Sacrifice Controversy

[ROBE]

He promised he would offer to YHWH OR burn as an offering.
It was mistranslated as offer to YHWH AND burn as an offering.

[Kurieuo]

Guys what is your take on Jephthah sacrificing his daughter after defeating the Ammonites as The Book of Judges describe. i know it is a clichéd kind of question, I know for a fact the God is not responsible for such actions. but Jephthah is listed in Faith Heroes in Hebrews 11. I have read online about it as to how the "sacrifice" or "burnt offering" could mean consecration but I must say I am still curious as to before the 18th century this view did not exist (if i am not wrong).

Bit late, but there's many inconsistencies with this story to believe he actually "sacrificed" as in killed his daughter as a "burnt offering".

Glenn Miller notes of this:

• Jephthah's daughter (Judg 11):
  
  And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD: "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering." .......... 34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, "Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break." 36 "My father," she replied, "you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But grant me this one request," she said. "Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry." 38 "You may go," he said. And he let her go for two months. She and the girls went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. 39 After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin. From this comes the Israelite custom 40 that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
  
  Most commentators believe that Jephthah literally killed and burned his daughter on an altar somewhere, and that this human sacrifice was condoned by God (since it was a vow thing). It seems to me that this is probably NOT the case--there are just two many incongruities in the text/context for that. Consider:
  
  • 1. Literal "burnt offerings" HAD TO BE male (Lev 22.18-19). Jephthah's daughter obviously wasn't.
    
    2. What did Jeff THINK would come out of a house? Not animals! He must have known that only a human would have come out.
    
    3. Human sacrifice was STRICTLY forbidden (Dt 12.31) and we have NO record of it being practiced (even in horrible Judges-period Israel) by mainstream Israel during this period.
    
    4. The lament for the daughter is about 'not marrying' NOT about 'not living'--it makes me wonder if some kind of religious celibacy is not in view. (Maybe the women at the Entrance to the Tent were celibate--Ex 38.8--living as widows in Israel later did on Temple payrolls.)
    
    5. Verse 39 calls his action a 'vow'. Lev 27.28 (coupled with 27.21) allowed people to be given over the Lord, who became servants of the Priests. As devoted to the Lord's service, some of them probably did NOT marry (cf. the Nazarite vow, in its restriction on becoming 'unclean' for family members (Num 6.7) omits the words 'husband' or 'wife'...perhaps it was sometimes involving celibacy. The only Nazies we know, though, were married--Samuel and Samson)
    
    6. As the only child, and if given to the priest in this fashion, Jephthah's entire estate would go to someone else.
    
    7. We have the VERY parallel case of Hannah and Samuel. She takes a vow, and offers her son to the Lord for all his life. (I Sam 1-2), and such vows did NOT allow the person to be redeemed with money (Lev 27.28-29).
    
    8. Burnt offerings were ALWAYS associated with condemnation/evil--not thanksgiving and vows. Even the one non-literal use of it in Dt 13.16 (in which a town is offered as a burnt offering) involves abject judgment/condemnation--NOT at all in view in the Jephthah passage.
    
    9. He would have had to offer her at some cultic site, which would have had a priest. I cannot imagine a priest (even those as lax as elsewhere in the book of Judges) that would have agreed to perform a human sacrifice!
  What I have to conclude from this passage is that Jephthah is using 'burnt offering' in a general 'offering' sense, and that he is meaning an 'irredeemable vow' as a thank-offering, along the line of Hannah/Samuel. This is the only way to make sense of all the particulars. (Interestingly, Jephthat is surprisingly literate—his knowledge of biblical history,evidenced in the letter to his adversary, shows that he knows the mosaic history—he WOULD have known how bad a literal human sacrifice would have been.)
  
  A recent book by Pamela Reis [OT:RTL] adds some interesting insights to this event:
  
  • 1. Jeff's vow would have been taken in the town he lived in, and would have been publically known to all—including his daughter
    
    2. The daughter has all the appearances of a 'spoiled' child, flaunter her power over her dad;
    
    3. The daughter has all the appearances of a “paganite” in the passage!
    
    4. Giving the daughter over to God (as I suggested above) might have forced her to remain unmarried (since she could have done no housewifely work as dedicated to the Lord). This would have forced her (in her understanding) to remain in her father's house (instead of at the tabernacle, as I postulated above).
    
    5. Jephthah's vow is accordingly 'not rash'--he probably expected a male servant to come out deliberately—as an advancement to the cultic life.
  The net effect of her understanding is the same: there was no human sacrifice, nor any devaluation of women in the passage.

[Jac3510]

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!

Just for the record, I hold that it was a real human sacrifice and that Jephthah so intended it. The problem was that he intended to sacrifice his wife. As such, the vow was not rash. It was evil. God obviously did not approve, but that's part and parcel of the whole point of the book of Judges.

I wrote a detailed analysis of the passage here: Jephthah's Syncretism: An Exegesis of Judges 11:29-40.

[Kurieuo]

Holy thread resurrection, Batman!

Just for the record, I hold that it was a real human sacrifice and that Jephthah so intended it. The problem was that he intended to sacrifice his wife. As such, the vow was not rash. It was evil. God obviously did not approve, but that's part and parcel of the whole point of the book of Judges.

I wrote a detailed analysis of the passage here: Jephthah's Syncretism: An Exegesis of Judges 11:29-40.

You and you're damn papers Jac.
Take a break will you? Let us catch up.

I'll obviously have to read your paper, but I find it extremely hard to accept.
Burnt offerings required a priest to slaughter and flay.
Priest's would keep the skin in all except birds.

There is no Levitical Law for sacrificing humans.
I can not accept that God would honour such a request.
Unless you reject that God is responsible for it at all?

If God is somehow accountable in truly accepting this vow,
I'd think to believe such would make God contradict himself.
Furthermore, it'd make the priest sinful and blemished.
God specifically singled Israel out to not be like the pagans around them who did such.
God also prohibited the taking of human life (i.e., murder).

And, then, why would she be only too happy to oblige.
Why would she only ask for 2 months and not 2 years?
It doesn't make sense on so many levels.

I'll read your paper though.

[Kurieuo]

I read it very quickly, and something like this was you're only way out of the dilemma that I saw:

More importantly, such questions distract from a simpler and more fundamental issue,
that is, whether or not a vow to commit a sin is even valid.39 Obedience is better than sacrifice
(cf. 1 Sam. 15:22), so no matter what view one takes of the vow’s motivation, it is apparent that
God would not have expected or required Jephthah to keep it.40 It was not, then, Jephthah’s
ignorance of the Law that brought destruction on his children and ended his family line. Rather,
it was his syncretistic belief that God required sacrifice (human sacrifice, no less) rather than
obedience to the Torah that wreaked so much havoc.

I find Judges so depressing in general how Israel kept turning their back on God.

In any case, I find your interpretation nonetheless an acceptable one that doesn't contradict God's nature.