No King in Israel (27)

I find it interesting that the scriptures rarely spend much time describing the conflicts in which Israel engaged (Jericho and Ai being exceptions). In a Tolkien novel, a battle may take multiple chapters to cover. Same with a secular history. But the writers of scripture are teaching moral lessons, and are not interested in martial minutiae unless it serves their spiritual purpose in writing.

In this case, the writer dispenses with a great victory over Ammon in a single verse.

Compared to all else written concerning Jephthah, it’s a trivial amount of information, yet it’s the event for which he was known and celebrated in Israel, and for which he was selected to lead and helped by God. So what was Jephthah’s battle plan against Ammon? Don’t know. How did he array his troops? No idea. How did the tide of battle turn, and in what manner did God show his favor to Jephthah and Israel? Not a word.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

8. Jephthah (continued)

Judges 11:32-33 — The Victory

“So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.”

It looks as if the battle began near Aroer, a former Amorite city in Gilead. So Jephthah attacked the invaders in the northern Transjordan (Israelite territory), then pursued them south into Ammon city by city. Experts are uncertain about the exact locations of Minnith and Abel-keramim, but both were apparently Ammonite cities. So then, war for Israel’s territory commenced in Israel, ending with the Israelite conquest of twenty foreign cities that God had previously disdained to give into Israel’s hands. Of course, since the king of Ammon initiated the conflict with his neighbors, he forfeited the Lord’s protection of his territory, as Ammon’s sister nation Moab also did in Judges 3. This was a great victory for Israel, and the nation once again had peace for a time.

Judges 11:34-40 — Disaster Strikes

“Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter. And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.’ And she said to him, ‘My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.’ So she said to her father, ‘Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.’ So he said, ‘Go.’ Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.”

What Was He Thinking?

Now we get to the meat of Jephthah’s story, and yet another cautionary tale from scripture about what happens when a man departs from the will of God. Sin limits one’s choices: instead of choosing between good and evil, you now get to choose between degrees of bad. Inexplicably certain of his ability to make good on his vow, Jephthah had promised something God neither desired nor required. What did he expect: an animal from his herds or flocks to wander up to him at his property line and conveniently fulfill his unnecessary promise to God? It almost seems as if the terms of his foolish vow require human intellect, awareness, and expectation of Jephthah’s return, and yet it’s evident that Jephthah was also completely surprised by an outcome that we would expect any normal, rational adult to anticipate.

It’s also evident from the text that both Jephthah and his daughter were familiar with the Law of Moses in some detail, despite the degraded times in which they lived. So what was the man thinking when he committed himself to a course of action that had such potential to go sideways? Tim Keller believes Jephthah knew what he was doing, and that he always had human sacrifice in view:

“If Jephthah had promised God an animal, then when his daughter came through the doors he would never have considered the promise to have had any binding force with regard to her.”

Presumably then, in Keller’s view, Jephthah always intended to sacrifice a human being rather than an animal, perhaps a servant. That’s certainly an indication of a degraded mindset ignorant of the law, and a tonal fit in the context of Judges. Yet it doesn’t jibe with the rest of what we know about Jephthah’s character and his knowledge of Moses. I think it unlikely. I suspect his sin was more a product of overconfidence and thoughtlessness than anything else.

Degrees of Bad

As I mentioned, sin committed often limits our future choices. Binding himself with an unnecessary, unwise promise to God left Jephthah with two options, both degrees of bad.

1. One was to fail to make good on the vow. The Law of Moses makes abundantly clear that was a very bad idea in both Numbers and Deuteronomy.
2. The other option was to fulfill his vow by offering his daughter as a burnt offering. This too would violate the revealed will of God. He detested human sacrifice. It was “an abominable thing that the Lord hates”, as Deuteronomy declares. Sacrificing their children was common in Canaan, and it was one of the reasons God used Israel to strip the Canaanite nations of their territory.

Degrees of bad. I know how I’d feel about that choice. But what exactly was the choice?

A Convenient Loophole

Commentators disagree about what was actually at stake here. Robby Lashua points to a Hebrew conjunction in Jephthah’s vow. He said, “Whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s, and [Hebrew: vav] I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” Experts translate vav differently depending on context. In this situation, Lashua believes it should be translated “or” rather than “and”. That would give Jephthah a loophole: either dedicate his daughter to serve the Lord for life, remaining a virgin, or else offer her as a burnt offering, which he declined to do.

Two problems with this rather convenient “out”: (1) 35 different English translations of the verse are listed here, and only two translators chose “or” over “and”, as Lashua would prefer; and (2) the idea of a man or woman remaining a virgin to serve the Lord is Roman Catholic, not Hebrew.

There is nothing anywhere in the Law of Moses requiring women dedicated to the Lord’s service to be virgins (or, indeed, any indication that such a role for women in Israelite worship even existed). If Jephthah or his daughter assumed the service of God required female virginity, it’s a notion they absorbed from the nations, not from the Law of Israel.

Moreover, Lashua would have us believe that both Jephthah and his daughter were deeply grieved because she would never bear him grandchildren, and that women all over Israel mourned her loss of children year after year. Does the negation of one woman’s fertility seem sufficient cause for an annual four-day period of national mourning? It certainly seems unlikely to me. Women in Israel took the privilege of bearing children very seriously, but that goes beyond any reasonable response.

It’s a neat idea, but Lashua’s loophole is simply not there anywhere I can see.

Ambiguities in the Text

So then, the text of Judges 11 is full of ambiguities that leave unresolved what actually happened to Jephthah’s daughter. Is it “and” or “or”? Is it “whatever” or “whoever”? When it says Jephthah “did with her according to his vow”, what that means very much depends on how the reader interprets the terms of his vow.

Jephthah’s name is cited in Hebrews 11 as an example of faith. Some make the argument that had he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering, he would not have been included in Israel’s hall of fame.

I doubt that. The men and women credited for their faith in Hebrews never exercised faith at all times or in every area of life. David is included despite getting all kinds of people killed in the fallout from his sin with Bathsheba. Lot is included despite having drunken sex with both his daughters and siring two neighboring nations that gave Israel perpetual problems, including this one. So that argument doesn’t hold much water.

In the end, we can’t say with certainty what happened, except that it was bad; that much we can be very sure about. Sin has consequences, and sins committed from self-confidence, lack of forethought or ignorance of God’s law are no exceptions.