Featured Jepthath's vow

But of course there is that Scripture:

Romans 12:1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service

 

Judges 11:31 seems to indicate that Jephthah had a human in mind when he made the vow to God. Now how is this any different than the Moabite king's action in 2 Kings 3:27, just substituting the true God's response (who grants success for such devotion?) for that of a false god (who doesn't)? And then Jephthah is praised in 1 Sam 12:11 and especially Heb 11:32 as being exemplary as to faith? Then obey the word and go and do likewise? For crying out loud!

 

It was a rhetorical statement. I agree with you entirely.

The masculine gender used includes both male or females. If animals were meant it would have been stated in a feminine form - Jephthah could have been more specific - but the text leaves so much unsaid and unexplained.

The focus of the chapter is on the lost, never to be had, inheritance rather than on the unnamed daughter.

Perhaps some posters here should make vows that whoever bothers them with a negative comment after they post will be the Lord’s, or they will be sacrificed as a silent ignore offering. :laugh:

Rob

 

It also seems that Jephthah vowed his vow when the Spirit of the Lord was upon him (Judges 11:30). And why this weird obsession with his daughter's virginity in 11:37,38,39? Maybe weep and wail for your imminent slaughter, but for your virginity? The placement of the clause "and she knew no man" in 11:39 right after the fulfillment of the vow (whatever it was) almost seals the deal for me.

 

Basically, elsewhere the expression "come out of the doors of the house" refers to an individual, never to an animal (cf. e.g. Josh 2:19; Judg 19:27), and also using the word יצא with an animal seems to be always in the Hiphil (i.e. cause to go out, i.e. "drive out"), but here in 11:31 it is in the Qal (i.e. go/come out on one's own), indicating that Jephthah was speaking of and intending an individual when he spoke the words. (BTW, if this verb יצא ever is used of animals in the Qal I'd like to be made aware of it. I've done some searches but may have missed some, since the verb is used some 1000x in the OT.) Also, the verb קרא (here, who "meets" me) never to my knowledge is used to indicate meeting up with an animal, although it does have negative connotations, e.g., meeting people in battle, etc.

 

I never said it wasn't, only that the text mentioning only virginity as the cause for weeping and nothing about one's imminent death as the cause -- nothing at all! -- seems misplaced not in light of my worldview but in light of the sequence of the text itself.

 

It was at least the view of Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 7.49.

Below is the relevant quotation of Augustine from the note in Keil and Delitzsch in that place:

 

Another good point, as Keil/Delitzsch show, is that it would be a weightless vow if only an animal were intended, since sacrificing animals were a given, and vowing to sacrificing such, even the most costly animal one possessed, would have meant very little.

 

The placement of the "virgin" statements are not so unusual.
The stories in Judges, like much of Genesis and many other Hebrew writings were chiastic in form.

Look back at the outline of the text in post #13. (and that was developed from the English text!).
You can see a mirrored ABCD

D'C'B'A' chiastic pattern.

The daughter's virginity and unmarried status parallel Jephthah's mother's unwed, prostitute status.

This pattern was often used in ancient literature as a memory devise for both the story-teller and listeners.

Often the same words were used in the patterns: sometimes opposites were employed like in this particular case.
The Book of Judges for some strange reason most often uses synonyms – words meaning the same thing but different.

As the story progresses you see the importance of it bears upon the inheritance of Jephthah – no daughter – no heirs - no inheritance.

The sacrifice, whether spiritual or physical makes no difference to the outcome.

Well. I've spent the week in Judges rather than Deuteronomy 29 – I've got work to do for Sunday's lesson! Got-to-go.

Rob​

 

Rob,

While I admit that I'm not one who sees chiasm behind every bush (partly because its determination is so subjective and partly because it's like the Bible Code -- one tends to find what one's looking for), it's obvious that the technique does exist and is helpful for exegesis (when it exists). Your post and those before it are instructive. But I must ask, wouldn't it make more sense from your chiasm to have Jephthah being driven away in A (11:2) and Jephthah's daughter being driven away (not senselessly slaughtered) in A' (11:39)? Just sayin'!

Jonathan

 

Jonathan, it was a first attempt done at work between cardiac stress test patients.
It was the contrast between the prostitute and the virgin that first alerted me that there was a chiasm in the section.
It still looks okay, a few adjustments may be necessary - I need to look deeper in to the Hebrew and when/if I spend more time on it I'd expand it to include the verses in chapter 11 which probably correspond to the later section of chapter 12.

