Judges 11

Jephthah

Jephthah is the next judge. He is the bastard son of a prostitute and was run out of town (Gilead) by his father’s wife. He turns to a life of crime before the people of Gilead ask him to lead them against the Ammonites.

He is shocked by this request, but they persist and he agrees. He goes to the Ammonites who basically say “we want our land back”. His response was that during the time of the 40 years of wilderness wandering, their ancestors attacked his ancestors, so they took the land fair and square. They end up fighting it out but Jephthah makes a rash vow that whatever comes out of his family’s home to meet him will be God’s and/or it will be a burnt sacrifice. He wins the battle and lo and behold, it is his daughter that meets him. He fulfills the vow after sending her to the mountains to lament her virginity. The text says “she knew no man”.

Question and controversy – was she sacrificed and burned? Such would of course be against the Mosaic code and the heritage from Abraham/Isaac. I checked around the internet for commentary and there is a dispute about the translation of the conjunctive clauses. Is it “and” or it is “or”. Will he dedicate her to God by making her a burnt sacrifice or will just dedicate her to God?

I am actually leaning towards that she was sexually dedicated to God and not sacrificially burned based on the context of the rest of what happened. In particular, she laments her virginity for 2 months and then the text says “she knew no man”. If she were going to be a human sacrifice, these details would be far less important than “hey, she’s dying”. Rather, these things seem to be tied to what the actual sacrifice is – her sexuality.

Using Biblegateway, I checked various other English translations to see how they resolve it. It generally remains ambiguous, but there does seem to be a majority that translate his vow to mean that he will sacrifice and kill whatever comes out of his house.

Maybe human sacrifice actually occured here. When Jephthah did his original vow, he was probably thinking that someone from the disowned family would come out to meet him. So, if human sacrifice was the intention all along, then he was trying to get revenge from his family. If anyone else had come out, he would have said, "sorry, but I must kill you because I made a vow to God."

But then, it all backfires and it is his daughter that comes.

Regardless, there is no indication that God is actually pleased with this, nor any indication that God was actually consulted in the matter. God has repeatedly said no human sacrifice throughout the Mosaic Law, so I assume God would have released him from this vow.

So, I see two possibilities:

1. She was "dedicated" in the sense of sexual dedication.

2. He intended to get revenge on his family by offering up one of them as a human sacrifice and it completely backfired as he had to kill his own daughter.