36“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.” 37She 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.”
38“Go,” he said. And he sent her away for two months.
So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity upon the mountains. 39After 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 40that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
Lament
a. He carried out his vow with her which he had vowed: Some think that Jephthah did really offer his daughter as a burnt offering. If he did, this was clearly an example of misguided zeal for God because God never asked him to make such a foolish vow or to fulfill it so foolishly.
i. Later in their history, Israel began to serve a terrible pagan god named Molech, who was appeased with child sacrifice in the most terrible way imaginable. God never asked to be served in this terrible way, and therefore it can’t be blamed on God.
b. She went with her friends, and bewailed her virginity... She knew no man: These words indicate that it is more likely that Jephthah set his daughter aside for the tabernacle service according to the principle of Leviticus 27:2-4, where persons set apart to God in a vow were not required to be sacrificed (as animals were) but were “given” to the tabernacle in monetary value.
i. We know that there were women who were set apart for the tabernacle service; they were called the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of meeting (Exodus 38:8; 1 Samuel 2:22). It is likely that Jephthah’s daughter became one of these women who served at the tabernacle.
ii. His daughter and her friends were rightly grieved that she was given to the tabernacle service before she was ever married. Probably most of the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle were older widows.
iii. By sending his unmarried, only daughter to the service of the tabernacle for the rest of her life, it shows how seriously both Jephthah and his daughter took his promise to God.
iv. Many commentators object and see no other option than to say that Jephthah horribly fulfilled his vow by the human sacrifice of his own daughter. “The attempt to commute the sentence of death to one of perpetual virginity cannot be sustained.” (Cundall)
v. Yet her committal to be one of the women who assembled at the tabernacle still seems like the best explanation because Jephthah is listed as a hero of the faith (Hebrews 11:32). It is hard to think of him as doing something so contrary to God’s ways as offering his daughter as a human sacrifice and still being mentioned as a man of faith in Hebrews 11.
When we study the word of God we need to chew on it and ask ourselves would the Lord allow human sacrifice? I am reminded by this scripture:
Genesis 22: 9When they arrived at the place God had designated, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar, atop the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
11Just then the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12“Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him,” said the angel, “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.”
The Lord tested Abraham and did not allow human sacrifice! So I agree with Cundall’s commentary “The attempt to commute the sentence of death to one of perpetual virginity cannot be sustained.”
As with Abraham I believe the Lord would have stopped Jephthah from making a human sacrifice and he wouldn’t have been hailed as a man of faith!
Hebrews 11: 32And what more shall I say? Time will not allow me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34quenched the raging fire, and escaped the edge of the sword; who gained strength from weakness, became mighty in battle, and put foreign armies to flight.
That’s a lot to take in with five verses isn’t it?
Blessings
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