One
can only imagine the blissful scene that quickly turned to anguish as Jephthah
arrives home and meets his daughter. I picture Jephthah’s daughter playing with
some of the servant’s children in the entry way of his home as she did every
day, hoping for her dad to come home safely from war. Finally, to her delight,
she notices a group of men on horseback heading her way. There is only one person it could be, her dad! As the battalion of men grows closer, his
daughter recognizes the man in the front, and runs outside to give her dad a
huge hug and welcome him home. As
Jephthah draws nearer to his house, he sees his daughter running towards him
with a smile that stretches from ear to ear.
Her excitement cannot be contained, not even by her dad’s dreadful
words.
“Daughter! You have made me very sad! I have made a vow to God that I cannot take
back.” Jephthah says with a torn heart. “Father, I am just glad you are home, but
you need to keep your vow to God, do to me as you vowed.” The narrative leaves us befuddled as it says
,”he does with her as he vowed” then goes dark moments later leaving us
horrified at what appears to take place.
(You can read the entire passage in Judges 11:29-40).
There
are so many questions that rattle us when we read this account in Judges. Did Jephthah actually sacrifice his daughter? Did God accept the sacrifice? How could this happen? Why would Jephthah make such a foolish vow,
wouldn’t he had known that it would have been a human that would have come out
and met him, let alone possibly his daughter?
Why did he even gamble with a vow like this knowing he had a daughter?
Buried
in this story is a legion of lessons for the modern reader. But to get to those lessons we have to begin
peeling back the layers of the story to understand what is really going on
here. Let’s start by asking the
question, why did Jephthah make a vow like this?
To
begin, let’s look at the book of Judges as a whole. Judges is rightly named as Israel resides in
the long awaited Promise Land and is governed by officials called Judges. A Judge was typically a military leader who
helped Israel conquer their enemies. The
victory would boost this leader to a prominent political status, yet not quite
to the status of a King.
Lacking
a physical King, Israel takes up residence and settles down in this land
flowing with milk and honey. Their
nation is governed by a theocracy (where God is the King and the Law
giver). As time passes in this Promise
Land, Israel begins to drift away from God through the worship of false gods of
the nations around them.
With
each turn of the Biblical page, comes further deprivation on Israel’s
part. The end of the book of Judges makes
a startling revelation of the people of God; “everyone was doing what was right
in their own eyes.” Israel had walked
away from the law of God and each individual had established a code of ethics
based upon each one’s own desire.
Jephthah
was no exception as he made and fulfilled a vow that was right in his own eyes,
yet it would have been an abomination in the eyes of God. But To fully understand what led Jephthah to
make such a foolish vow, we need to understand his history.
Jephthah
had a rough childhood. He was the only
child in his home that was the child of a prostitute. His brothers picked on him because of this and
eventually drove him out of the home.
Jephthah
fled to a land called Tob. We don’t know
much about this land except that is was located 13 miles south east of the
Galilean Sea on the northern border of the Ammonite territory. [1] Living in such close proximity to the
Ammonite territory, Tob would have been influenced by the practices of the
Ammonites. This could be one of the
reasons Jephthah was summoned back to Israel to lead them in a military
campaign against the Ammonites, as he would have been familiar with their land,
practices, and pagan worship.
One
of the gods of the Ammonites was a god called Molech. Scripture reveals to us a little about the
religious practices of this false god.
2 Kings 23:10
says, “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom,
that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.”
It was a religious
practice for the Ammonites to offer their children as burnt sacrifices to this
god. I could just imagine how desperate
a parent would have to be to appease this false god by killing their own child.
As
I dig into Judges 11 a bit more I see a man who is desperate to rebuild his
reputation among his brothers and desperate to do so by defeating the Ammonites. After being exiled by his family, he is
called back to lead his brothers in war against the Ammonites. It appears (in
my opinion) that he becomes anxious not to fail them, possibly to be accepted
back into the family he was once shunned by.
In so doing, he makes an irrational vow to God that was motivated from
his religious affiliation during his time in Tob by becoming acquainted with
the practices of Molech.
Jephthah
was a man who knew Yahweh, Israel’s God (as is evident in the fact that Judges
11 says, “The Spirit of God came upon him), but because of his time in a
foreign land, he did not know how to worship or commune with the One true
God. So Jephthah resorted to what he was
familiar with, the religious practices of the pagans that he was surrounded
with while in Tob (Judges 11 also points out that worthless men followed him to
Tob and lived with him there. This indicates that Jephthah or these men lacked
a knowledge of the Law of God as Israel would have been governed by.)
In
analyzing Jephthah’s vow, we see hints that he planned to sacrifice a human as
his burnt offering. Here is why I
believe this.
Judges
11:30-31 says, “And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, ‘If you will give
the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever
comes out of from my doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace
from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.’” (Italics added).
One
reason I believe Jephthah planned to sacrifice a human in this vow are the
words whatever and it. These
words can also be translated from the
Hebrew as whoever and he, as it is somewhat ambiguous in the
Hebrew translation. If this is the case,
then Jephthah would have determined to offer a human as a sacrifice all along.
A
second reason I believe this is because of the phrase “to meet me”. This phrase
indicates that whatever Jephthah had in mind was a creature or human that had
the intent of coming out for the specific purpose of meeting Jephthah and
welcoming him back.
My
premise is that Jephthah was hoping for a child of a servant to come out to
meet him. Regardless if sacrificing a
human was his intent or not, he made a foolish open ended vow that included the
option of burning a human life. We see
his true intent when his daughter runs out to meet him and his heart is grieved
as he sees her as the object of his upcoming sacrifice.
Some
believe he never sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering but rather
committed her to the Lord as a virgin the rest of her life. If we read this story at face value, we are
led to believe that he does offer her as a burnt offering as verse 39 says
“…who did with her according to his vow that he had made.”
Every
time I read Judges 11, I am forced to pause and ponder why God would allow
something like this to take place inside of his chosen nation? He clearly could have put a stop to it by
sending a prophet to Jephthah to correct his reckless behavior and thwart his
plan to sacrifice his daughter. But
since God doesn’t, I must assume that this story has purpose in the overall
plan of the redeeming power of the Gospel.
Jephthah
is a picture of the state of Israel during his time. Being located in the middle of the book of
Judges, it represents a nation who has amalgamated faith in Yahweh with the
religious practices of the nations around them.
In
Jephthah’s vow, Jephthah has blended the worship of Yahweh with the religious
practices of the god of the Ammonites, Molech.
This picture shows the reader of Judges the state Israel was in. They were still God’s people, yet their
worship of God was polluted with the worship of false gods around them.
My
conclusion is, Jephthah made a pagan vow to the Holy God.
This
still leaves us with a slew of unanswered questions. Did God accept his vow? What should have Jephthah done the moment he
realized his sin? Was there a way out
for him? What can we learn from his
foolishness? These are all questions I
will address next time as we see how we have a merciful God who longs for
something much greater than sacrifice and burnt offerings.
My
belief is that Jephthah did sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering as he
vowed to. This was not God’s desire for
Jephthah, but God still found favor in Jephthah faith.
Read
on next time to see the hope we have in a merciful God who looks beyond our
foolishness to grant us grace and mercy.
