Vicar Philip

Judges 11:29 - 40
What a wonderful story. Jephtaph, infested with the spirit of the Lord, makes a deal with God to defeat those horrible Ammonites. You know, the people who had their land stolen from them by the Chosen People, the Israelites, in the name of God. Anyway, Jeph says to God, "Look, God, Jehovah, whatever the hell you call yourself these days, have I got a deal for you. If you give those despicable Ammonites to me in battle, why, when I go home, I'll sacrifice whoever walks out of my front door to You as a Burnt Offering. If I could, though, God, I'll need to ask you for a bag of MatchLight and one of those lighter thingies. Lighting a fire in the Bronze Age is a royal pain in the ass."

So, God, aka Mr. Omnibenevolent, grants Jephthro his little deal, apparently hungry for the fragrant fumes of burning flesh. Jephtaph is victorious (the Ammonites must not have had Iron Chariots), returns home, and what do you know, his only daughter comes out to greet him. Jeph knew full well it would probably be her, since she was an only child. Who knows, maybe he had a real bitch for a wife and assumed she would come out first; she was always riding his ass to clean up the pile of shit under the outhouse.

Nevertheless, the daughter, who apparently didn't have a name, cheerfully bounces out the door to greet dear ol' dad, fresh from victory. He greets her warmly: "God-dammit, daughter, YOU have brought me very low. You have become the cause of great trouble to me, mainly because I opened my cake-hole and made a promise with the most successful murderer in history, the one and only God the Impaler." "No worries, Pop," says the daughter, young nubile breasts heaving under her robe, "since you fucked up and I happened to draw the shortest straw, just let me wander the mountains aimlessly for two months, bewailing my virginity" (whatever the hell THAT means). The poor lass never did get boned, and upon her return, had to climb up on the Weber while her doting father made a neat pile of charcoal under her. Oh how wondrous the fragrance must have been up in heaven as the girl's supple young flesh snapped and popped in the orange glow of the GrillMaster 650BC flame.

Thanks God, you are one hell of a story teller. :thumbs:

Hobbs

My guess is it means that she was sad that she would never have the opportunity to produce children for a man, which, after all, is the point of a woman's existence.

Jon Promnitz

A ridiculous story about a moron and his foolish promise with god. God, being all-knowing and able to see the future knew his daughter would be the first to return. Instead of interjecting, this god decides it would be fun to teach Jephtaph a little lesson by allowing him to make a vow which directly resulted in the burning of his young virgin daughter. What a moral lesson! I'm glad it's in the Bible so no idiot today looks at the sky, proclaims a witless vow and ends up burning someone.

inquisitive01

Leviticus 22: 18-19; Deuteronomy 12:31.

DaMan121

I agree. Its a great lesson. But funny how everything in the OT is a parable/alegory but the NT is fact.

Hobbs

So then you'll have to explain why God broke his own rule here, or at best knowingly allowed it to be broken when he could easily have fixed it. After all, it was not Jephthah who had anything to do with who or what first came out to greet him. God, knowing of Jephthah's vow, could easily have sent out a nice prize valuable fatted calf and made Jephthah give that up, or tripped up Jephthah's daughter or otherwise occupied her time or attention until He could arrange something more suitable to walk out the door first. But no. Even though God said at other times that he doesn't want child sacrifices, he didn't so much as lift a Holy Finger to prevent such an abomination. I suppose the lesson to Jephthah not to make stupid vows was more important to God than His requirement of a proper animal as a sacrifice or His prohibition against child sacrifice, even more important than the life of the girl.

Or, perhaps God is actually very weak and was unable to do anything to impede the daughter's progress out the door or to arrange something interesting that would have otherwise occupied her attention for a few crucial moments before she looked out the window and saw her dad coming down the road. After all, we know God isn't strong enough to help his army defeat an enemy army that has iron chariots (Judges 1:19)

LP675

He obviously did no such thing, which is why you continue:
He knowingly allows all sorts of breaking of his rules, he lets you break them on a daily basis (he doesn’t step in and fry you, or prevent you from doing it somehow). It’s called 'free will' I believe.

Why didn’t Jephthah just say “oops, I didn’t mean a human being, and I know you don’t like that funky heathen stuff anyway, so I will just burn a cow instead, ok?�. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have an option. And if he was unsure, why not consult a prophet as to what he was supposed to do? It is my understanding the point of the book of judges is there is a lot of wacky stuff people do when they don’t actually bother to ask God what he wants, but just do what they think is best, evidenced for example in the repeating of the phrase:

Hobbs

Actually, you make a good point here. I think this story is sufficiently ambiguous to say definitively that God approved of what Jephthah did. After all, it says pretty much nothing about what God thought of all this. On the other hand, that ambiguity means that you can only infer, based on selecting some other passages to refer to, that God must have disapproved. One could also appeal to passages such as the Amalekite massacre in 1 Sam 15 and many other similar places to say that God's character as described in these other passages is such that he would have approved, or at least would not have minded, Jephthah's sacrifice over Jephthah breaking his vow.

As for the free will thing, that can work against God here as well as work for him. In Exodus, the Pharaoh's free will was not as important to God as was God's chance to send repeated plagues on Egypt and killing lots of people. The Pharaoh was repeatedly ready to let Moses and his people go, but God repeatedly hardened Pharaoh's heart (i.e. stepped in to take away Pharaoh's free will) and then punished all of Egypt for Pharaoh's hardened heart. I've seen lots of "creative" attempts to deny what the Bible says in this case or to pretend it says something other than what it clearly says; a search of the archives here should bring up a few responses to these attempted dodges. And besides, there are plenty of other examples of God overriding people's free will: Jonah didn't want to go to Ninevah so he hopped on a boat in the other direction, and God sent a big storm, and then provided a convenient whale. Then God repeated his request. Sure, Jonah could have refused again. But since God didn't let him go where he wanted to before, and took such drastic measures to stop him, can you really say Jonah had much of a choice here? In any case, God certainly intervened and did not let Jonah freely go to Tarshish rather than Ninevah in the first place. And there are many more examples where those came from. So, I think we can safely conclude that God is willing at times to overrule free will, i.e. there are some matters which are more important to God than free will. In this case in question, however, since God did nothing to intervene, I think we can safely conclude that Jephthah's free will to make and follow through on a stupid vow was more important to God than was the life of his daughter. I think God needs to get his priorities straight.

Amaleq13

Yep, those passages are completely ignored by both Jephthah and God. And that looks to me like two really good reasons to conclude that this is not a history lesson but an instructional parable about the dangers of making deals with God. Thus, it would probably be more accurate to say that the author of the story has ignored both of those passages in order to convey his point.

Jon Promnitz

Originally Posted by LP675
Are you joking LP? He does step in a fry you after you die. It's called 'hell' I believe. Stepping in wouldn't have prevented or hindered Jephthah's 'free will.' It would have saved his daughter and given her a chance to use her 'free will.' What about the girl? It's called 'free will', and she wasn't given a chance!