In Judges 11:29-31, we read, "At that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and from there he led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the Lord whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
The traditional understanding of this passage is just as it reads. Jephthah makes an agreement with Yahweh that would Yahweh hand over Israel's enemies in military conquest, Jepthah will sacrifice on the altar whatever happens to come out the front door of his house when he returns. God does His side of the bargain, and decisively hands over the Ammonites to Israel. Jephthah returns home with expectation to see what might come out the front door of his house, and so we read in 11:34, "When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter came out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy."
As events go, it seems Jephthah does in fact end up sacrificing his only child on the altar in fulfillment of his vow. End Chapter 11.
In my bible, this section has the heading, "Jephthah's Foolish Vow", and so it is. How could it possibly be that someone could utter words so laden with capacity for harm and evil? And how could this person be a Judge in Israel? A hero in this book? For the most part, commentaries are unanimous in showing that this event just goes to show how far Israel had already begun to slide from the Mosaic Covenant: even their judges were committing gross wickedness.
In the Middle Ages, a group of Rabbis decided to make an attempt at arguing something very different in this passage, and it is a position that I hold and will attempt to demonstrate to you now.
My Thesis:
Jephthah's daughter was not offered to Yahweh as a human sacrifice, but rather, was given over to the tabernacle for life-long service as one wholly committed to Yahweh.
My Argument:
I must first give thanks to the Keil & Delitzsch Old Testament commentary for giving me the words to use here. Much of my thinking on this subject comes from their rendition of the argument, but if you own this commentary, you'll notice I have added to it significantly.
1) The word translated "burnt-offering" doesn't carry in itself the idea of being slaughtered and burned on an altar, but rather, carries the sense of "rising" or "going up" (onto an altar). The fact that the context in which we see this word in the OT is almost unanimously sacrificial offerings of animals gives translators the freedom to add this word. The point here, is that creatures that are given to Yahweh as an "Olah" are given entirely over to Him. The entire carcass was burned. None of it was consumed. God received the entirety of the sacrifice. Many other sacrifices were portioned up, and the priests and even the one offering the sacrifice were given the bulk of the meat to consume. But not Olah sacrifices. They were consumed in the fire whole, and so, they were "whole, burnt offerings". The point here, is that what the word is actually trying to communicate is the wholeness of the offering, and not a burning of the offering.
2) Jephthah knew his Torah. The commands of God against offering up offspring in a sacrifice to Him were clear and abundant in the Torah, and Jephthah knew his Torah. In fact, he knew it better than we might think he did. At the beginning of chapter 11, Jephthah gets into a one-round debate with the King of Ammon about whether or not Israel stole land from the Ammonites 300 years earlier, and Jephthah walks the King of Ammon through the travel log of Israel after they left Egypt with a clarity and precision that almost makes you wonder if he was sitting and looking at a copy of the travel log while he wrote that letter. But the text itself gives no indication that he used the Torah when he wrote this letter. It simply says he wrote the letter, which means not only was Jephthah familiar enough with the travel log, but the authenticity of Ammon's claims to the land must have already come up multiple times. The oppression of the Israelites by the Ammonites has already gone on for 18 years at this point. This familiarity with the Torah would have given Jephthah rapid access to how God feels about the abomination of child sacrifice. Human sacrifice is not encountered in Israel until King Ahaz in the book of Kings.
3) Jephthah utters this vow after God's Holy Spirit fills him. A man indwelt by the Holy Spirit in the OT and even in the NT is a man given the capability by God to say and to do what could not be done without the Lord's help. Yahweh enters into Jephthah and enables him to rally an army...and make a stupid, offensive, ludicrous, wicked vow in God's eyes? Can you imagine knowing that God's Spirit had filled someone, and the result of that, is to say, "Jesus was a woman"? Or "Baal is the one who led us up out of Egypt"? Or "Coffee smells good but tastes bad"? NO. The proximity here is on purpose. The vow is made in light of his being filled, which means at the very least, the vow is in-alignment with God's Holy nature and character, and at most, maybe even prompted by Yahweh Himself.
