Jepthah's daughter

[Liguori]

Judges 11 NRSVCE - - Bible Gateway

I find this story challenging to understand and I do not know of a good way to explain it to someone outside of Christianity. Any explanations or comments would be appreciated!

 

[porthos11]

Judges 11 NRSVCE - Jephthah - Now Jephthah the Gileadite, - Bible Gateway

I find this story challenging to understand and I do not know of a good way to explain it to someone outside of Christianity. Any explanations or comments would be appreciated!

What’s so challenging about it? It’s not like we’re supposed to sacrifice our children. It just means he made a rash vow and had to suffer the consequences of them, something we need to be careful of even today.

Now that said, human sacrifice was an absolute no-no in Israelite Yahwism, considered an abomination. It is a minority opinion but there is linguistic and cultural evidence that when Jephthah saw that it was his daughter, he was immediately barred from offering her as a literal burnt holocaust. Further evidence is the fact that she mourns her virginity, not her impending death. Rather, to fulfill his vow, he had to turn her over to the Tabernacle at Shiloh where she was to live her life in a monastic-like setting, with no chance to marry, and with whom the Gileadite women would mourn for her.

Again, it’s only a possible opinion, but not an unreasonable one.

And even if we’re to concede that he did offer her as a burnt offering, the Book of Judges simply says it as it is without pronouncing a moral judgment either way.

 

[Hodos]

I find this story challenging to understand and I do not know of a good way to explain it to someone outside of Christianity. Any explanations or comments would be appreciated!

The best explanation that can be given is summed up in the phrase which is repeated throughout the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” – Judges

The story of Judges is the story of Israel’s repeated fall into the practices of the pagan peoples around them. They apostasize, are conquered by a foreign people, cry out to God, and are delivered. Judges never provides justification for what Jephthah did, it just describes what happened. What we do know though is that Israel increasingly throughout the book of Judges falls into the same abominable behaviors as those reported about the people’s before them, even so far as nearly repeating the crimes of Sodom before them. The narrative of Jephthah only emphasizes the depth to which even Israel’s leaders had abandoned the Sinai covenant. Jephthah thought it better to honor a rash pledge that he bound himself with rather than preserving the life of his daughter, a violation of the Sinai covenant and God’s previous revelation that you are not to sacrifice your children.

 

[Werbenjagermenjensen]

I like this take on the story.

https://ronrolheiser.com/mourning-our-virginity/#.XrG5dDFKiUk

 

[BartholomewB]

I don’t know if it answers your question, but the Jerusalem Bible gives this footnote to Judges 10:6, the verse where the Jephthah episode begins.

 The following narrative shows traces of re-editing and possibly derives from varying traditions, probably of Transjordanian origin. Jephthah, cast off by his family, becomes an outlaw chief. When danger threatens he is invited to return; the conditions he lays down are in fact a claim to kingship. Jephthah is pre-eminently the judge of the land of Gilead. The war between Ephraim and Gilead shows how far Israel is from unification.

 

[Hodos]

The following narrative shows traces of re-editing and possibly derives from varying traditions, probably of Transjordanian origin. Jephthah, cast off by his family, becomes an outlaw chief. When danger threatens he is invited to return; the conditions he lays down are in fact a claim to kingship. Jephthah is pre-eminently the judge of the land of Gilead. The war between Ephraim and Gilead shows how far Israel is from unification.

I would be curious as to what they mean by traces of re-editing. Any chance that footnote provides a reference? Might look that up myself. I tend to think this commentary is wishful thinking in trying to explain a difficult passage, but if there is a good textual critical reason for this, it would be interesting to hear.

Update: Sounds like this is a hypothesis put forward by Israel Finkelstein, a famous Israeli archaeologist. His theory seems to think that this made its way into the text sometime after the split between the northern and southern kingdoms. While he has lots of knowledge of archaeology, he isn’t a textual critic. This seems to me to be highly speculative, unless he can point to manuscript traditions which lack this narrative. Since there is a fair amount of Midrashic commentary on this, I would think there would have already been rabbinic discussions on whether this text is original to the manuscript tradition. However, it doesn’t appear that there is. They deal with it as a historical narrative, rather than trying to explain it away. Not really seeing a firm basis for discarding this text other than its difficult to take for moral reasons.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

A few things to note in the story:

• God agrees to the bargain made by Jephthah and thus bears some of the responsibility.
• God could have had the Ammonites been defeated or delayed the battle without specifically putting them in Jephthah’s hands.
• At no point does God tell Jephthah to not make such a deal, nor does he save his daughter as was done for Isaac.

 

[BartholomewB]

Sorry, @Hodos, I can’t help you much with your question. I simply cut-and-pasted the whole footnote. It can’t be anything to do with Finkelstein because of the date: this is the original Jerusalem Bible, published in 1966, when Finkelstein was still in high school.

In the New Jerusalem Bible this footnote has been entirely rewritten. It includes information, for example, about the “major” and “minor” judges and Jephthah’s intermediate position between the two. Let me have a closer look and I’ll get back to you in a few minutes. Or do you have the NJB?

