The Daughter Who Must Die Because of Jephthah’s Vow

29Then Yahweh’s Spirit came on Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed over to the children of Ammon. 30Jephthah vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, 31then it shall be, that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Yahweh’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” 32So Jephthah passed over to the children of Ammon to fight against them; and Yahweh delivered them into his hand. 33He struck them from Aroer until you come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and to Abelcheramim, with a very great slaughter. So the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. 34Jephthah came to Mizpah to his house; 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. 35When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are one of those who trouble me; for I have opened my mouth to Yahweh, and I can’t go back.”

Life is like a journey by train, for one moment we are exclaiming with delight at flowers in full bloom, and the next we are plunged into a pitch-dark tunnel. Life is like that: we can never predict what will happen.

Through Jephthah we want to see how hard life is to predict. Israel’s endless wickedness had stirred up God’s wrath. God wanted only one thing from Israel, that they live keeping faith with him, and Israel failed to keep that command.

When God’s people serve foreign gods, they are refusing to acknowledge that God is alive. In his anger God did not work for their deliverance, though the Philistines and the children of Ammon oppressed and tormented Israel for eighteen years.

Judges 10:13-14

13Yet you have forsaken me, and served other gods. Therefore I will save you no more. 14Go and cry to the gods which you have chosen. Let them save you in the time of your distress!”

It is detestable to see the people come to God crying out that Baal had not been their protector. How could those who had forsaken God pray to him to save them? It grieves me.

If the Philistines had not attacked and the children of Ammon had not oppressed them, Israel would not have sought God. Until then Israel had been spared attack from foreign nations because God had been a wall of protection around them. Now that they could no longer bear the oppression of foreign nations, they were calling on God’s name and confessing their sins. But God said that he could no longer watch them betray him and turn back, over and over, and therefore he would save them no more. He told them to go to the gods they had chosen and served and ask them for help; never again would he work on their behalf. These people had used the God who came running to help the moment they called his name, and they did not realize how wicked their behavior was.

When God vowed that he would save them no more, it looked as if he had abandoned Israel; but in his heart it was a passionate confession of love for Israel. A parent may shout at a troublesome child, “You are no child of mine any more; get out!” yet the parent’s heart does not want the child to leave. It is a plea for the child to understand the parent’s disappointment and love. Through the Bible we know how much time and care God poured into making Israel a nation. The Bible tells us how much he longs for those he called to be his people to keep his law.

God, who had forgiven Israel every time they cried out, now declared that he would save them no more. Yet because God is rich in love, when the people steeped in idolatry showed signs of repentance, he once again raised up a judge, Jephthah.

In the world today, people in the upper classes set up relationships in which they hold the upper hand, and they treat those beneath them unjustly, as though their power placed them above others. They look down on those of the lower classes as being of no use to them at all. The wickedness of the upper classes now goes beyond all bounds; all they have is wealth, and yet they order others about like servants. It grieves me that people of love and good character, who are living far better lives, must put up with arrogance and insolence simply because they have no money.

When Jesus came to this earth, people looked at his appearance and decided he could do nothing for them. But when he performed signs and wonders, they turned around in an instant and wanted to make him king. Then, when it looked as though the powers of the world had overwhelmed him and he was going to the cross, they abandoned him once again. Seeing them, Jesus said that though he had come in God’s name they did not believe him, but if someone else came in his own name, they would receive him. He meant that they would readily have believed the words of someone with worldly fame, power, title, education, or possessions. We need a faith that seeks the glory of the unseen God, but people pursue what can be seen, and so they follow the world. That is why, however much truth they hear, they do not change, and they cannot make their lives holy.

But the affairs of this world do not go according to human calculation. Life is such that we may make plans all our lives and race toward our goals and still not get what we want; and life is also such that a blessing we never imagined may come to us with ease. Only those who rely on God, the master of life, can receive a greater blessing than the plans they made, and enjoy a heavenly glory they would never presume to ask for.

Judges 11:1-2

1Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead became the father of Jephthah. 2Gilead’s wife bore him sons. When his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out, and said to him, “You will not inherit in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.”

Jephthah, who now appears as judge, was the son of a prostitute, a man mocked and persecuted by his half brothers, a poor man who owned nothing. But he was a mighty man of valor. While Israel lived in peace, no one recognized him, so he could form no ties with people of the upper classes. This was because his brothers had driven him out so that he could not share in his father’s inheritance. Afraid of their threats, Jephthah gathered with lower-class people like himself and lived among them as a band. Convinced that no amount of effort would ever get him into the upper classes, he must have thought very little of himself.

Then, some time later, the children of Ammon attacked Israel. With no warrior in Israel, the elders in their alarm went to Jephthah, who was living in the land of Tob, to ask for his help. What a sorry lot they were, living by nothing but human reckoning! Instead of asking God for help, they begged the valiant Jephthah to be their chief and drive back Ammon. Jephthah told the elders what was really in his heart, asking whether they had not hated him, despised him, and driven him out, and whether they had come to him now only because they were in distress. The elders of Gilead, who had looked down on him, apologized a hundred times over and promised that if he fought the children of Ammon for them, they would make him leader over the inhabitants of Gilead. Here was his golden chance to enter the upper classes.

