Virgin Daughter Sacrifice

[Dr. Shane]

WARNING: [:"red"] This thread is about a warrior (son of a harlot) that sacrificed his virgin daughter. I don't know where it is going to go. If you are easily offended you may now choose to click the "Back" button.

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Judges 11:

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29. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

30. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

31. Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

32. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands.

33. And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

34. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

35. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.

36. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

37. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

38. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.

39. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,

40. That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

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I saw this story in a cartoon format on KTV on SkyAngel. Anyone care to comment? It leaves me confused <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

[Gregory Matthews]

Shane:

If you are confused, you are in good company.

My take on it: You have to have a good understanding to the culture of that time, and the nuances of some of the spoken forms to understand it.

I do not have that understanding.

[cricket]

There is a lesson to be learned for us here, I am sure. God could have prevented her from coming out to greet her father. And, so we must assume that God allowed this to happen for a reason.

Strangely, I am confused not with the fact that this man killed his own daughter; I am not confused with the fact that she was willing to be sacrificed. I am confused only in the reasoning God has in desiring such a sacrifice.

[Gregory Matthews]

1) Are we certain that such was what God wanted?

2) How do your respond to those who say that she went into a state where she gave up marriage, and she was not killed.

[Dr. Shane]

A lot of confusing things in the story. God could have also stopped the father from sacrificing her like He did with Abraham.

[Pockey]

This may help. It is from "Amazing Facts Inside Report" April 2001 issue, by Doug Batchelor:

[:"blue"]I believe that what Jephthah did to fulfill his vow was similar to what Hannah did with Samuel (1 Samuel 1:27-28). He brought his daughter to the sanctuary, and she was consecrated to the service of the Lord, which meant she was to remain celibate.

There are several biblical reasons why I believe Jephthah did not kill his daughter, but instead consecrated her to the Lord’s service.

First, human sacrifices were an abomination to Jehovah (Leviticus 18:21,20:1-3; Jeremiah 32:35). We are told in Judges 11:29 that “The spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah." Do you think that with the Spirit of the Lord upon him, he would have executed his daughter?

Secondly, Jephthah had it in his power to redeem his daughter. Leviticus 27:2 says, “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, “When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the Lord by thy estimation.” In other words, if your first-born was consecrated to the Lord, you weren’t supposed to offer him as a sacrifice; you were to pay a price or offer an animal in his place.

Furthermore, only a priest was allowed to make a burnt offering (Leviticus 17:1-9). Remember how Saul got into trouble when he tried to assume the prerogative of a priest (1 Samuel 13:6-14)? What priest would have been willing to offer Jephthah’s daughter, knowing this was an abomination to God?

Finally, the Bible says she bewailed her virginity, that she knew no man, and that the Israelite women went yearly to lament, or to comfort, her (Judges 11:38-40). Where did they go? They went to the temple, because her life was consecrated to the Lord. Perhaps you are thinking, “Well, God asked Abraham to kill his son.” True, but also remember that God stopped Abraham from doing it. Abraham did not kill Isaac, his son; God prevented him from carrying out His command. If Jephthah was led to victory by the Lord and willing to fulfill his vow, don’t you think God would have stopped him before he shed his only child’s blood?

I think it’s clear what happened. Jephthah consecrated his daughter to the service of the sanctuary[/] -Doug Batchelor

[cricket]

Well, when I read it, it said that the father promised to give whatever greeted him when he came home as a burnt offering. I guess my response to others would be, where do you read in biblical words that he did otherwise?

And, I can't be certain that it is what God wanted, but I can be certain that it is what God allowed.

[Gregory Matthews]

Christine:

Read what Sid posted in the post jsut above yours. It is an excellent statement of the reasons for that position.

Is it correct?

Is is wrong?

Why?

In any cae it illustrates some of the issues surrounding that passage.

[bevin]

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but I can be certain that it is what God allowed.

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but God allows all sorts of atrocities. The Holocaust. The genocide of the Native Americans.

And many of them are done in His name - The Crusades. The Conquistadors. The Inquistion.

Just because a sincere and fanatical follower of God does something does not make it right.

The protogonist in this story makes a stupid vow, and then does not back down when it becomes apparent how badly he has messed up. Of course he does not suffer - his actions cause his daughter to suffer. He is not an example for us to follow - he is a object lesson for a pair of mistake we are not to repeat.

