It says in Deuteronomy 23:21, “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not postpone fulfilling it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you would incur guilt.” As a result, in Judges 11:30-31, 34-39 it tells the story of Jephthah one of the Judges of Israel and the vow he made and the consequences of that vow:
30And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.”
34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” 36 She said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” 37 And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander** on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” 38 “Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. 39 At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made.
As noted by John Collins, Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School in his book Introduction to the Hebrew Bible** (Fortress Press, 2014), “While the story in Judges certainly appreciates the tragedy of the outcome, there is no hint that Jephthah did wrong by making the vow (for which he was rewarded with victory) or in fulfilling it.”
So apparently if someone made a vow to perform a human sacrifice to God, they were bound to fulfill that vow and God apparently saw nothing wrong with human sacrifice in this case since He rewarded Jephthah by making him victorious over the Ammonites as a result of that vow. Isn’t all of this a little bit troubling? It certainly makes me wonder what kind of God we have that would require someone to sacrifice their child as a burnt offering because of a vow they had made. That’s why I think that this is just a story and is probably not true.
A vow to perform human sacrifice is contrary to the Law of God.
“When you come into the land which the LORD, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of the nations there. Let there not be found among you anyone who causes their son or daughter to pass through the fire of sacrifice” (Deut. 18: 9).
“The people of Judah have done what is evil in my eyes—oracle of the LORD. They have set up their detestable things in the house which bears my name, thereby defiling it.
In the Valley of Ben-hinnom* they go on building the high places of Topheth to sacrifice their sons and daughters by fire, something I never ordered, that had never entered my thoughts.”
“You shall not offer any of your offspring for immolation to Molech,* thus profaning the name of your God. I am the LORD.” ( Leviticus 18: 21) The word Molech is of phoenician origin and designated a certain type of sacrifice, namely, the sacrifice of children. In Israel, it was understood as a divine title.
“When the LORD, your God, cuts down from before you the nations you are going in to dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and are settled in their land,
be careful that you not be trapped into following them after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire regarding their gods, “How did these nations serve their gods, so I might do the same.”
You shall not worship the LORD, your God, that way, because they offered to their gods every abomination that the LORD detests, even burning their sons and daughters to their gods.” (Deuteronomy 12: 29-31).
Jephthah made a rash vow and being that it was his own daughter who first came out to meet him, he was not required to fulfill it as it is against the Law of God to sacrifice your own daughter or son to be burnt by fire or any other way. St Thomas Aquinas says that a vow should be about a better good but if it entails an evil result, it must not be kept and such was the case with Jephthah. Accordingly, St Jerome in commenting on Jephthah and his vow says: “In vowing he was foolish, through lack of discretion, and in keeping his vow he was wicked.” It is probable though that Jephthah repented of his sinful deed and of his religious ignorance. So, in making a vow Jephthah did a good thing but being that it entailed that he sacrifice his daughter which is against the Law and an evil, in this particular case he was not required to keep it for a vow is something done voluntarily such as above what we are minimally required to do by the Law and it must not concern something against the Law but a voluntarily better good such as the counsels of Jesus Christ.
