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BIBLE WARRIORS - Caught in his own trap BIBLE PERVERSIONS - Child sacrifice |
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JEPHTAH |
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JEPHTAH'S
FAMILY - OR LACK OF IT He was born to a father who already had a family, but Jephtah was illegitimate and his mother was a prostitute, so on two counts he was a social outcast. By the time he was a young man his brothers, the legitimate sons of his father Gilead, ran him off, expelling him from the family - and effectively giving him something close to a death sentence. A man without a tribe or family was defenceless. The sons' motives may have been mixed: Jephtah was aggressive, a born fighter, and probably not easy to live with. But there was another reason: as far as the legitimate sons were concerned, their share of the inheritance would be less if Jephtah was given a portion of his father's estate. At some stage in the story, Jephtah had a daughter - though there is no information given about the mother of this little girl. The girl was his only child, no doubt the apple of his eye. JEPHTAH AS A GUERILLA FIGHTER But war came to the area, and in this emergency the elders of Gilead went to Jephtah and asked for his help. Jephtah mocked them at first - 'Didn't you drive me out of my father's house, didn't you reject me?' he asked. But the elders persisted, and finally Jephtah agreed - on condition that he was made leader. If he succeeded it would make him a hero and wipe out the stain of his illegitimacy He went with them - an enormous turnaround: no longer rejected, he was feted and honored. JEPHTAH CONFRONTS THE AMMONITES The Ammonites rejected this argument, and insisted that the land was still theirs. 'Let the Lord, who is judge, decide....' said Jephtah. He prepared for battle. Jephtah know that victory was by no means
certain. His troops were courageous and willing, but not well-armed or
trained - they were citizen militia. But his
desire for acceptance fueled his ambition, and under its influence he made
a stupid and cruel vow. JEPHTAH
BARGAINS WITH GOD |
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'......tragedy
was about to strike. As he approached his house, his beloved daughter ran
out to meet him, leading the
women singers who greeted returning warriors. A horrified Jephtah knew he
must sacrifice her to fulfill his promise. He
was caught in a trap.' |
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Jephtah won the battle, and was feted and honored as the savior of the Israelites. It was a great triumph for someone who had been a despised outcast. But tragedy was about to strike. As he approached his house, his beloved daughter ran out to meet him, leading the women singers who greeted returning warriors. A horrified Jephtah knew he must sacrifice her to fulfill his promise. He was caught in a trap. A DEATH SENTENCE FOR HIS DAUGHTER She returned, and the vow was carried out. The exact method of her death is unknown. If she was a burnt offering, she would have been first killed with a knife, and then her body burnt. THE
BRUTALITY CONTINUES In the fighting that ensued, many were slaughtered. Jephtah's men took to killing every Ephraimite they met, and devised a horrid little test to discern who was an Ephraimite and who was not. The Ephraimites could not pronounce the word 'shibboleth', but said 'sibboleth'. If a captured man failed this test, he was cut down without further ado. It is recorded that Jephtah lived six years after this, and then died and was buried in his town of Gilead.
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BIBLE
REFERENCE
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PEOPLE
IN THE STORY
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FAMOUS
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INTERESTING WEBSITES - stories, pictures, reconstructions A
TRAGIC WARRIOR, ONE OF THE TOP TEN SOLDIERS OF THE BIBLE CHILD
SACRIFICE - THE WORST PERVERSION IN THE BIBLE THE VICTIM OF A
FOOLISH VOW ______________________________________________________________________________
Discussion
question: Is it ever permissible to kill? Consider these three
situations:
In
depth study of one person's story
Bullying
And
while we're on the subject...