The moment they needed the strength of the man they had so despised and mocked, they threw away all their pride and bowed low before him to save their own skins. In their distress it no longer mattered that he was a prostitute’s son, nor that he lived among men of the lowest class. They needed his strength for one reason only: to protect what they owned. This is the wicked heart of the world: it will make peace with anyone, if only that keeps its possessions safe.

Now Jephthah had a fine opportunity to show who he was. Would he, despite the injustice he had suffered, live relying on God, or would he reveal the revenge he had longed for? The choice was his. This decision was a crucial moment that would settle whether he lived the rest of his life within God or outside of him. God could help him up to this moment, but from here on his life would unfold according to his own decision. Jephthah needed to look carefully into God’s purpose in giving him this opportunity and make his decision prudently.

Jacob’s sons, too, once sold Joseph out of jealousy. They joined together to get rid of him and lied to their father that he was dead, but God rescued Joseph, his man of faith. Rather than live for revenge on his brothers, Joseph strove to be approved by God. God saw Joseph’s faith, made him ruler over Egypt, and made the brothers who had sold him come and bow before him. When God wills it, he can make Joseph, a man striving to live by faith, the head over everyone.

Friends, life has to be lived through to the end. As we live, we meet hardship, illness, and fearful, painful troubles. But they are like raging waves: hard to bear at the moment, yet when God stills the wind, peace comes. When someone does their very best with a good heart where they have been placed, as Joseph did, God keeps their life from shame and makes their brothers come of their own accord and kneel before them.

What you should notice here is that Joseph did not strive to become Israel’s leader; he kept faith in the place he had been given so that he would not dishonor God’s name.

Jephthah, too, had been despised by his brothers and felt wronged, but with no power in the world there was nothing he could do. Then, just when Israel was in trouble, the elders came to him. When they asked for help, Jephthah asked whether, if he fought Ammon and won, they would truly make him their head. His words reveal that he had been living for nothing but a chance at revenge. When the elders promised to do as he wished, he told them not to go back on it, for Yahweh would be witness to their promise. With the absurd claim that God would witness his becoming the leader of Gilead, he sought compensation for everything he had held down inside. Had Jephthah truly believed in God, his first concern should have been that Israel, which God rules, was under attack from Ammon.

However much he resented those people, he should have headed for the battlefield to keep the land God had given from falling to Ammon. Instead Jephthah turned the situation into a chance to become their head, and nothing more. Even if he had not traded on God’s name to become head, God would have raised up Jephthah, a man working to save the people. But Jephthah pretended to have faith and set God up as his witness.

What I want to say is that we must get our priorities right. Since Israel had no man of valor, Jephthah was going to become judge in any case. Even if Jephthah had lived serving God among the poor, Ammon would still have attacked, and the elders would still have come to the mighty Jephthah and asked him to be their head. As we go through life, incidents and accidents are bound to happen. When they do, whether we look at them as people of faith or see in them an opportunity for our greed makes all the difference to how things end. Anyone can meet an opportunity, but a person’s life turns out entirely differently depending on their character and faith. That is why you need to serve God now and live with good character.

Once Jephthah became head of Gilead, he sent messengers to the king of Ammon, who had attacked Israel, and tried to settle the matter without war. He wanted to resolve it by negotiation rather than by a war of bloodshed. But the king of Ammon insisted that because the land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan had been Ammon’s territory, Israel should give it back.

Numbers 21:24

24Israel struck him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, even to the children of Ammon; for the border of the children of Ammon was strong.

Israel had once wanted to live at peace with every nation, but Sihon king of Heshbon attacked Israel, and God helped Israel take his land; the land of Ammon, however, Israel did not take. Ammon’s claim was that the land was theirs because, before that, they had lost it to the Amorites.

But Jephthah answered that Israel would possess all the lands God had given them, and he rebuked the king: three hundred years had passed since those cities were taken, and in all that time Ammon had never tried to recover them, so why demand them now? Jephthah made it clear that he had no wish to fight, but the king of Ammon prepared for war to seize the land.

Judges 11:30-31

30Jephthah vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, 31then it shall be, that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Yahweh’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”

After he became head, Jephthah thought that God was on his side. So he thundered at the children of Ammon, asking what they had to do with him that they had come to fight against his land, and he prayed that Yahweh would judge that day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.

God had to protect Israel, so he had no reason not to help Jephthah as he marched out. True, if he won the war, the people would exalt him further and he could enjoy wealth; but God takes no interest in a person’s possessions.