/Bevin

[Gail]

Well, I see it as a rash vow made on the spur of the moment by Japhthah. Then he found himself in a position of having to keep his promise

Is there room for that, for what we might think as overzealous?

[DaveM1936]

EGW makes no comment on his daughter. This is her entire comment on Jephthah.

"A deliverer was raised up in the person of Jephthah, a Gileadite, who made war upon the Ammonites and effectually destroyed their power. For eighteen years at this time Israel had suffered under the oppression of her foes, yet again the lesson taught by suffering was forgotten." {PP 558.3}

I think we have to accept the story as it reads. If EGW understood it, she opted to keep silent on it. I beleive he made a foolish vow and that the Lord never asked him to do.

Your friend,

Dave M

[Robert]

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so we must assume that God

allowed

this to happen for a reason.

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This statement assumes God either forces or forges human will....

[cricket]

I don't see it that way. I see it as Him allowing us to make choices.

[Robert]

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I don't see it that way. I see it as Him allowing us to make choices.

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I understand, but "allow" still means sovereignty over our wills. Force is against His nature....

[Dr. Shane]

Let's look at verse 31 from the Strongs:

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31. |1961| then it will be |3318| the thing outcoming, |0834| which |3318| comes out |1817| from the doors of |1004| my house |7125| to meet me |7725| when I return |7965| in peace |1121| from the sons of |5983| Ammon |1961| will belong |3068| to Yahweh, |5927| and I will offer it {instead of} |5930| a burnt offering.0

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The all important word here seems to be "burnt" in verse 31. It is olaw - 5930 in Strongs. It means "steps" or stairs normally leading to a holocaust, to ascend, burnt offering or "go up to".

The word before olaw is awlaw - 5927 in Strongs. In the KJV it is translated "I will offer it up". It means "to act", arise up, cause to ascend, cause to burn, carry up, cast up. to make go away, lift up, to make pay, put on, raise, recover, rise up, scale, set up, shoot forth, spring up, stir up or take away. It can mean so many things we really have to understand olaw (5930) to understand awlaw (5927).

The easiest way to translate the passage seems to be exactly the way the KJV did it. However it could have been translated simply "... shall surely be the Lord's and I will send it up to You." He may well have expected a servant to greet him and have planned to send away a servant to be the Lord's. that would be in line with Doug Bachelor's explanation.

While I see that as possible, it still doesn't sit will with me. I guess mostly because I am not aware of any versions that translate it like that.

However it does seem odd to me that a girl that is about to die is crying about never having had sex (or children) and never getting to have sex (or children). Why is she so concerned about her virginity if she is about to die?

[Dr. Shane]

As I look at the literal tanslation, posted above, I don't know where they are getting the "instead of" from. As it reads he is saying he will offer who ever comes out to great him INSTEAD OF a burnt offering not offer them AS a burnt offering.

Am I reading that wrong?

[cricket]

Don't you believe that God is sovereign over everything?

I do. And, in this sense, He allows this to happen.

[Nicodema]

Sounds to me like he made a rash oath without thinking about the consequences, and then followed up with an extremely strict interpretation of the Third Commandment. It sounds barbaric to me, but the daughter did consent, so perhaps both believed they were doing what was necessary to honor the Lord, according to how they understood Him in their time and culture. Still ... shudder to think. Perhaps the lesson here is not to make rash vows, and that is why the people memorialized her death by going up to bewail her annually -- to remember not to make rash vows without considering all the possible outcomes and consequences.

[Nicodema]

Doug B's summary here is interesting, but I'm not entirely comfortable with him adding to the text. I don't see in the Bible that Japhthah simply dedicated her to temple service. Rather, the end of the passage states explicitly that "he did with her according to his vow unto the Lord" and the vow was to offer whatsoever came out of his house first as a burnt offering. Clearly he expected a pet or livestock to rush out to greet him, or else he is more savage than we are even imagining.

If she was not killed, why would they go "lament" her four days every year?

Don't get me wrong -- I would RATHER believe Doug B.'s summation. I just don't think it's Biblical, and I'm not a fan of rearranging the harsher things in the Bible to soothe the disturbance they create. I'm more comfortable with either understanding the hard thing or living in a state of not knowing. I don't understand everything about how God works, period. I probably never will. For all I "know", "God" is just a name we give to the pattern we perceive in random factors of life and the unconscious ways our beliefs shape our experiences. But that's where faith comes in. I choose to believe there is a God, and I choose to believe certain things about Him, beyond which I confess a lack of understanding and certainty, and that is that.

