Seder 101: Judges 11---More on Jephthah and his Vow

 The account of Jephthah's rash vow in Judges 11 leaves readers shaking their heads, as I have noted previously.   Before going to battle against the Ammonites, he promises God, 

"If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then 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 I will offer it up for a burnt offering" (Jdg 11:31).    

When Jephthah returns victorious, it is his daughter who greets him, and he ends up carrying out his vow (verse 39).  Commentators are of two opinions on what he ends up doing.  In particular, the medieval Jewish commentators fall into two camps, as Shera Aranoff Tuchman explains.  Some, like Rashi and Ramban, go with the majority view that Jephthah kills his daughter, engaging in human sacrifice.  Others, like Abarbanel and Radak, believe that she lives a kind of cloistered existence in service to God, never marrying.  (I lean toward the majority.)  

What all agree on is that this vow should never have been carried out.  Some argue that the vow is incoherent, since a number of the creatures that would come to greet Jephthah do not belong to the category of sacrificial animals.  In any case, any person dedicated to God could be redeemed according to the guidelines laid out in Leviticus 27:1-8.  God, of course, hates human sacrifice (Lev 20:1-5, e.g.)

Because the laconic narrative leaves us with lots of questions, it is natural to propose possible scenarios about what happened.  One thing that is communicated in Judges 11-12 is that Jephthah was an argumentative, stubborn kind of guy who came from a tough background and didn't have much knowledge of what God was like or what God wanted from him.  It's possible that a priest or Levite tried to teach him but found him unwilling to listen.  

One problem that is evident in Judges is a vacuum of leadership and spiritual guidance from the priests and Levites.  This could be the fault of negligent teachers, unwilling students, or most likely a mixture of both.  Jephthah was not the only Israelite who ignored the Torah during the period of the Judges.

There is a midrash on Judges 12:7 suggesting that God punished Jephthah for his disobedience.  As the ESV footnote mentions, the MT in this verse says that when Jephthah died, he was buried "in the cities of Gilead."  How can a person be buried in a number of cities?   The midrash proposes that God struck Jephthah with a disease that caused him to lose one body part at a time.  The parts were then buried in the towns where they fell off.  

Seder 101: Judges 11---Jephthah's Needless Vow

 During the period after Israel's conquest of Canaan, the Israelites failed to completely drive the Canaanites out of the land and ended up becoming much like their Canaanite neighbors.  In the words of commentator Daniel Block, the book of Judges, which chronicles this period of Israel's history, describes the "Canaanization of Israel."  We read several examples of Israel's descent into sin.  We also read of God's grace and faithfulness to his people, as he repeatedly rescues them despite their serious problems.  

Judges 11 describes a time when the Israelites who lived east of the Jordan River were threatened with a military invasion by the Ammonites.  Looking for a deliverer, the people in Gilead called upon Jephthah, whose family had previously driven him away.  Jephthah agreed to help them if they would make him their leader (vv 1-11).

After being appointed leader, Jephthah carried on a negotiation with the Ammonites.  When the Ammonites complained that the Israelites had taken land from them, Jephthah responded quite rightly that the Israelites had done no such thing.  Rehearsing the history recorded in Num 21, Jephthah asserted that God had given the Israelites their territory east of the Jordan.  

The statement of Jephthah recorded in Judges 11:24 is interesting.  Jephthah says to the Ammonite leader, "Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess?  And all that the LORD our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess."

These words raise a couple of questions.  First, Chemosh was the god of the Moabites, not the Ammonites.  The Ammonite god was Milcom.  In getting the name of their god wrong, was Jephthah showing deliberate disrespect to the Ammonites by implying that the name of their god really didn't matter?  It could have been like referring to their god as "Whatshisname".  

Also, Jephthah's theology is incorrect in saying that the Moabite or Ammonite god would give the Ammonites land, since it is Yahweh who allotted the nations their territories and their gods, who were angelic beings that he had created (Deut 32:8-9).  In making his statement, was Jephthah simply speaking the language of the Ammonite king, or did he believe his incorrect statement?  The answer may have some bearing on how we interpret what happened later.  

The Ammonite king did not back down, and so war ensued.  Jephthah, who was used to relating to others through tough negotiation, made a vow to God:  "If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then 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 I will offer it up for a burnt offering" (vv 30-31).  

This wasn't a promise that Jephthah needed to make.  For Israel's sake, God empowered him to win the battle against Ammon.  

It's not completely clear what Jephthah was promising.  We know that when he returned home after the campaign and his daughter greeted him at the door, he was disheartened.  We also know that his daughter died without having the opportunity to marry or have children.  The usual interpretation (and apparently the only one before medieval times) is that he made his daughter a human sacrifice, but the text doesn't say explicitly.  It just says that he carried out his vow (v 39).  

Whatever the nature of Jephthah's vow, there was no need for him to carry it out.  It would have been better for him to substitute the payment called for in Lev 27, or to have broken the vow and taken the consequences.  God certainly did not want him to sacrifice his daughter.  

As a whole, the book of Judges highlights incidents that show Israel's depravity during this era of its history.  God by his grace continually delivered his people despite their fall into immorality.  One message of Judges is the absence of spiritual instruction and influence from the priests and Levites.  Jephthah was a fine negotiator, but he does not seem to have known God or understood what God really required of him.  

In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on April 30, 2022, Kyle Kettering discussed this puzzling account and stimulated us to think about what we might learn from it.  

Seder 101: Leviticus 27---Rules Involving Vows

Leviticus 26 ends with a summary statement, one that can be seen as a summary of the entire book of Leviticus:  "These are the statutes and rules and laws that the LORD made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai" (v 46).  

This would seem to have been a perfectly appropriate way to conclude the book of Leviticus.  But Leviticus has one additional chapter, which ends with a second summary statement.

Leviticus 27 deals with gifts promised to the tabernacle or temple.  Sometimes the promises were made in prayers, where a person promised a certain thing if God answered a particular prayer. 

One famous example is the promise Hannah made when she prayed for a son:  "And she vowed a vow and said, 'O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of my life, and no razor shall touch his head" (1 Sam 1:11).  

Hannah, we know, kept her promise, and Samuel served God from the time he was a young boy.

People also might promise gifts as a spontaneous expression of thanksgiving or love of God.  Several psalms speak of people publicly praising God by carrying out a vow (Ps 22, 50, 56, 61, 65, 66,76, 116).  

Sometimes the details of a vow would have to be changed.  Suppose that a man had vowed his services to the tabernacle, but the tabernacle did not need his help.  Then the man could give a donation instead, with the amount depending upon his age (Lev 27:1-8).  The amounts listed in Lev 27 seem to depend on the value of the manual labor that people in those age groups could contribute, taking into account also the fact that women might have family responsibilities that could limit the amount of time they could work at the tabernacle.  

If someone donated a house, land, or other asset and then found he couldn't afford the gift, he could buy it back with a 20% penalty.  The precepts in Lev 27 give incentives for people to keep their word and not make these kinds of promises lightly.  Nothing in the Bible encourages anyone to make a vow.  

At the end of Israel's 40 years in the wilderness, Moses would say, "If you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin.  But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin.  You shall be careful to do what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God what you have promised with your mouth" (Deut 23:21-23).  

Some of the provisions in Lev 27 relate to the year of Jubilee, which is a reason why they appear after the Jubilee is introduced in Lev 25.