Focus
Questions
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ADING Extract
from 'Jephtah and His Vow' by David Marcus, Texas Tech Pr., 1986 'In every period of Israel's history, marriage, not
celibacy,
is considered the desirable state for women. The blessings of the married
state are extolled, and it was held axiomatic that a woman achieved fulfillment
only with husband and children. Indeed, it was considered a tragedy
for a woman not to be married, and a terrible misfortune, even a punishment,
if she did not have children. The institution of the levirate marriage
is clear evidence of the importance for a wife to bear sons for her husband
and was what Israelite society considered the norm: that a man's house
and name should be continued in his children. In such a society, it is
thought that it would be highly unlikely for a woman to take a vow to voluntarily
refrain from marriage and from having children. The non-sacrificialists do not disagree with this view of the primacy of marriage in Israelite society, but a few believe that it is possible to assume that some voluntary celibacy may have existed. This assumption is based on the fact that, according to Numbers 6:2, women as well as men could vow themselves to God as Nazarites. Although the rules of the Nazarites, which specifically included abstinence from alcohol, not cutting the hair, and avoidance of corpses, did not include celibacy (the two most well-known Nazarites, Samuel and Samson, were both married), it is held most likely that this applied only to male Nazarites: they were permitted to marry, but a female one was not. This is deduced from the fact that in ancient Israel a wife was considered the property of her husband. A woman consecrated to God would, therefore, regard God as her spiritual husband, and would become, so to speak, His property. Hence, it would not be considered proper for such a woman to be married. She would remain in lifelong chastity or, in the case of a widow, in lifelong widowhood. Summary: There is no real evidence in the Hebrew Bible of women's electing to remain celibate, and the likelihood of this as a regular feature in society is remote. Likewise, there is little evidence in ancient Israel of an institution of celibate women being attached to a sanctuary akin to the chaste priestess in Mesopotamia, or to the vestals in ancient Greece and Rome in the cults of Athene, Artemis and Vesta. A
RARE EXAMPLE OF HUMAN SACRIFICE IN ISRAEL Most
Bible scholars today believe that the story of Jephthah and his daughter
represents an example of a human sacrifice offered up in emergency conditions
to obtain the active cooperation of the deity. Another example
of this type is the sacrifice by Mesha, king of Moab, of his first-born son. Mesha, being invaded by the combined armies of Israel,
Judah, and Edom, and seeing that
the tide of battle was going against him, took his first-born son,
and offered him up on the city wall as a burnt offering. So he took his first-born son who was to succeed him as king, and offered him up on the wall as a burnt offering. A great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and went back to [their own] land. The efficacy of the offering was immediate. The deed caused tremendous consternation upon the allies, and especially upon the Israelites. Thus, as with Mesha, it is believed that Jephthah was responding to an extraordinary situation, a desperate war with the Ammonites. Even if one grants that the war with the Ammonites be considered "emergency conditions" or a "specially dangerous situation," this view has, of course, to contend with an obvious and well-known problem. Given that human sacrifice was abhorrent to Israel, a vow to make a human sacrifice would surely have been against the law. This being so, one would expect some condemnation of Jephthah in the text after he put his daughter to death. Attempted solutions to this problem by sacrificialists have generally followed two lines: (1) it is held that a vow to offer human sacrifice was not in fact against the law in Jephthah's time, or (2)
it is possible that Jephthah was unaware of the law. HUMAN
SACRIFICE NOT AGAINST THE LAW IN JEPHTAH'S TIME In
advocating that a vow to offer human sacrifice was not against the law in
Jephthah's time, a number of scholars point to the fact that the narrative
does not seem to hold that such
a vow is contrary to the spirit of Israelite religion
Thus it is believed likely that in Jephthah's time human sacrifice could
have taken place. Religious beliefs of this age must not be judged, say the
sacrificialists, according to later laws or ideas; even the later prophets
were forced to wage war against
child sacrifice. Soggin has recently pointed to the value
of the Jephthah episode in enabling us to get a glimpse of early Israelite
religion, telling us that it
"had much more in common with that of Canaan and
the other religions of the Ancient Near East than Israelites were able to record
at a later stage or than the revisions of the text were disposed to admit". But there is an element here of petitio principii. It has first to be established that human sacrifice existed in ancient Israel before one can assume that the Jephthah episode is an example of it, and hence that it represents an earlier stage of Israelite religion. The fact is that it has never been satisfactorily established whether or not human sacrifice existed in Israel. The most recent studies on this old and difficult problem are those of Moshe Weinfeld and Morton Smith, who have debated the traditional view whether the reference to the passing of a child through fire or to Moloch indicates not child sacrifice but religious initiation to a foreign cult. The present state of inquiry seems to be that the evidence is such that one cannot say for certain one way or another whether human sacrifice existed in ancient Israel. JEPHTAH
UNAWARE OF THE LAW The
second attempted solution to explain Jephthah's action is that although a
vow to offer human
sacrifice was against the law, Jephthah was unaware of the
law. A
reason often given, particularly by modern scholars, for Jephthah's ignorance
