Judges 11

Judges 11:29-33

Jephthah’s Vow and Victory (11:29-33) The charismatic element now enters into the situation. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. His message rejected, he stirred up the men of Manasseh and Gilead for war. Apparently they gathered at the shrine at Mizpah, where Jephthah vowed that if God vouchsafed victory, Jephthah would offer as a burnt offering whoever first crossed the threshold of his home to greet him on his return. Evidently a human sacrifice was here implied. A great blessing from God seemed to demand a supreme sacrifice in return, and Israelite custom was still at the level when human or child sacrifice was not unknown.

The patriarchal story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac and the provision of the ram as a substitute reflects the period when men were learning that God did not require a human life at their hands (Genesis 22:9-14). Jephthah is to be judged here by the standards of his time and not by ours. At least he was giving to God what he had. He must have known that his daughter was a real possibility, since, according to custom, the women of the house came forth to greet a returning victor (see 1 Samuel 18:6). God demands our best — this at least was recognized, but with misunderstanding of its significance.

The victory over the Ammonites was complete. The Lord delivered them into Israel’s hand, an indication that this was regarded as a holy war in which God fought for and with his people. The same implication lies in the emphasis on the charismatic nature of Jephthah’s leadership.

Judges 11:34-40

Jephthah’s Return (11:34-40)

As with Miriam’s greeting and at Saul’s victorious return (Exodus 15:20; 1 Samuel 18:6), so in Jephthah’s case, he was greeted by the women of his household with timbrels and dances. His only child, a daughter, came first to greet him in this way, and the terrible nature of his vow dawned on him. His predicament was that he could not take back the vow, an indication that it came out of a deeply religious emotion. We need to remember the Hebrew realism involved here. A man’s words, if uttered in high seriousness, became extensions of his own personality and carried something of himself in them. Should he fail to fulfill them, then his own personal integrity would be at stake (see Deuteronomy 23:21-22).

His daughter, with a noble simplicity, recognized Jephthah’s dilemma. God had given him triumph, and he must fulfill his vow. Let him grant her two months to bewail her virginity; that is, to lament that she was to die unmarried and childless. Again we note the Hebrew realism, for in those early days, to die childless meant to have no perpetuity beyond death. At best, personal survival after death was but a shadowy one in Sheol, the one abode of the dead which embraced every family grave. Real immortality lay in the extension of personality down through time in one’s offspring.

Hence the grief of Rachel weeping for her children has a double bitterness (Jeremiah 31:15; Matthew 2:18), as does the case of Jephthah’s daughter.

The writer with fine restraint implies that the vow was carried out and the sacrifice made. This noble story, despite its primitive background and uncivilized overtones, has inspired poems by Byron and Tennyson. But, long before this, it had left its mark on Israel’s history. When, in after years, the pagan ceremony of weeping for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14), a god of spring and fertility, had inspired an annual retreat of the women of Israel, the true motivation of this ceremony appears to have been covered up by the identification of it with the annual remembrance of Jephthah’s daughter. With all of Jephthah’s limitations and lack of ethical vision, his deep sense of obligation to God colors this story, as does the piety of his daughter.