the vow he made and fulfilled was a vow made to the Lord. This explains why Jephthah kept his vow even though it meant the death of his only daughter, as well as the end of his family bloodline.

As tragic as it may be, a plain reading of Judges 11 shows that Jephthah’s daughter was not consecrated for service to God, but rather offered as a willing, yet unwanted sacrifice to the Lord. What this tragic reality demonstrates is the strong loyalty that Jephthah has for his vow to a god he hardly knows. Writing of the fate of Jephthah’s daughter, Esther Fuchs says, “Jephthah’s willingness to let his daughter roam the mountains to mourn her virginity also tells us more about him than about her. That he allowed her a period of grace before her death demonstrates that he did not wish to harm her, that he did love her, and that there was nothing at all he could do to revoke his vow.”[8] The biblical text further reinforces this by explaining Jephthah’s reaction when he saw his only daughter emerge from his home. “When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are among those who trouble me; for I have given my word to the Lord, and I cannot take it back’” (Judg 11:35). It is clear by the text that Jephthah had intended to sacrifice the one who greeted him upon his return home, and it would be especially strange if Jephthah had intended to dedicate a non-person to the Lord in any other capacity than a burnt sacrifice. So, based upon Jephthah’s reaction upon seeing his daughter, we know that the only way he would have not sacrificed his daughter was if he was able to make an exception or annulment to his vow. As the text shows, this is clearly not what happened. Additionally, the Pseudo-Philo text, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB), represents a medieval Jewish attempt to justify Jephthah’s vow and subsequent sacrifice by saying, “The text notes that because God saw that Seila [fictitious name given to Jephthah’s daughter] was wiser than all her contemporaries and that she was willing to die, he accepted her wish and did not allow any of the wise men of her time to revoke her father’s vow (LAB 40.4).”[9] While this account may merely represent a pious forgery meant to indemnify Jephthah, it nevertheless serves to demonstrate that the medieval Jewish consensus was that Jephthah’s daughter was in fact sacrificed, and not simply kept a virgin and dedicated to the Lord’s service.

Theological Significance

Although Judges 11 is one of the most tragic passages in the Bible, understanding the theological significance can be beneficial to any student of the Bible, and provide some redeeming qualities to this otherwise senselessly violent passage of Scripture. The most obvious parallel with Judges 11 is Genesis 22. In this passage, the Lord calls out to Abraham saying, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you” (Gen 22:2). While these two stories are certainly very different, they both contain a male leader being put into a position where they are required to sacrifice their only child to the Lord as a burnt offering. Although these Old Testament passages seem very similar, arguably the most theologically significant parallel in the Bible comes from Mark 5. In this passage Jesus heals two women. One was, “A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years…” (Mark 5:25), the other was the young daughter of a synagogue official named Jairus, who was on the threshold of death before passing away just before Jesus’ arrival (Mark 5:23). In speaking to how the stories of Judges 11 and the raising of the little girl in Mark 5, Beavis says, “Jephthah’s daughter comes out to meet him joyously and is faced with death, but Jairus is the one who runs to Jesus and prostrates himself at his feet to beg for the girl’s life. Jephthah’s daughter dies and is mourned by the daughters of Israel, but Jesus makes the mourning in Jairus’s household unnecessary when he raises the girl from the dead…”[10] As Beavis points out, the death of the daughter in the Old Testament is contrasted with the resurrected life of the daughter in the New Testament. Jesus is the giver of life, and “…has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” (1 Pet 1:3).

Additionally, the story of Judges 11 fits as a piece of the entire book of Judges and describes the depravity of a society where, “everyone does what’s right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).  Although the Lord only a few generations earlier had given his moral law to the people of Israel through the Ten Commandments saying, “You shall not murder” (Exod 20:13), the book of Judges serves as an example of how far a people can fall once they have decided to reject the Lord and His Word. Speaking to this theme in the book of Judges, Hamilton says, “It is a book about kindred killing kindred. That is a gruesome part of the savagery of the era.”[11] Although the record of Judges 11 is gruesome to the point of being heartbreaking, the story of Jephthah’s daughter is nonetheless eclipsed by the tragedy that takes place in the final chapters of the book, thus demonstrating Israel’s need for a proper leader who will follower after God in thought, word, and deed. Initially this leader would be a king, and ultimately this leader will be the Messiah; Jesus.

Conclusion

Those who would seek to diminish the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter do not do her any favors. It could be argued that understanding this young woman’s sacrifice of being only that of perpetual virginity would cause the reader to lose or not fully grasp the theme of the book of Judges. Through examining the text of Judges 11 and the historical context of the book, as well as both historical and modern scholarly commentaries, it becomes clear that the text of the Bible means what it says in regards to Jephthah fulfilling his vow to the Lord. As Hamilton concludes, “She will die husbandless. She will die childless. She will die without ever being sexual. She will die with an unfulfilled life. She will die an unnatural death. She will die a premature death. She will die a violent death.”[12] What this tragedy demonstrates for the modern reader, especially the reality of her untimely death at the hands of her own father, is that when humanity rejects the direction of God and is therefore left to follow after its own sense of right and wrong, humans will always choose create new tragedies. Through the death of Jephthah’s daughter, we see senseless lose, but when Jesus comes we see the life of a dying daughter restored to a pleading father. The tragedies that humanity creates for itself can only stopped through humble submission to a perfectly holy, perfectly righteous creator God who came to redeem humanity from our own unrighteousness. The death of Jephthah’s daughter stands as a small stepping stone in a long line leading straight for the cross of Jesus.

Bibliography

Baumgarten, Elisheva. “Remember That Glorious Girl: Jephthah’s Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 2 (2007): 180-209.         http://www.jstor.org/stable/25470203.

Beavis, Mary Ann. “The Resurrection of Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11:34-40 and Mark 5:21-24, 35-43.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2010): 46-62.    http://www.jstor.org/stable/43726687.

Block, Daniel I. Judges, Ruth: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture from The New American Commentary Series, volume 6. Nashville, TN:B&H Publishing      Group, 1999.

Fuchs, Esther. “Marginalization, Ambiguity, Silencing: The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5, no. 1 (1989): 35-45.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002095.

Hamilton, Victor P. Handbook on the Historical Books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2008.

Lange, John Peter, et. al. A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Judges. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008.

Logan, Alice. “Rehabilitating Jephthah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 128, no. 4 (2009): 665-85. doi:10.2307/25610213.

Reiss, Moshe. “Jephthah’s daughter.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2009): 57-63.

Swanson, James. Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997.

[1] Alice Logan, “Rehabilitating Jephthah,” (Journal of Biblical Literature 128, no. 4, 2009), 668.

[2] Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are from the New American Standard Bible.

[3] Alice Logan, “Rehabilitating Jephthah,” 666.

[4] John Peter Lange et al., A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Judges (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 177.

[5] Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture from The New American Commentary Series, volume 6, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 1999), Judges 11:35.

[6] Moshe Reiss, “Jephthah’s daughter,” (Jewish Bible Quarterly 37, no. 1, 2009), 59.

[7] James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), #5624.

[8] Esther Fuchs, “Marginalization, Ambiguity, Silencing: The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter,” (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5, no. 1, 1989), 43.

[9] Elisheva Baumgarten, “Remember That Glorious Girl: Jephthah’s Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture,” (The Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 2, 2007), 184-85.

[10] Mary Ann Beavis, “The Resurrection of Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11:34-40 and Mark 5:21-24, 35-43,” (The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1, 2010), 54.

[11] Victor P Hamilton, Handbook on the Historical Books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2008), 169.

[12] Victor P Hamilton, Handbook on the Historical Books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, 146.