4) Think carefully about this one. If Jepthah knew that God hated human sacrifice, and Jephthah was miraculously filled with the Holy Spirit, what could he possibly have hoped would come out of his front door? A sheep? An ox? A donkey even? If Jephthah was thinking of a whole burnt offering, he would know that only clean animals can be killed that way, and the only clean animals that can be killed that way wouldn't come walking out his front door when he arrived at home. They would all be out in pasture. Jephthah had to be expecting a human being. Period. A household servant or a slave or the like was almost certainly his expectation. Jephthah made a vow knowing the consequence of the vow was the loss of someone in his home.
5) Look at the results of the vow. First, his daughter laments the fact that she is about to lose her life. Just kidding. She laments her virginity. She is sad because she will never marry. Second, she requests to stay at home in the comfort of her family and loved ones to be together and enjoy one another as long as she can. Just kidding. She asks to leave and spend two months on the mountains with other women. Can you imagine a little girl thinking she was about to be killed and her response is to leave her home? To not spend every moment she can with her mom and dad? No, she is sad because she will never experience intimacy and motherhood, so she goes with other women to lament womanly sorrows away from the ears of the men in the town who had no business knowing her grief. It even says in verse 38 that the heart of her grief was the fact that "she would never have children." To mourn the fact that you are a virgin is almost nonsense if the upcoming circumstance is death, but fits perfectly if the consequence is life. These are the tears of a child who wants to grow up to be a godly mother and a godly wife realizing she will instead live a long life as a celibate woman in the temple.
6) The existence of women in service to God in the tabernacle like this has textual precedent in Ex 38:8 and in 1 Sam 2:22. They were, in a sense, married to God, and given entirely over to His service the moment they entered into His service. I think my favorite example of a person like this is the prophetess Anna in the book of Luke, who, after the death of her husband, became wholly committed to God and lived in the temple, never marrying again.
7) The ongoing remembrance of the event by young women in that town is strong as well. Verses 39-40 read, "So it has become a custom in Israel for young Israelite women to go away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter." K&D argue that the word translated "lament" here should instead be translated "praise". Huge difference. The yearly ritual of going off into the mountains is not to lament her, but to celebrate her. What is worth celebrating? The fact that she willingly left the prospect of a traditional marriage and family in the Israelite community as her father's only child, and entered into life-long service in the tabernacle. She was the answer to a vow that rescued Israel from the Ammonites. The response of the daughter is perhaps the most spiritually mature statement made in all the book of Judges, and this woman clearly has both love for Yahweh and respect for the law. As her father's only child, the bloodline ends there with Jephthah, whereas there would much less cause for such a ritual if Jephthah had lost a slave to life-long service instead.
8) This would require that the daughter were taken into the tabernacle and killed on the altar of God by a Levitical priest. The absurdity of this notion is perhaps sufficient in and of itself to discount any attempt at arguing that Jephthah's vow had anything to do with killing whatever came out of his front door. Can you imagine the Levitical priest, upon hearing Jephthah's vow and the reason behind coming to the tabernacle with his daughter, saying, "Well, a vow is a vow, ya idiot," and going through with the sacrifice? This presents an impossibly ludicrous notion, and there can be no entertaining of either that or the idea that Jephthah would to be willing to offer a burnt offering on any other altar, which is equally offensive in God's eyes.
I don't think Jephthah killed his daughter. You shouldn't either. But I will say, the vow does kinda sorta have a foolishness to it. If I were to make a vow like this, I would leave a whole lot less up to chance. But it seems Jephthah was allowing Yahweh to be the one to work out the details of the vow, and Jephthah was showing the strength of his faith in Yahweh by letting Him do so. So what reason is there to think Jephthah made a foolish vow and killed his only child? A single word that we normally translate as "burnt offering". What reason is there to disregard that notion and view both the vow and the results of the vow as honorable and praise-worthy (though somewhat sad...)? These 8, and perhaps more.
Now I could be wrong...but that's my take on it.
