Weird Stuff in the Bible

Was it Right for Jephthah to Sacrifice his Daughter?
Judges 11

Introduction
One of our listeners, Alana, always sends in fantastic questions. Recently she sent an email with this, and I can’t believe I haven’t already covered this on the podcast before.
She asked about the passage in Judges where Jephthah vowed to sacrifice the first thing that came through his door to meet him after victory in battle. And if you know the story, you know that it actually ends up being his daughter. Alana said, “Clearly that was a sacrifice to God. Why would God allow him to sacrifice his daughter?”
This is a passage that incites a lot of debate, discussion and even depression among many bible readers. Jephthah is a believer. He’s even listed in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11.
And yet he also commits this abominable act- something God has often stated is unacceptably wicked- of committing a human sacrifice with his own child.
Yes, he made a vow in Judges 11 to sacrifice the first thing that came through his door.
Yes, it was a foolish vow since he didn’t realize his own daughter might be the thing.
But was it right for him to keep this vow?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Judges 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Who is Jephthah?
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about whether it was right for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter in Judges 11.
And perhaps let’s start by talking about who Jephthah is, because this is not one of the most well-known people from the Bible. If anyone knows anything about Jephthah, it’s that he sacrificed his daughter to keep this foolish vow. But Jephthah has two chapters in the book of Judges dedicated to him, and that story was only one part of it.
So let’s talk about who this guy is for a minute. His story shows up as one of the six major judges in the book of judges. The judges in the book of Judges were leaders of Israel back in the days before they had a king. The book of Judges has 6 major judges and 6 minor judges. Jephthah was one of the last major judges, right before Samson.
Jephthah has a dark backstory. The opening line about him, Judges 11:1, tells of how he was the son of a prostitute. Because of this, his brothers never accepted him. It’s wild; instead of opposing their dad for sleeping with a hooker, they blamed him for having the audacity to be born. And as he got older and they became concerned about him having a share of the future inheritance, they said, “you’re not one of us; you’re nothing but a Tinder date gone wrong”- or maybe you should say it was a Tinder date gone right- but either way, they ran him off and Jephthah moved to the land of Tob.
Jephthah became sort of a Robin Hood-type figure with a band of merry men. Later on, the Ammonites made war against Israel- as Ammonites have been known to do- Israel gets really desperate for someone tough enough to stand up to Ammon.
They actually come to Jephthah and ask if he and his band of merry men could come do something about these Ammonites. Jephthah says yes, but only if he can move back home and- if he’s victorious- become the leader of Israel.
This deal works for them. And so Jephthah goes up against Ammon. First, he tries to resolve the matter diplomatically. He listens to Ammon’s demands, and Ammon is demanding a portion of Israel’s land, and then Jephthah presents all the historical information for why the king of Ammon is being unreasonable. Jephthah demonstrates that he knows his history. But Ammon’s king doesn’t listen, because he’s not interested in the truth; he just wants Israel’s land.
We see a recurring theme all throughout the Old Testament that someone is always trying to separate the Israelites from their land, and we covered why that is in an episode of the podcast back at Christmas called Satan’s Master Plan. You can go check it out if you’d like to dive deeper into what’s going on here. It’s very interesting, though, that we see this same thing playing out today when Israel once again belongs to the Jewish people and how there are people trying to take the territory once again today- using very very similar arguments to what the King of Ammon is saying in Judges 11.