I used to be a Thelemite and the sacred text for Thelema, called "The Book of the Law," had a verse which read, "I give certainty, not faith." Paradoxically, of course, one had to have faith in this statement to have that certainty. Maybe other types of faith work the same way. Again, I'm out of my league here. *sigh*.

Nico

(who has more questions than answers, but is at least learning to be content with life that way.)

[Dr. Shane]

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Sounds to me like he made a rash oath without thinking about the consequences

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Here is the problem with that conclusion. Lev. 27 allows for him to buy his way out of the vow. So he would not have had to follow through with it according to the levitical law.

[Dr. Shane]

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the vow was to offer whatsoever came out of his house first as a burnt offering.

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Are we sure about that? I know that is what the English translation says.

[Kevin H]

Several of our college, and I believe Seminary professors have done excellent studies on the issue of Human Sacrifice in scriptures. I believe my major source is a Dr. Dalton from Loma Linda for this particular post, however I've heard different studies from different professors from different schools.

Although God did not want human sacrifice, he worked with people where they were and allowed it until he could grow people into a fuller understanding of the truth. In the Sacrificial passages of the Pentituch, it gives instructions on how to perform human sacrifice, but then adds a verse at the end telling us NOT to do it but to instead redeem the person instead.

It is scary when Saul brings Agag and the other goods and told Samuel that they were for sacrifices, and Samuel quickly performed a human sacrifice without calling for the Pentituch to review the instructions.

This is a story to help see the problems of human sacrifice to lead to it's eventual stop. It also teaches us that even in trusting God we can make horrible mistakes, but if we are in the direction of headed towards God, like the story of the prodigal son, while still a long ways off the Father will run to meet us.

Our problem is that, no matter how much lip service we give to ideas of God reaching us where we are, and pressent truth, we tend to approach the Bible as a very static book, we Seventh-day Adventists, approach the scriptures with the unconscious impression that Abraham was a good Baptist.

[Dr. Shane]

Seems there is disagreement on this throughout denominations.

Christian Answers

Exploring God's Word

[LifeHiscost]

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Anyone care to comment?

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IMO many lessons could be drawn from this circumstance. Because God does not choose to go into detail about it, if one is looking to the Scriptures for answers perhaps this verse might be appropriate.

[:"red"] "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD." [/] Isaiah 55:8 KJV

OTOH this doesn't seem to me to preclude the right of His children to seek answers to difficult experiences, which this certainly was.

One thing seems certain to me. Just because an individual relies on God for advice for success, doesn't make believing false doctrine (teaching) any less dangerous. Jephthah lived in a culture where human sacrifice was practiced, probably as the highest honor one could give to the god of choice, albeit a false god. Once having made a promise that events turned into a horrible mistake, Jephthah then felt honor bound to keep his oath maybe just for the sake of other warriors he kept company with.. As a well recognized leader, pride alone could have been enough to prevent him from admitting he might have made a mistake.

There is no mention of what his devotions were so we can only guess what his knowledge of God was, as a God of love. If he had little contact with the Hebrew Rabbis he probably didn't know he could ask to be released from his oath, based upon God's Word.

[:"red"] "Samuel said, 'Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice...'" [/] 1 Sam 15:22 NASB

[:"red"] "...For to draw near to hear and obey is better than to give the sacrifice of fools [carelessly, irreverently] too ignorant to know that they are doing evil" [/] Ecclesiastes 5:1 AMP

The last verse quoted is probably not totally accurate in describing Jephthah [:"red"] [carelessly, irreverently] [/]as it appears he suffered remorse, all the while feeling his oath could not be avoided.

Could God have stepped in to stop Jephthah's rash promise and the loss of his daughter? No doubt in my mind. But I'm pleased to believe for the sake of both Jephthah and his daughter God will fulfill a promise to them, despite their shortcomings.

[:"red"] "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" [/] Romans 8:28 NASB

Both father and daughter determined to follow what they believed to be God's wishes. And this begs the question. Would I have been as willing to obey, if I believed as they did and were put in the same position? I just thank God He has never asked me anything that difficult, for I can not be certain of my answer save by the overruling of God's providences.

[Robert]

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Don't you believe that God is sovereign over

everything

?

I do. And, in this sense, He allows this to happen.

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Out of His sovereignty, God chose to save all men in Christ....Yet the Bible clearly states some will be lost. Why?