SACRIFICING YOUR TEEN DAUGHTER TO THANK GOD FOR VICTORY

Joshua > Judges > Ruth

WARNING:  HUMAN SACRIFICE, PROSTITUTION

CONTEXT: ~ 1200 BCE to 1050 BCE The Book of Judges occupies an interim time frame between the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan and the installation of the monarchy. It also contains some of the most disturbing and violent episodes in the Bible.

 When it comes to book banning initiatives, one wonders why any family values advocate would want their impressionable child exposed to the violence and sexuality of the Bible – especially the Book of Judges.* In particular, let's take a look at Judges 11, in which the warlord Jephthah sacrifices his teen daughter to thank YHWH for victory over the evil Ammonites.  

 STORY SUMMARY: On the way to battling the Ammonites ** Jephthah the Gileadite*** vows to sacrifice whatever or whomever he first encounters after the victory. 

"And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 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."  – Judges 11:30-31 [KJV] 

The good news is that Jephthah wins the battle, wiping out twenty towns in the process; the bad news is when he returns home, his unnamed daughter dances out the door playing timbrels in celebration of his victory.
 

Jephthah abruptly realizes that he has failed to thoroughly consider the possible consequences of his vow to the Lord; the mighty warrior rends his clothes. Nevertheless, after granting his only child a few months to hang out with her friends he sacrifices her as promised. In order to assure Fun Bible Stories readers experience the holy scriptures are as realistically as possible, the process of sacrifice would involve binding the girl to an altar, slaughtering her like a farm animal and then burning her body.****

YHWH has nothing to say about the murder of an innocent one way or the other, and certainly doesn't prevent it.***** 

A fascinating side-effect of this story is the effort by Bible apologists to claim Jephthah didn't necessarily fulfill his horrifying promise. The rhetoric of these arguments is deceptive, suggesting that somehow the text doesn't clearly describe how he barbecues his kid. Or maybe YHWH stopped the killing and no one wrote it down. Or it could be a mistranslation (a favorite). Etc. Etc. Theologians of the inerrancy school understand that this kind of gas lighting works because few of their flock will grab their good book to verify the apologist argument. As is the case with so much biblical pseudo scholarship, the objective is to explain why the text doesn’t say what it says. All that notwithstanding, the text itself could not be more clear.
 

Here is what the passage says:

"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, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year." – Judges 11:40 [KJV]

That is the King James Version, but every translation says the same thing with little variation: Jephthah made good on his vow, which was to sacrifice his daughter.***** 

You don’t have to be a Christian to know how to read.

______________________________ NOTES ______________________________

* Old Testament “judges” were not judicial officials but rather de facto rulers more akin to warlords.

** Canaanite types who had been resistant to wandering Israelites taking over their land. Think of them as any other indigenous people wiped out by YHWH’s hordes. 

*** Jephthah is introduced from the beginning as a sketchy guy, An outlaw of sorts who heads a band of scoundrels. His mother is described as a prostitute and he has been forced from his home by his brothers due to his illegitimate birth.

**** An additional problem is the fact that Jephthah was neither a priest nor a Levite and is therefore unqualified to make sacrifices, human or otherwise. In the Torah, the Lord provides extremely detailed sacrificial protocol, which, if followed, would render our description even more disturbing. Furthermore, God takes offerings to himself very seriously. The price of messing up even a small detail is death. So why there are no consequences for Jephthah is a Bible mystery.

***** Compare this scenario to the famous divine test of Abraham, who is willing to sacrifice Isaac until YHWH calls it off.