Judges 11:29 – 40 “Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, then through Mizpah of Gilead. And from there he advanced against the Ammonites.
Jephthah made this vow to the LORD: “If indeed You will deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out of the door of my house to greet me on my triumphant return from the Ammonites will belong to the LORD, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”
So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD delivered them into his hands. With a great blow he devastated twenty cities from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.
And when Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no son or daughter besides her. As soon as Jephthah saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “No! Not my daughter! You have brought me to my knees! You have brought great misery upon me, for I have given my word to the LORD and cannot take it back.”
“My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have said, for the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites.” She also said to her father, “Let me do this one thing: Let me wander for two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity.”
“Go,” he said. And he sent her away for two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity upon the mountains. After two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she had never had relations with a man. So it has become a custom in Israel that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”
Poor Jephthah! Jephthah was a man without a family, for whom family would mean everything. Jephthah had no illusions about his half – brothers and uncles. As soon as Jephthah succeeded in conquering the enemies, his father’s family was more than willing to kick him out again, despite all their fine promises. Jephthah had no son, but his daughter was young and beautiful, and he probably looked forward to the day when his daughter would marry and give him grandchildren to carry on his line.
Why did Jephthah make such a foolish promise? Jephthah was probably anticipating that his beloved dog would come out of the house first; at no point did he ever anticipate his daughter coming out to greet him ahead of everybody else in the household. Despite Jephthah’s strong affirmations about the God of Israel, Jephthah was actually someone who was probably worshiping other gods alongside Yahweh. Yahweh had expressly forbidden human sacrifice on many occasions; however, other demonic gods demanded such sacrifices. (“You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.” (Deuteronomy 12.31)
Did Jephthah really sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering? This question has raised controversies for years. Some people would like to argue that surely Jephthah would have relented, perhaps dedicating his daughter to serve in a temple somewhere far away. But in actual fact, Jephthah probably did kill his daughter and then burn her body. Jephthah’s pride was on the line, and his daughter paid the price for it.
APPLICATION: Was God pleased with Jephthah’s offering? No. There is no point in time at which God has demanded human sacrifices. The only human sacrifice God has approved is the one that Jesus made on the cross of Calvary for the sins of the whole world. But the question for us as modern – day people is this: are we acting out of pride to make our children into human sacrifices to our own ambitions?
We know a family in which the father has longed to be a professional in his chosen sport. The father plays well enough to be in recreational leagues but not to make the big time. But this same father is grooming his son, forcing him to compete in several games a week for most of the year – all to the end that his son might become a professional sports figure. There are other families in which one or both parents may be doctors; woe betide the poor kid with average grades in such a family, particularly if there are one or two brilliant siblings who have fulfilled their parents’ dreams of their becoming doctors as well. Sometimes parents make unreasonable financial demands on a child, erroneously assuming that child to have far more wealth than is actually the case. The child is then left in an untenable position: to fulfill his/her parents’ wishes and risk financial failure, or to deny his/her parents’ wishes and to be thought an unfeeling and undutiful child.
In a blog, Pastor Joel from Riverview Baptist Church comments: The mystery of the gospel is that God is a God of infinite grace who pays for the debt of sinners – horrible sinners. All sin is a horrendous offense against a holy God, from white lies, to pirating music or television from the internet, to human sacrifice. And God’s grace can and does cover them all through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin. Rather than justify Jephthah by diminishing the severity of his sin, I think an honest accounting of this text rather serves to magnify the grace of God. God’s grace can cover any sin. Even the sin of child sacrifice. (https://www.riverviewbaptist.net/pastor-joels-blog/2017/10/2/digging-deeper-did-jephthah-really-sacrifice-his-daughter)
Hebrews 11:32 ”And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets…” This passage includes Jephthah as one of the heroes of faith along with several others whose walk with God was extremely uneven but who acted in faith. It’s a good thing too! For Jephthah represents each one of us who has made horrible mistakes sometimes but who has still acted in faith, imperfect as it might be.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for Your grace! Thank You that You love us so much that You forgive our sins and still count us as Your children. Help us to do the things that please You always. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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