I'll admit it, chiasms are a weakness for me.
I see them throughout OT scripture
Tomorrows session on Deuteronomy 29 includes one.

Deuteronomy 29:10–15
10 All of you are standing today
in the presence of YHWH your God—
your leaders and tribes, your elders and officials,
all the men of Israel,
11 your children, your wives, your sojourner living in your camps,
from your wood chopper to your waterhauler.
12 For you to cross over into the covenant of YHWH your God, and into his oath
that YHWH your God is cutting with you today,
13 to confirm you this day as his people, with him being for you as God
as he promised you
and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
14 Not with you, you-alone
do I cut this covenant, with its oath,
15 but with the one that is here, standing with us today
before the presence of YHWH our God,
And (also) with the one that is not here with us today.

I'd encourage you to look at The Literary Structures of the Old Testament, a Commentary on Genesis-Malachi by David Dorsey, recently promoted into the Lord's presence.

Rob

 

REVIEW: by Robert G. Bloing, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Ii, 60637 in JSTOR, Hebrew Studies 31 (1990) 210

JEPHTHAH AND HIS VOW. By David Marcus. Pp 77. Lubbock: Texas Tech Univesity, 1986.

This essay is a singularly focused pursuit of the question: what happened to Jephthah's daughter at the conclusion of the story in Judges 11:29-40? What Marcus calls the "traditional" or "sacrificialist" interpretation hold that Jephthah rashly vowed his daughter to death. A minority opinion, also with some deep roots in rabbinic interpretation, regards the sacrifice as metaphorical: Jephthah's daughter was consecrated to God to remain a virgin for the rest of her life.

After briefly recounting the history of exegesis, which rather massively favors the traditional interpretation, Marcus proceeds to a rehabilitation of the dissenting view. He is convinced that while the sacrificialist case is less than iron-clad, the alternative is not without merit. The result, he concludes, is a story shot through with intentional ambiguity. The effect of the ambiguity is to focus attention away from the unanswerable question about the fate of the daughter and on to the rashness of Jephehah's vow. There is considerable merit to the argument, and so we "sacrificialists" may well have to be less decisive about certain matters in our second editions.

 

I was reminded of this thread while reading a blog from BibleStudyMagazine.com

Rob

Righting a Wrong by Michael Heiser (May 16, 2017)

The Story Repurposed

The tragedy of Jephthah is repurposed in the New Testament story of Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus (Luke 8:40–56). The details are subtle but theologically powerful.
COMMON ELEMENTS
Jephthah Story

• Jephthah’s only daughter
• Preceded as judge by Jair (spelled in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, as Ιαϊρ)
• Land of Jephthah = Gilead (Judg 11:1)
• Land of Jair = Gilead (Judg 10:3–5) Gilead = east of the Jordan, ruled by the Ammonites in Jephthah’s day

​

Jairus Story

• Jairus’ only daughter (Luke 8:42)
• Jairus (spelled in Greek as Ιαϊρος)
• Jairus encounters Jesus on the shore of the sea of Galilee, after Jesus’ return from Gerasa/Gadara = Gilead in the Old Testament

​

CONTRASTING ELEMENTS
Jephthah Story

• An Israelite leader who worships Yahweh in the manner of false gods
• Selfish vow results in the human sacrifice of his daughter
• An Israelite girl is sacrificed to a foreign god Daughter dies

​

Jairus Story

• A Jewish leader who embraces Jesus
• Unselfishly pleads to Jesus for the life of his daughter
• A Jewish girl is raised by the true God incarnate Daughter raised to life

​

As was the case in the original Jephthah story, this repurposing is about which god is king, and what territory is his rightful domain. Jesus is showing that Gilead is being taken back by the true God.

 

The verses seems to clearly indicate that Jephthah murdered his daughter and made her an unacceptable sacrifice to God, given the Law did not allow for human sacrifice. The Law states clearly the only creatures that make for an acceptable sacrifice. This is reminiscent of the child sacrifices to Moloch or Baal later in the bible, which God hated with what seems like special hate (Leviticus 20:2-5, Jeremiah 19:5).

The story is no less horrible than many in the book of Judges such as in Judges 19.

 

Think that he put her up in their version of the nunnery, as she remained a virgin for life, and thus his family line ended!