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Jephthah's Burnt Offering Sacrifice of His Daughter (Judges 11:30-40): Did God Command or Sanction It?
[11 June 2009]
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...ice-of-
his.html
Dear Dave,
The reader's question about Jephthah's daughter reflects the struggle that many Christians have with this text.
You make a good effort at explaining the text and I commend your honest effort at trying to make sense of a very difficult passage.
However, I believe that by absolving Jephthah, we try to avoid the moral dilemma the text raises. Jephthah made a foolish vow that did not have God's approval. I believe that the proper reading of the text will show that the sacrifice actually took place.
Thank you for an excellent post.
Claude Mariottini
Dear Dr. Mariottini,
I'm honored that you commented on my blog. I have often run across your excellent articles in searching for something or other. In fact, I have a link to your site on the sidebar.
Perhaps you misunderstood my own opinion. I cited advocates of the "no sacrifice" hypothesis, but did not agree with them. I wrote: "this is considered an implausible interpretation by most of the commentators I have seen." Shortly before, I had written: "He wrongly assumed that God would be propitiated in the same way as was believed about the Canaanite false gods."
My opinion, then, is that the sacrifice took place, but that it was neither commanded by God, nor a moral act.
Even my title presupposes that it took place and moves immediately to the question of whether God was directly involved.
Dr. Mariottini: I, too, have read your blog before and enjoy much of what you have written. I do have a question about what you wrote here.
You wrote: "However, I believe that by absolving Jephthah, we try to avoid the moral dilemma the text raises. Jephthah made a foolish vow that did not have God's approval."
Would you agree that there was no mechanism in the OT that allowed for the loosing of Jepthath's foolish vow without him committing a sin?
I had in mind passages such as Num 30:3, Dt. 23: 21, and Eccl. 5:4-6. These passages seem suggest that the keeping of one's vows was deemed to be rather important and perhaps even paramount.
God bless!
Dave,
I apologize for misreading your conclusion. After I reread your post, it is clear where you stand on this issue.
Claude Mariottini
Paul,
You are correct. Many Israelites took the vows they made to God seriously.
We have to remember that if Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac to God, and he came that close, Jephthah did sacrifice his daughter because both he and his daughter recognized the importance of the vow he had made to God.
Claude Mariottini
A correction, Dave: Judges 11:1 does not say he was half-Canaanite. It says he was a Gileadite, born to Gilead of a harlot. His mother was a prostitute, but it doesn't say she was a Canaanite. There is nothing to suggest that Jephthah was a half-breed "mamzer," who under Mosaic Law would not be an Israelite at all but would require formal proselytisation.
That's not to say that Jephthah couldn't have been influenced by the diabolical pagan errors that were so common in those days, nor that his being born out of wedlock didn't have something to do with his rash vow (I think the storyteller does expect us to connect his illegitimacy with his conduct throughout his career as a Judge), but we can't assert that his mother wasn't an Israelite.
As for the question of whether or not Jephthah actually sacrificed his daughter, I'm slightly inclined toward the interpretation that he did not, but that she was placed under lifelong celibacy in God's service, though I admit that's the minority position (even in Jewish rabbinic tradition) and not the obvious interpretation. The fact that Abraham was ready to obey a commandment from God to sacrifice his son doesn't tell us anything about whether or not Jephthah violated God's commandment forbidding human sacrifice. Whatever Jephthah really did, though, there's good reason to think that his story was told as an example of what happened in those days "when they was no king in Israel" and "every man did what seemed right in his own eyes." All commentators, Christian and Jewish, agree that his vow was rash and foolish, and the Law of Moses included provisions for being released from such vows -- but Jephthah may not have known that his vow was not binding.
The old Jewish Encyclopedia has an interesting summary of the Jewish rabbinic tradition of grappling with this troubling episode:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.co...id=222&
letter=J
A further comment on the argument that Jephthah would not have expected an animal to come out of his house to meet him. Well, we know it was not uncommon in the ancient Near East for humans to live under the same roof as some of their animals, and a household's livestock were almost counted as part of the family and were expected to participate when the family mourned or fasted. More likely Jephthah was saying he would sacrifice "anything," beast or man, that came out to meet him. The Hebrew can be translated either "whoever" or "whatever." So, even if he didn't specifically intend to offer a human sacrifice, his words indicate that he didn't rule that out, though perhaps he figured one of his animals would be more likely to come out instead of his daughter or whoever else may have been living under his roof (such as a servant).
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