of the law is the fact that he lived outside of Israel for some time. Jephthah
may have been, just as we know Israel was, influenced by the religion
of the neighboring people. The Book of Judges testifies to the fact that the
Israelites worshipped the Ammonite god Milkom prior to their liberation by
Jephthah; so it could well be that during Jephthah's stay in the land of
Tob as a freebooter or mercenary chief, he too came under the influence of
foreign religion. A basic element
in this argument is the belief that the Ammonites,
like others of Israel's neighbors, regularly practiced human sacrifice
in their cult. Thus, it is thought, Jephthah believed that just as other gods
required human sacrifice, so did Yahweh. The non-sacrificialists are able to refute this point of view in two ways. First, as the parallel case of David shows, the fact that one lives the life of a freebooter or mercenary outside of Israel does not necessarily mean that, upon one's return, one cannot still live in accordance with the law of Israel. Having lived outside of Israel does not by itself point to ignorance of Israel's law. Second, as with the case of Israel itself, there is no convincing evidence that human sacrifice was practiced as a regular part of the cult of any of Israel's neighbors so that any alleged influence of this practice on Jephthah is most speculative. NO
CONDEMNATION OF JEPHTAH IN THE TEXT The final question to be considered here, if in fact there is a case of human sacrifice, is why there is no word of disapproval or any moral evaluation in the text of Jephthah's act. Jephthah is depicted in the entire chapter as a true follower of Yahweh (verse 9); he wages war on behalf of Yahweh, and calls upon Yahweh to judge between Israel and Ammon (verse 27); the spirit of Yahweh 'comes upon him (verse 29), and he makes his vow to Yahweh (verse 30). He is extolled as one of Yahweh's saviors in the Book of Samuel (1 Samuel 12:11), alongside Gideon, Bedan (possibly Barak or Samson), and Samuel himself. Is
it likely, then, say the non-sacrificialists, that Jephthah, a true
Yahwist, would
have presented an offering which was anathema to Yahweh, and that this
fact would not be commented on by the narrator? The usual answer to this question is that absence of condemnation has little significance. Firstly, it may point to the fact that human sacrifice was in fact current in Jephthah's day. Secondly, even if this is not the case, there are other heroes in the Bible whose errant behavior is not condemned. But if, as is generally agreed, the stories of Jephthah fit into the redactional framework of the Deuteronomist, then one would expect unlawful acts to be somehow condemned, either overtly or obliquely, in accord with the didactic outlook of the Deuteronomistic school. It will be recalled that the narrator castigated Gideon for a much lesser crime with the Ephod (Judges 8:27). Absence of condemnation is therefore significant in judging a character's action. Jephthah is not only not condemned but referred to by the same Deuteronomist as a "savior of Israel," which is hardly an appellation to be applied to one guilty of such a crime. SUMMARY The proponents of the sacrificial point of view believe that Jephthah's act is to be considered an example, like that of Mesha and his son, of human sacrifice offered up in an emergency. To offset the objection that such a vow and execution would have been against the law, some proponents maintain that a vow to offer human sacrifice was not against the law, and if it was, Jephthah was unaware of it. A possible reason offered for Jephthah's ignorance of the law is that he had lived outside Israel and was subject to foreign influences. The absence of condemnation of Jephthah by the narrator is pointed to by non-sacrificialists as proof that the vow and its fulfillment were not contrary to the laws of Yahweh in Jephthah's time. The sacrificialists, on the other hand, point to the absence of condemnation as proof that human sacrifice was acceptable in Jephthah's time. CONCLUSIONS My conclusion is that while I personally favor a non-sacrificial fate for Jephthah's daughter, the evidence is so ambiguous that it must be admitted that both conclusions are possible. In positing that this situation was not accidental, it will be pointed out that the narrator is a brilliant stylist and craftsman who is most familiar with Hebrew rhetorical devices. Such a craftsman could be quite capable of devising a deliberately ambiguous ending. Perhaps the fate of Jephthah's daughter is not the chief element of the story at all, rather Jephthah's rash vow is. The story in effect is one which illustrates the consequences of a hasty vow; a fine irony for a man whose forte is seen to be eloquence of speech and mastery of words. SUMMARY
OF ARGUMENTS FOR A SACRIFICIAL CONCLUSION (1)
The text of the vow clearly states: "I will offer him up for an
ôlãh, 'burnt
offering", and this was put into effect in the fulfillment. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENTS FOR CELIBACY AND CONSECRATION (1)
The
phrase in the vow wehãyãh
laYHWH can only mean consecration, not offering of a sacrifice. DELIBERATE
AMBIGUITIES These problems may not have been entirely accidental, but could possibly represent ambiguities consciously devised by the narrator. He chose his words so that they would be open to a number of interpretations. As far as the fate of Jephthah's daughter is concerned, the fact remains that the text, as it stands now, admits the possibility of either conclusion. Was this deliberate? With the conclusion left up in the air, the suspense of the entire story is heightened. In many respects this is akin to classical folklore, inasmuch as there language is often intentionally ambiguous, and it has been observed above that some classical legends have different endings corresponding to different traditions. It remains to be demonstrated that our narrator was capable of such deliberate writing, and that such ambiguities are to be found elsewhere in the Bible.'
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