Jephthah’s Vow of human sacrifice
So when diplomatic negotiations fail, Jephthah instead has to enter into what we Star Wars fans call Aggressive Negotiations. And we’ll pick up the story at
Judges 11:30-31
30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 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.”
As also we Star Wars fans say, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
And since we already know where this is going, I’ll go ahead and make a note right here on something Jephthah said. Many wonder: what did he think would come out the doors of his house?
Well, the Hebrew word for “whatever” right there- when he says “whatever comes out from the doors of my house”- is yasa (yacht-saw), and it means anyone or anything that passes through.
So a lot of people read this and think, “Well Jephthah must have thought a family pet or perhaps some kind of barnyard animal was going to pass through his doorway. And maybe he did, as bizarre as that sounds. It makes sense that that was what he was thinking based on his reaction later.
But many scholars will note that the word yasa can easily and generally refer to human beings, and so it also seems likely that he thought a person- probably a servant or housemaid- was what was going to come out his door that day. And that brings a much more sinister edge to his words.
Judges 11:32-33
32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. 33 And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
After all that buildup for all of Judges 11, and the battle only lasts one verse. Because the gripping thing and focus of Jephthah’s story is not about the battle, but about what happened next.
Judges 11:34-35
34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.”
Deep breath before I try to go on because this story is honestly very sad.
We’ll try to get in Jephthah’s head a little more in just a few minutes. But why did he make this vow in the first place? It was common for a king or someone going off into battle to say something like, “If God gives us victory today, I’ll do XYZ when I get back.” So he was very much just doing something similar to what the valiant men of his day would do back then as they were riding off into battle, although I’ll note later that I think this demonstrates a lack of understanding God’s character.
Judges 11:36-40
36 And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.” 37 So she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.” 38 So he said, “Go.” Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. 39 And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel 40 that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.
And so as the story says, Jephthah sacrificed his daughter on the basis of the vow that he had undertaken.
And it probably goes without saying, but she certainly comes across as the most noble person and hero of this story; she is willing to lay down her own life, it seems, for the importance of keeping vows.
And so now we come back to Alana’s original question: Clearly that was a sacrifice to God. Why would God allow him to sacrifice his daughter?
And then I’ll add that another question I think a lot of us have when we approach this story is: was it right for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter despite the fact that he made this vow?
So I’ll start with the question of God’s involvement in this story. My read on the story is, God had nothing to do with this. God is silent throughout the events of this story. If God were speaking, I have no doubt that God would have been saying, “Don’t do it Jephthah! Don’t kill your daughter, and don’t make the vow in the first place.”
And why do I feel confident in saying that? Because God’s opinion on human sacrifice is pretty clearly spelled out in the Old Testament law:
Leviticus 18:21 - You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.
Deuteronomy 12:31 - 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 18:10 - There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering
So it’s not in doubt that God abhors the idea of human sacrifice. The closest you can come to justifying it is in Genesis 22 when Abraham almost offers up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, but even that was a test and not something God actually wanted Abraham to do.
So no, I don’t think God accepted this sacrifice; I think God was extremely angered up in heaven for how this played out.
But if so, then why doesn’t God put a stop to it? And I would say the answer to that is the same answer to why God doesn’t put a stop to all kinds of sacrifices throughout history. We read it there about Molech and the sacrifices offered to him in the Bible. If you go into the history of the Aztecs and the Mayans, you’ll see a lot of human sacrifice. It probably shows up in just about every ancient culture somewhere. People have been offering up sacrifices- and especially their own children- for thousands of years. So Jephthah’s daughter is not unique in this regard; she’s one of many. So God allowed this to happen for the same reason any bad action happens: because God gives man free will, even though man uses it for terrible purposes at times.
As for why God didn’t interject Himself into this story like He does in many other Bible stories, I can’t say. God can do whatever He wants. But we have to remember that this was a very dark time in Israel’s history.
In I Samuel 3- which is a different book of the Bible but still the time of the judges-
It says in verse 1
the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.
God is silent through A LOT of the book of judges and A LOT of bad things happen. But Israel was behaving very badly throughout this time, and when people live in darkness, they cut off the voice of God from their lives.