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

God agrees to the bargain made by Jephthah and thus bears some of the responsibility.

God doesn’t speak so you can’t say that.

God could have had the Ammonites been defeated or delayed the battle without specifically putting them in Jephthah’s hands.

This doesn’t matter.

At no point does God tell Jephthah to not make such a deal, nor does he save his daughter as was done for Isaac.

The circumstances were different.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

God doesn’t speak so you can’t say that.

In Judges 11:30 Jephthah asks for a specific request, to have the Ammonites (the sons of Ammon) delivered into his hands. I don’t know Hebrew, but the interlinear bible I’m looking at says the word pronounced bə-yā-ḏî. means “in my hands”. Then two verses later it says God delivered the sons of Ammon into Jephthah’s hands. It uses bə·yā·ḏōw which is clearly a variant of the same word and means “in his hands”. So both use the same phrasing of God completing a feat, delivering the sons of Ammon into Jephthah’s hand. It’s crystal clear the verses are saying God did what was asked.

This doesn’t matter.

It most certainly does. There are some who might say that the defeat of the Ammonites was part of God’s plan, and Jephthah struck up this bargain not know it would already come to pass. By showing there are numerous other possible outcomes it heads over such an excuse before it starts.

The circumstances were different.

Were they different enough that God would allow a young girl to be sacrificed? How specifically?

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

It’s crystal clear the verses are saying God did what was asked.

God did what was asked, but He didn’t demand a sacrifice.

Were they different enough that God would allow a young girl to be sacrificed? How specifically?

Divine intervention usually doesn’t happen and there were many loopholes that allowed Jepthah to get out of it.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

God did what was asked, but He didn’t demand a sacrifice.

I want to throw out a few scenarios to you:

1. Your friend offers to make a wager with you on something. It could be a sporting event, an election, or who’s who on The Masked Singer. It doesn’t matter. You agree but find out later that he’s betting his rent money and his family will be out on the street if you win.
2. Your roommate offers to sell you a laptop. You buy it but find out later that it’s stolen from his relative, his work, or whatever.
3. Your brother calls you up and says that if anyone asks that he was with you all night playing cards. Not thinking anything of it, you agree. You find out later that there was a crime and you’ve become his alibi.

There are all sorts of wager, bargains, and agreements that could be made that could negatively impact one or more third parties. If you go in with full knowledge of this impact or you find out later and do nothing then you bear a share of that blame. By God – who knows full well who’d be coming out of that house to greet Jephthah – agreeing to this bargain he is as guilty.

Divine intervention usually doesn’t happen

There literally was divine intervention by God delivering the Ammonites into Jephthah’s hands.

and there were many loopholes that allowed Jepthah to get out of it.

What specific loopholes are you referring to?

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

There are all sorts of wager, bargains, and agreements that could be made that could negatively impact one or more third parties. If you go in with full knowledge of this impact or you find out later and do nothing then you bear a share of that blame. By God – who knows full well who’d be coming out of that house to greet Jephthah – agreeing to this bargain he is as guilty.

They are responsible for their own actions and the misfortune is their fault alone. There were many other people that could have stopped the sacrifice as well.

and there were many loopholes that allowed Jepthah to get out of it.

What specific loopholes are you referring to?

Human sacrifice was forbidden by the law and an alternate sacrifice could be made instead.

 

[mythbuster1]

He should have made a sin offering for making a rash vow and a holocaust offering in place of his daughter, as well as accept any discipline from God, up to and including death for even suggesting a human sacrifice.

 

[poche]

It is a prefiguration of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

[Hodos]

Sorry, @Hodos, I can’t help you much with your question. I simply cut-and-pasted the whole footnote. It can’t be anything to do with Finkelstein because of the date: this is the original Jerusalem Bible, published in 1966, when Finkelstein was still in high school.

In the New Jerusalem Bible this footnote has been entirely rewritten. It includes information, for example, about the “major” and “minor” judges and Jephthah’s intermediate position between the two. Let me have a closer look and I’ll get back to you in a few minutes. Or do you have the NJB?

No worries, I actually appreciate the note. It is always good to look into those types of textual critical comments and theories. Thanks for sharing.

 

[_thaddeus]

No worries, I actually appreciate the note. It is always good to look into those types of textual critical comments and theories. Thanks for sharing.

I think this is the note from the NJB.

d. Jephthah was a ‘minor’ judge, like those preceding and following him, and the same sort of information is given about him as about them: on his family, 11:1-2, on the length of his tenure of office and on his burial-place, 12:7. Since there was a story of rescue to be told about him, however, he joined the ranks of the ‘major’ judges, compare Gideon and the note to 8:32. • The introduction to this story, 10:6-18, has been much expanded by the deuteronomic editor, on the same lines as 2:6-19. The account of the war of liberation against the Ammonites, 11:1-11,29,32-33, has been overloaded with the pseudo-historical addition of Jephthah’s message to the king of the Ammonites, 11:12-28, and by the story of Jephthah’s vow, 11:19-31,34-40; to which add the conflict between Ephraim and Gilead, 12:1-6.