Women with a Story to Tell: Jephthah's daughter.

 This is a difficult story. The distance between our culture and the culture of the Israelites and surrounding people during the period of the Judges is so great that we have trouble understanding what is going on. But there is a young girl, and she does have a voice, but it is barely heard.

 Let me frame this discussion around one telling comment: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6, 21:25). These two summaries, one halfway through the book and the other at the end of the book, tell us the sad story of individuals in divisive tribes pursuing their own interests, to the destruction of the society of the Israelites. Sound familiar?  

 In two other places the first half of this phrase is used, “In those days there was no king in Israel” (Judges 18:1, 19:1). This reveals the political allegiance of the writer of Judges. However, this bias turned out to be wrong. Any reading of the books of Kings and Chronicles, which were not written by the same hand, reveals that this conclusion was wrong. Many of the kings were worse than the Judges. Bad leaders only make ungodly practices worse. The issue is obedience to God.

 Here we have another story about a judge, and he was the son of the more well-known Gilead. However, he was a bastard son. The text says Jephthah was “the son of a prostitute” (This story is in Judges 11). Gilead’s legitimate sons, and he had many, drove Jephthah away so he would not share in their inheritance. Then the Ammonites invaded Israel just like the Russians invaded Ukraine. The elders of Gilead knew that they were in trouble, so they sent a delegation to strike a deal with Jephthah because he was known as an accomplished warrior. 

 The elders asked him to come and be their ‘commander’, and Jephthah countered with a bid to be their ‘head’, that is their political leader as well as their war leader. The elders capitulated; they were out negotiated. 

Jephthah rallied the national guard to fulfill their legitimate duties. As he took the field, he made a rather rash vow: “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD’s, to be offered up as a burnt offering” (Judges 11: 31). 

 The text already says that Jephthah was called and that “the spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah.” What more did he need? God had asked no more of the judges than to come when he called and be present at the LORD’s victory.

 As you now might guess, when Jephthah returned victorious from battle, the first person or animal to come out his door was his one and only daughter. She came dancing with timbrels (little tambourines) to celebrate his victory. We don’t know her name, though others down through the ages have given her one name or another. Jephthah was crushed. As a prostitute’s son, he had gained the status in society he desired, but now he was losing his only chance to be a patriarch of a family in Israel. 

 “Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble for me. For I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow.” 

 What he says does not make clear whether he is more concerned about his daughter or his status in society. 

 As has been the case with many women, Tamar for example, the woman shows more integrity than the man. His daughter says, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the LORD, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, not that the LORD has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” 

 That takes faith in God and respect for a father who is trying but has opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have. What happened to the daughter of Jephthah? There is nothing anywhere else in the Bible about her. Bible scholars, both Jewish and Christian, disagree on the outcome. 

 Remember that Isaac was to be sacrificed by Abraham, but God stopped him. It was the practice of the Ammonites and Moabites sometimes to sacrifice their children, and the Israelites’ sin was to follow the gods of the people around them. Still, the story has a telling conclusion.

 Jephthah’s daughter continues, “Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” Some have asked why she did not bewail her death if that was coming? Why bewail her virginity? 

 There is the suggestion that she, like Samuel, was dedicated to the LORD through service in their place of worship. Women who were virgins were known to serve in other temples in the Near East though only a few cases are mentioned for the Israelites (Exodus 38:8, I Samuel 2:2). In this case, she would be one of the first nuns mentioned in the Bible.

 If this is true, then the custom of girls coming for four days every year to lament the daughter of Jephthah means that they would come and lament with her. There is no other mention of this custom elsewhere in the Bible, so if this is indeed the story, the girls stopped doing that when the daughter died of old age. 

 But the possibility still remains since the text says, “her father, … did to her according to the vow that he had made,” and that may refer back to the mention of a “burnt offering.” Either way, this is a sad story of a young girl, like Anne Frank, whose voice was cut off way too soon.

 Once again, we have men doing things contrary to the covenant that God established and the laws therein. For centuries, a misreading of that covenant has meant that women are paying the price. Notice that “Gilead” is the name of the community in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. For a current example, search online for Doug Wilson’s ‘Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches’. 

 No church should mistreat daughters, wives, or widows. Nor should any adult women, married or not, be relegated to second class citizen status. Instead of, “every man did what was right in his own eyes,” we have been called to be “disciples who obey everything that Jesus has taught us.”