Jephthah's Vow

A victorious army comes home. Out of a house door runs a girl, dancing, a tambourine in her hands, so happy to see her father. And the moment he sees her, he tears his clothes in grief. This is one of the hardest stories in the Bible.

Jephthah grew up in Gilead, east of the Jordan. He was a strong and brave man. But his mother was a prostitute, not his father's wife, and when his half-brothers grew up, they drove him out. “You'll get no share of our family's inheritance. You're the son of another woman.” So Jephthah went to live in the land of Tob, and a band of rough, restless men gathered around him. He became their leader, an outsider with nothing to lose.

Then the Ammonites go to war against Israel, and the leaders of Gilead are desperate. They go to Tob, cap in hand. “Come and be our commander.” Jephthah looks at them. “Didn't you hate me and throw me out of my father's house? Why come to me now that you're in trouble?” They have no good answer. They promise to make him head of all Gilead. And so the outcast comes home, and makes his agreement before the Lord at Mizpah.

Jephthah tries talking before fighting. He sends messengers to the king of Ammon. The king claims the land is rightly his. Jephthah sends back a long, careful answer: the history of how Israel came there, which lands they took and which they left alone, and how for three hundred years nobody challenged it. “I have not wronged you. Let the Lord, the Judge, decide today between Israel and Ammon.” But the king won't listen.

Then the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Jephthah, and he marches out to face the Ammonites. And on the way, Jephthah makes a vow. Nobody asked him to. God didn't require it. He just said it.

“If you will give the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace will be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”

The Lord gives him the victory. Twenty towns are taken, and Ammon is subdued. Jephthah comes home to Mizpah. And the first one out of the door, with tambourines and dancing, is his daughter. His only child. He has no other son or daughter. He tears his clothes. “Oh, my daughter. You have brought me so low. I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take it back.” And she answers with a courage that is almost unbearable to hear. “My father, if you have made a promise to the Lord, do to me what you promised, since the Lord has given you victory over your enemies. Only let me have two months to go into the hills with my friends, and weep that I will never marry.”

So she goes, with her friends, into the hills for two months. Then she comes back to her father, and he does to her as he had vowed. The Bible tells it in few words, and so shall we. She never married. And it became a custom in Israel that every year, the young women of Israel would go out for four days to remember Jephthah's daughter.

Readers have struggled with this ending for a very long time. God's law strongly condemns offering children as sacrifices, and nowhere in this chapter does God ask for the vow or approve of it. Many readers, ancient and modern, take the text to mean Jephthah really did sacrifice his daughter, a terrible act in a dark period of Israel's history. Others, including some medieval Jewish commentators, have argued that she was instead dedicated to the Lord for life and never married. What everyone agrees is that the vow was rash, and that his daughter was remembered and grieved for, every year.

Jephthah's Vow. You'll find it in Judges chapter 11. God had already given Jephthah his Spirit. He didn't need to bargain. But his careless words cost the one person who loved him most. So here's the question to carry with you. Where are you tempted to make big promises or quick deals with God, when what he wants is your trust?