Todays first reading

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Prodigal1984

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Todays first reading is so messed up. What is the Church teaching us by including this passage in the liturgy? Didn’t God forbid child sacrifice?

First reading
Judges 11:29-39a
I shall offer whoever comes out of the doors of my house as a burnt offering.

The Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and through Mizpah-Gilead as well, and from there he went on to the Ammonites. Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. “If you deliver the Ammonites into my power,” he said, “whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites shall belong to the LORD. I shall offer him up as a burnt offering.”
Jephthah then went on to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD delivered them into his power, so that he inflicted a severe defeat on them, from Aroer to the approach of Minnith (twenty cities in all) and as far as Abel-keramim. Thus were the Ammonites brought into subjection by the children of Israel. When Jephthah returned to his house in Mizpah, it was his daughter who came forth, playing the tambourines and dancing. She was an only child: he had neither son nor daughter besides her. When he saw her, he rent his garments and said, “Alas, daughter, you have struck me down and brought calamity upon me. For I have made a vow to the LORD and I cannot retract.” She replied, “Father, you have made a vow to the LORD. Do with me as you have vowed, because the LORD has wrought vengeance for you on your enemies the Ammonites.” Then she said to her father, “Let me have this favor. Spare me for two months, that I may go off down the mountains to mourn my virginity with my companions.” “Go,” he replied, and sent her away for two months. So she departed with her companions and mourned her virginity on the mountains. At the end of the two months she returned to her father, who did to her as he had vowed.
 
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See also St. Thomas:
Objection 2. Further, Jephte is included among the saints (Hebrews 11:32). Yet he killed his innocent daughter on account of his vow (Judges 11). Since, then, the slaying of an innocent person is not a better good, but is in itself unlawful, it seems that a vow may be made not only about a better good, but also about something unlawful.

Reply to Objection 2. Certain things are good, whatever be their result; such are acts of virtue, and these can be, absolutely speaking, the matter of a vow: some are evil, whatever their result may be; as those things which are sins in themselves, and these can nowise be the matter of a vow: while some, considered in themselves, are good, and as such may be the matter of a vow, yet they may have an evil result, in which case the vow must not be kept. It was thus with the vow of Jephte, who as related in Judges 11:30-31, “made a vow to the Lord, saying: If Thou wilt deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, whosoever shall first come forth out of the doors of my house, and shall meet me when I return in peace . . . the same will I offer a holocaust to the Lord.” For this could have an evil result if, as indeed happened, he were to be met by some animal which it would be unlawful to sacrifice, such as an ass or a human being. Hence Jerome says [Implicitly 1 Contra Jovin.: Comment. in Micheam vi, viii: Comment. in Jerem. vii. The quotation is from Peter Comestor, Hist. Scholast.]: “In vowing he was foolish, through lack of discretion, and in keeping his vow he was wicked.” Yet it is premised (Judges 11:29) that “the Spirit of the Lord came upon him,” because his faith and devotion, which moved him to make that vow, were from the Holy Ghost; and for this reason he is reckoned among the saints, as also by reason of the victory which he obtained, and because it is probable that he repented of his sinful deed, which nevertheless foreshadowed something good.
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I’m guessing the point of the Church including this passage is as an example of those who did evil, thinking they were doing the will of God, not unlike those Jesus is referring to in his parable in the Gospel reading who killed the prophets.
 
Prodigal1984 said:
Todays first reading is so messed up. What is the Church teaching us by including this passage in the liturgy? Didn’t God forbid child sacrifice?
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Yes, the point in this passage is that Israel had gotten in a habit of adopting the practices of the nations around them in their apostasy. If you read further, the passage speaks of there being no king (apparently Israel did not consider God as her king in adopting these practices) and the result was that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. With regard to your question, what is the Church teaching us? The lesson here should be just what I said, having not read the epistle or gospel reading for today I am not sure how the Church is linking this to those readings, but I am sure there is a connection. That being said, I think we are mistaken to ignore “tough” passages such as this and are better served by speaking about them in the community of faith because God does have a salient point in including this passage in the book of Judges.
 
I liked these related reflections on that passage, and still remember them even though I read the first many years ago:

https://ronrolheiser.com/the-vale-of-tears/#.XV8HW-hKhPY
“Despite the unfortunate patriarchal character of this story, it is a parable that in its own earthy way says something quite profound, namely, that we must mourn what’s incomplete and unconsummated within our lives.”

and

https://ronrolheiser.com/mourning/#.XV8GquhKhPY
“Like Jephthah’s daughter, all of us have to mourn our inconsummation.”

Note that God did not command that Jephthah make the vow he did. It was the custom of the time, however, to make a sacrifice that recognized the bounty one had been given. He didn’t promise his daughter, per se, but he knew the first one out to greet him would be dear to him, and not one of the ones who hung back, lukewarm. The greater the gratitude, the greater the sacrifice. When Jephthah made the vow, he was offering a person of his household as a sacrifice because of the many lives that had been spared because the help he had as a general that had come from God, and not from his personal prowess. He felt he had to make a great sacrifice in recognition of how much Israel had been spared. Like Abraham, he did not hold anything or anyone back from God. That was the way people thought at the time: that is, that the patriarch of the family had both the authority and the duty to make this kind of decision on behalf of his household. Again: if the gratitude was real and the number of lives spared were that many, the sacrifice of thanksgiving had to be that extreme.
 
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