The importance of our vows
Now let’s talk for a minute about whether it was right for Jephthah to keep this vow once he had made it. Maybe you say, “OK Luke, so we know God doesn’t want human sacrifice. But once Jephthah had made this vow, should he have kept his word anyway even if it meant his own daughter would die?”
Was the vow more important than the prohibition on human sacrifice?
And this is a stickier question, so I want to give a fair hearing to both sides here. The Bible is pretty consistent on the importance of keeping our vows, even foolish ones. There are some loopholes, which I’ll get to. But outside of the loopholes, it’s pretty solid.
Ecclesiastes 5:4-5
4 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.
And the Bible puts this to the test in Scripture in ways that I find honestly shocking.
In Ezekiel 17, there’s a brief story where the Israelites had made a treaty with King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians that they would submit to him and not try to fight back.
But then under the radar, they send an envoy out to the current Pharaoh down in Egypt asking for his help in fighting off the Babylonians. In other words, they lied to the King of Babylon.
Ezekiel 17:13-15
13 And he took one of the royal offspring and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath (the chief men of the land he had taken away), 14 that the kingdom might be humble and not lift itself up, and keep his covenant that it might stand. 15 But he rebelled against him by sending his ambassadors to Egypt, that they might give him horses and a large army. Will he thrive? Can one escape who does such things? Can he break the covenant and yet escape?
And God goes on to say that the king of Israel who broke this covenant is going to die.
Now, we might be very sympathetic to the Israelites here who are attempting a sort of rebellion against Babylon. After all, Babylon is the bad guys. What is the problem in breaking our word to our enemies?
Well, that’s what the people of Israel thought. But God tells them in chapter 17, they might be the bad guys, but if you gave them your word, you better keep it.
There’s another story in the book of Joshua, where God had said to go into the land of Canaan and wipe out all the inhabitants. But one group within Canaan, the Gibeonites, tricked Israel by pretending they were visitors from a far-off land. So Israel makes a peace treaty with these Gibeonites because they enter into this agreement without praying about it first.
Joshua 9:14-15 says
14 So the men took some of their provisions, but did not ask counsel from the Lord. 15 And Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore to them.
When the Israelites find out later that they were duped, they realize that they can’t do anything about it because they already gave their word that the Gibeonites would be left alone. Their covenant- their word- their vow- must stand.
And this is why the Bible so often says not to even make vows.
Jesus Himself says in Matthew 5:33-37
33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Jesus tells us that it’s better just to make no vows at all than to make one and not keep it.
He says let your yes be good enough. If you say you’re gonna do something, just do it. You don’t have to qualify it with “I vow” or “I promise…” Just do it.
A vow makes it even MORE serious, and saying you’re going to do something or not do something is already serious enough when it comes to keeping your integrity.

A sacrifice for breaking vows in Leviticus 5
So therefore, does that mean that it was right for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter like that, despite how much it cost him?
Well, I’m going to make the argument that no, it was not right for Jephthah to do this. And my argument basically comes down to the idea that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Yes, Jephthah made this vow; but to keep it rather than breaking it would mean to commit another- and I would say even greater- sin by offering up his daughter as a human sacrifice.
God’s prohibition on human sacrifices is consistent. God calls it an abomination. God wants nothing to do with slaughtering humans on an altar in His name.
God’s stance on vows shows a little more flexibility. In Numbers 30, the Mosaic law outlines some circumstances in which a vow can be canceled. For example, if a woman makes a vow and her husband or father- whoever’s the man of the house- doesn’t agree with it, then he can cancel that vow.
Now, that wouldn’t necessarily apply in Jephthah’s case, but I’m just saying, there’s a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to vows.
Also, a point I don’t usually see brought up is the offering for broken vows in
Leviticus 5:4-5
…if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that people swear, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and he realizes his guilt in any of these; when he realizes his guilt in any of these and confesses the sin he has committed, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation for the sin that he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin.
So in other words, if you make a vow you can’t or shouldn’t keep because it was a rash oath to do evil, then you confess the sin and do this sacrifice instead- which in this case would mean sacrificing a lamb or a goat, not a human.
So if I were advising Jephthah, I would have said: Jephthah, just acknowledge that this vow was a sin before the Lord. Repent of it, and do the sacrifice for an evil vow.
As we star wars fans say: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
It doesn’t mean that vows don’t matter. Breaking vows is still a sin. But just follow the Levitical ordinance for breaking vows, repent of it, and move on.
Now, if I’m wrong about that, I invite anyone to send me feedback. Leave a comment or send an email to weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com. I’m not saying I have the right answer on this. But it seems pretty clear to me that God has left open a couple of these loopholes or procedures in the Old Testament law to address situations like this in regard to vows. The only reason I’m not more confident in my answer here is that I never see people pointing out Leviticus 5 when they talk about Jephthah’s story.
So if I’m wrong in my interpretation here, I invite anyone to give me some feedback and show me what I’m missing. But it seems like Jephthah had another option here he didn’t utilize.