When you give yourselves to the church and to the Kingdom of God, God will answer your prayers so that you can fulfill a great calling. That is not for your own sake but for the sake of God’s work. For only when you are at peace and free of trouble can you take up God’s work. You must never misunderstand this, because if you speak or act with pride, thinking that God is on your side, or if you do not work for God’s Kingdom and his people, he will rebuke and judge you on the spot.

Since he was marching out for Israel, Jephthah was confident that God would help him and that he could win, and once he was sure of that, he made a vow as he pleased. He made the vow out of greed, so badly did he want to win this war. He probably thought that if he made a vow, God would help him to victory and he would be honored.

He attached a condition: “if you give me victory over Ammon.” And he vowed to offer as a burnt offering to Yahweh the first person to come out of his house to meet him. Life belongs to God, yet out of greed he made the wicked vow of offering up as a burnt offering whoever first came out to greet him.

A burnt offering is a sacrifice in which the offering is burned with fire. The law forbids using people as offerings, but in those days the Ammonites held to the superstition of sacrificing their children to the idol Molech. Since the children of Israel had taken up the gods of Ammon and Moab after the judge Jair died, Jephthah, too, would likely have thought it no great sin to vow a human being to God as a burnt offering. He probably made the vow because he assumed that the first person to come out to greet him would be a servant. He himself had suffered as one of the lowest class, and yet now that he was head, he thought it did not matter if a servant or two were offered up.

How must God have felt when he heard Jephthah’s vow? To offer a human being as a burnt offering to God, the Lord of life, shows that Jephthah thought of himself as someone special.

There is something we must grasp deeply from this event. If Jephthah’s vow was not in keeping with God’s will, he ought to have lost the war. Yet although it was not in keeping with God’s will, he won, and God seemed to have granted his wish.

Friends, when you make a vow to God, you must make it with a heart of sincere gratitude and keep it with that same gratitude to the end. If you make a vow on impulse, keep it for fear of disaster, and then complain after keeping it or turn it into a boast, you have not kept your vow at all. Jephthah’s vow, made with pride and greed, brought great calamity.

Judges 11:34

34Jephthah came to Mizpah to his house; 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.

The sad thing is that people forget God is the Almighty. He works over human thoughts, plans, purposes, and history, yet people ignore his absolute power and treat him like some insignificant human being.

Jephthah prayed and vowed as if he trusted God, but God knew how greedy Jephthah was, and because his character was poor, God knew already what kind of vow he would make. People of poor character do not change even when they receive grace. So God did not stop his beloved daughter from running out first when she heard that her father had won the war. On an ordinary day a servant would probably have come out to greet him and take the horse he had ridden. But this was a special day, so his only daughter came out first. It was only natural for her to run out first to celebrate her father’s victory, but to Jephthah, who had never expected it, it was a moment like hell itself. Had a servant come out, Jephthah would not have been troubled in the least. The servant who came out first would have been put to death as a burnt offering. That servant, too, must have been someone’s husband and someone’s father. Jephthah had himself been despised by his brothers, yet he did the very same thing; such character is an evil sin that deserves God’s judgment. God does not accept such a vow; rather, it becomes a torment.

When his daughter came out, Jephthah was in despair; he tore his clothes and mourned. To achieve his own ends, he had vowed to offer a human being as a burnt offering without even asking God’s will. Perhaps he thought it was the highest devotion he could offer God. But because he did not understand who God is, he made a vow he should never have made, and he lost his precious daughter. For the salvation of such people, God sent his most precious Son to this earth and put him to death on the cross.

His daughter, on the contrary, urged him to keep his vow, since he had made it. Jephthah must have realized only then that all of this was God’s doing. As I watched the anguish of a daughter who had to die for her father’s wrongdoing, I was reminded of the anguish of Jesus, who died for our transgressions. Like the daughter who had to be put to death for Jephthah’s arrogance, Jesus had to die for the arrogance of humankind, who fell for the temptation that if they ate the fruit, their eyes would be opened and they would be like God. As we look at him, we must come to know rightly who God is. Human arrogance and pride can only bear bad fruit. We must therefore strive to live by the truth and by the Holy Spirit.

Instead of making foolish choices like Jephthah’s, exalting ourselves to become head, or slandering and scheming against others simply because their suffering is not our own, we must keep a pure faith. There are times when we feel wronged and times when we burn with anger, but we must entrust even that to God and be saints who wait patiently until he raises us up.

Any of us would want revenge on our brothers, as Jephthah did. But God himself will take vengeance on our behalf, and he will also act at the right time to raise us up as head; so we must trust God, pray, and offer him a holy life. If I carry a sense of injustice, others can carry it just as much; the honor and power I want are what others want just as much. But if something is a sin against God, we must strive not to do it.

If you have kept the vows you have made and striven to live according to God’s will, you will certainly have received blessings from God. God protects those who fight to keep their faith, and he blesses them so that he may be revealed through their lives.

So I hope you will not spill the grace you have received, but live giving thanks in all things.