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Many have wondered about the account of Jephthah's daughter
(Judges 11). Dld Jephthah, judge of Israel, actual/y sacrifice
hls daughter to God? Above a/1, what ls the lesson for us today?
by
Scott
G.
Rockhold
T
he place: ancient Palestine.
The time: about 1100 B.C.
The cast of characters: an–
cient Israel, a divided and quar–
reling people consisting of many
tribes; the Amrnonites, formerly
Israel's eastern neighbors, now ber
oppressors; Jephthah, a judge of
Israel, the son of a prostitute. In
return for God's granting victory
over the Ammonites, Jephthah
promises to sacrifice to God the
first one who greets him upon his
return from battle. To his dismay.
his daughter, an only child, is the
first to greet him. True to his vow,
Jephthah offers his daughter as a
burnt otfering, a tragic event
which was still being com–
memorated by the women of Israel
when the book of Judges was writ–
ten (see Judges 11 :40).
The story of Jephthah's daugh–
ter is not only tragic, but seems so
unusual that many have not been
able to believe that the girl was
actually sacrificed. Though the
earliest Christian and Jewish com–
mentators all seem to have ac–
cepted the story at face value, the
medieval Jewish commentator
David Kimchi was apparently the
first to suggest that rather than
having sacrificed his daughter,
Jephthah merely kept her a per–
petua! virgin. Many subsequent
writers have agreed with this idea
(Keil and Delitzsch,
Bíblica/ Com–
mentaries on the 0/d Testament,
vol. 4, pp. 358-359).
Sorne puzzling questions sur–
round the story of Jephthah's
daughter: Why would God grant
The
PLAIN TRUTH June 1977
victory to a man who had vowed a
human sacrifice to H im?
Did
Jeph–
thah really vow to sacrifice a
human being, or was it in actua1ity
an
animal
sacrifice?
Actually, the Hebrew text at this
point is
ambiguous:
it could refer
to either a human being or an ani–
mal. The ambiguity is obvious
when one compares modem trans–
lations of Judges 11 :3 1: ". . .
who–
ever
comes forth from the doors of
my house to meet me, when I re–
turn victorious from the Arnmo–
nites, shall be the Lord's, and 1 will
oiTer
him
up for a bumt o.tfering"
(RSV); "...
anything
coming out
the doors of my house to meet me,
when 1 return with victory from
the Ammonites, shall belong to
Yahweh; I will offer
it
up as a
burnt offering" {Anchor Bible). Ei–
ther translation is possible, so we
cannot necessarily conclude that
Jephthah deliberately vowed to of–
fer a human being as a sacrifice to
the God of Israel.
Notice a lso that both trans–
lations {as well as most other trans–
lations and commentaries) agree
on the translation of "burnt offer–
ing." The Hebrew word
o/ah
used
here is the common one used
throughout the Old Testament to
refer to a whole bumt o.tfering
(Brown, Driver, Briggs,
Hebrew
and English Lexicon,
p. 750). Thus
we can be reasonably sure that
Jephthah indeed intended to o.tfer
something in sacrifice to God upon
an altar.
Now modern archaeology has
shed sorne new light on the matter.
From excavations in Palestine of
sites from the biblical period, we
know that houses often had an en–
closed courtyard where animals
and supplies were kept. Thus
Jephthah could well assume that
the first creature to meet him upon
his retum would be an animal suit–
able for sacrifice
{R.
Boling,
Judges,
p. 208). But to bis sorrow
and dismay, his daughter, who had
probably heard the news of his vic–
tory, was the first to come out!
Did Jepbthah then really sacri–
fice his daughter to God? The au–
thor of Judges does not directly say
so; he merely tells us that Jeph–
thah "did with her according to his
vow whicb he had made" (verse
39, RSV). The author seems to
leave the outcome to the reader's
imagination. We might conclude
with most commentators that
Jephthah actuaUy ful.filled the
promise he had made- a vow to
God must be kept! Verse 38 tel ls
us that his daughtcr bewailed her
virginity for two months; this was
probably because she was to die
chi ldless.
What lesson can this tragic and
gruesome account have for us
today? Certainly that one should
ncver make rash and hasty prom–
ises that later must be kept, sorne–
times at great expense. But the
lesson goes rnuch deeper. T he
book of Judges portrays all of the
judges as having sorne cbaracter
defect or liability: Samson had a
great weakness for foreign women
that proved bis undoing; Gideon
lacked the confidence he should
have had in God; Jephthah him–
self was the son of a prostitute, as
well as prone, evident1y, to making
rash vows. Yet the book of Judges
shows how people with all their de–
fects could still be used by the God
of Israel to accomplish His pur–
pose, and how He could deliver
Israel through the hand of a man
who míght even sacrifice bis own
daughter. The message of Judges,
and of the story of Jephthah and
his daughter, is one of more than
simple bloodshed. It is the story of
how God can use even the weakest
of human beings for His own great
purpose.
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