The importance of knowing God
And if you’re saying, “Well Luke, if you’re so smart that you can see this, why didn’t Jephthah see it?” And my response is: because Jephthah clearly didn’t know God very well.
Again, the book of Judges was a very dark time in Israel’s history, and Jephthah was right in the middle of it. They were not doing a good job of following God’s laws, and it’s likely that most people didn’t even know them. Yes, Jephthah had a knowledge of God; in fact, I believe he was probably saved, since he shows up in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11.
But if you pay attention during his story, there are a lot of moments that imply that he didn’t know God all that well. I once preached a sermon about Jephthah called “Getting God Wrong,” and in it, I discussed various places in Jephthah’s story where he shows a misunderstanding of God’s character.
1- he missed God’s grace. Notice that he tries to make some kind of deal with God for victory in the battle. He says, “if God helps us win against Ammon, I’ll sacrifice the first thing that walks out my doorway when I get home.”
He wanted a transactional relationship with God. If you do this, I’ll do that. And that’s not how God relates to us. God relates to us on providence and grace. We can’t do something to earn God’s grace; that’s why it’s grace.
It was a pagan belief that you’d have to strike some kind of deal with God in order to get Him to answer your prayers. And Jephthah here is treating God like some kind of pagan deity.
But God had already determined that Jephthah was to win the battle. He didn’t need an offering for Jephthah to secure the victory.
2- he missed God’s commandments. We already covered them earlier, but God had made abundantly clear in His law again and again: no human sacrifices allowed. God doesn’t want it. God abhors it. Don’t kill your kids.
Yet remember what Jephthah said before: “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 that word “whatever” meant anyone or anything. Jephthah clearly was open to the idea that this would be a person, he just didn’t think about the potential that it was his own daughter.
If Jephthah had known God better and known God’s laws better, he never would have put that kind of possibility of sacrificing a human on the table to begin with.
3- he missed God’s mercy. Because as I said, God had made a provision in the law for breaking a vow. Leviticus 5:4-5. God had a procedure Jephthah could have gone through to fix this problem.
And I think if Jephthah knew about it, he would have followed it. But the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. But they didn’t know how to do what was right in God’s eyes.
Jephthah shows in this story that he didn’t understand God’s Word. And since he didn’t understand God’s Word, he didn’t understand God.
And when you don’t understand God and His Word, it leads to error.
In Jephthah and his daughter’s case, catastrophic error.
So my encouragement to all of us today is that we strive to know God. And not just know God by what we imagine God to be; that was Jephthah’s problem. He had an idea of God, but it wasn’t based on how God had revealed Himself in His Word. On truth. We need to all get our idea of God from personal time spent getting to know Him in His Word, the Bible.
Jephthah never needed to make this vow in the first place. He didn’t realize God had already made provision for his victory. And when he messed up with his mouth, he didn’t realize God would also make provision for our sins.
Jephthah didn’t have to sacrifice his only daughter. Because God would sacrifice His only Son.

But did she die?
But I want to end on this question: did Jephthah’s daughter actually die? Now, it’s seems totally obvious that she did, of course she must have because of how sad everybody is at the end.
But did you know that there is actually- as far-fetched as it might sound- a very reasonable interpretation of this story in which Jephthah’s daughter actually didn’t die but was committed to tabernacle service for the rest of her life.
And once you hear it, it might actually make a few other details of this story make more sense, such as why she was bewailing her virginity instead of bewailing the fact that she would be set on fire. There’s a solid interpretation of this story that might not exactly be a happy ending but could make you feel a little better than the traditional interpretation.
BUT, I’m out of time for today. So if you’d like to hear that interpretation, go check out the latest article on my website: WeirdStuffInTheBible.com.
This is the kind of thing that I used to send out in my rabbit trails newsletter, and I’m still going to use the newsletter, but for this, I’m using the new website, and today I’ve added a new article called “Did Jephthah’s Daughter Actually Die?”
It goes into a particular Hebrew word that, if translated slightly differently, totally changes how you see this story. I think you’ll find it quite refreshing after the heaviness of today. So check that out: weirdstuffinthebible.com
Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.