We are now approaching what to many will appear the most
difficult part in the history of Jephthah — perhaps among the most
difficult narratives in the Bible. It appears that, before actually going
to war, Jephthah solemnly registered this vow: “If thou indeed givest
the children of Ammon into mine hand — and it shall be, the
outcoming (one), that shall come out from the door of my house to
meet me on my returning in peace from the children of Ammon,
shall be to Jehovah, and I will offer that a burnt offering.” We know
that the vow was paid. The defeat of the Ammonites was thorough
and crushing. But on Jephthah’s return to his house the first to
welcome him was his only daughter — his only child — who at the
head of the maidens came to greet the victor. There is a terrible irony
about those “timbrels and dances,” with which Jephthah’s daughter
went, as it were, to celebrate her own funeral obsequies, while the
fond father’s heart was well-nigh breaking. But the noble maiden
was the frst to urge his observance of the vow unto Jehovah. Only
two months did she ask to bewail her maidenhood with her
companions upon the mountains. But ever after was it a custom for
the maidens in Israel to go out every year for four days, “to praise of the daughter of Jephthah.”
Such is the story; but what is its meaning? What did Jephthah
really intend by the language of his vow; and did he feel himself
bound by it in the literal sense to offer up his daughter as a burnt
sacrifice? Assuredly, we shall make no attempt either to explain
away the facts of the case, or to disguise the importance of the
questions at issue. At the outset we are here met by these two facts:
that up to that period Jephthah had both acted and spoken as a true
worshiper of Jehovah, and that his name stands emblazoned in that
roll of the heroes of the faith which is handed down to us in the
Epistle to the Hebrews (11:32). But it is well-nigh impossible to
believe that a true worshiper of Jehovah could have either vowed
or actually offered a human sacrificed — not to speak of the sacrifice
being that of his own and only child. Such sacrifices were the most
abhorrent and opposed to the whole spirit and letter of the Law of
God (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10), nor do
we find any mention of them till the reigns of the wicked Ahaz and
Manasseh. Not even Jezebel had ventured to introduce them; and we
know what thrill of horror ran through the onlookers, when the
heathen king of Moab offered his son an expiatory sacrifice on the
walls of his capital (2 Kings 3:26, etc.). But the difficulty becomes
well-nigh insuperable, when we find the name of Jephthah recorded
in the New Testament among the heroes of the faith. Surely, no one
guilty of such a crime could have found a place there! Still, these are
considerations which, though most important, are outside the
narrative itself, and in any truthful investigation the latter should, in
the first place, be studied by itself.
In so doing we must dismiss, as irrelevant and untruthful, such
pleas as the roughness of those times, the imperfectness of religious
development, or that of religious ignorance on the part of the outlaw
Jephthah, who had spent most of his life far from Israel. The
Scripture sketch of Jephthah leaves, indeed, on the mind the
impression of a genuine, wild, and daring Gilead mountaineer — a
sort of warrior-Elijah. But, on the other hand, he acts and speaks
throughout as a true worshiper of Jehovah. And his vow, which in
the Old Testament always expresses the highest religious feeling
(Genesis 28:20; 1 Samuel 1:11; Psalm 116:14; Isaiah 19:21),
is so sacred because it is made to Jehovah. Again, in his embassy to
the king of Ammon, Jephthah displays the most intimate
acquaintance with the Pentateuch, his language being repeatedly
almost a literal quotation from Numbers 20. He who knew so well
the details of Scripture history could not have been ignorant of its
fundamental principles. Having thus cleared the way, we observe:
1. That the language of Jephthah’s vow implied, from the first, at
least the possibility of some human being coming out from the door
of his house, to meet him on his return. The original conveys this,
and the evident probabilities of the case were strongly in favor of
such an eventuality. Indeed, Jephthah’s language seems to have been
designedly chosen in such general terms as to cover all cases. But it
is impossible to suppose that Jephthah would have deliberately
made a vow in which he contemplated human sacrifice; still more
so, that Jehovah would have connected victory and deliverance with
such a horrible crime.
2. In another particular, also, the language of Jephthah’s vow is
remarkable. It is, that “the outcoming (whether man or beast) shall
be to Jehovah, and I will offer that a burnt-offering.” The great
Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages have, in opposition to the
Talmud, pointed out that these two last clauses are not identical. It is
never said of an animal burnt-offering, that it “shall be to Jehovah”
— for the simple reason that, as a burnt-offering, it is such. But
where human beings are offered to Jehovah, there the expression is
used, as in the case of the firstborn among Israel and of Levi
(Numbers 3:12, 13). But in these cases it has never been suggested
that there was actual human sacrifice.
3. It was a principle of the Mosaic law, that burnt sacrifices were
to be exclusively males (Leviticus 1:3).
4. If the loving daughter had devoted herself to death, it is next
to incredible that she should have wished to spend the two months
of life conceded to her, not with her broken-hearted father, but in the
mountains with her companions.
5. She bewails not her “maiden age,” but her “maidenhood” —
not that she dies so young, but that she is to die unmarried. The
Hebrew expression for the former would have been quite different
from that used in Scripture, which only signifies the latter. But for
an only child to die unmarried, and so to leave a light and name
extinguished in Israel, was indeed a bitter and heavy judgment,
viewed in the light of pre-Messianic times. Compare in this respect
especially such passages as Leviticus 20:20 and Psalm 78:63. The
trial appears all the more withering when we realize, how it must
have come upon Jephthah and his only child in the hour of their
highest glory, when all earthly prosperity seemed at their command.
The greatest and happiest man in Israel becomes in a moment the
poorest and the most stricken. Surely, in this vow and sacrifice was
the lesson of vows and sacrifices taught to victorious Israel in a
manner the most solemn.
6. It is very significant that in 11:39 it is only said, that Jephthah
“did with her according to his vow” — not that he actually offered
her in sacrifice, while in the latter case the added clause, “and she
knew no man,” would be utterly needless and unmeaning. Lastly, we
may ask, Who would have been the priest by whom, and where the
altar on which, such a sacrifice could have been offered unto
Jehovah?
On all these grounds — its utter contrariety to the whole Old
Testament, the known piety of Jephthah, the blessing following upon
his vow, his mention in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but especially the
language of the narrative itself — we feel bound to reject the idea of
any human sacrifice. In what special manner, besides remaining
unmarried, the vow of her dedication to God was carried out, we
do not feel bound to suggest. Here the principle, long ago expressed
by Clericus, holds true: “We are not to imagine that, in so small a
volume as the Old Testament, all the customs of the Hebrews are
recorded, or the full history of all that had taken place among them.
Hence there are necessarily allusions to many things which cannot
be fully followed out, because there is no mention of them
elsewhere.”
Alfred Edersheim, Bible History Old Testament, Vol. III, Chap. XVIII
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