Question: In Judges 11:29-40, we have the account of a vow that Jepthah made to God; my question has to do with how he performed this vow. Did he actually put his daughter to death, or was she dedicated to the service of the Lord for life?
Answer: I may be in over my head in regard to this question and may only be able to add little if anything to the questioner or to any reader out there. There are notable Bible scholars and commentators on both sides of this question. Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry (both notable commentators) both have rather lengthy comments in their commentaries at this place, and they do not agree on it. And each of them quotes from notable Bible scholars who do not altogether agree with them. I am sure there will be people among my readers on both sides of the question, so I am certain that I will not be able to answer it to everybody’s thinking; however, I will do my best to set forth my thinking and why. I will have to confess that I have had to revise my own thinking some in regard to this since I have been looking diligently into it, which I had never done before.
The first thing I encountered in my research, which crossed my own original thinking at this place, was that God strictly forbade human sacrifices of this nature. Leviticus 18:21 says, “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech,…I am the Lord.” “Pass through the fire” is a term applying to a burnt offering which Jephthah vowed to do (Judges 11:31). This was strictly forbidden by God. Deuteronomy 12:31 says, “Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.” Deuteronomy 18:10 says, “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire,…” II Kings 17:17-18 says, “And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire,…and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord,… Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel,…” This was actually Israel that did this in their practice of idolatry. Human sacrifices of this nature were strictly an idolatrous and heathenish practice. Read also II Kings 23:10; II Chronicles 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35; Ezekiel 20:26, 31, all of which reiterate the same denunciation of this practice.
II Kings 3:27 gives an account of where the king of Moab lost a battle with the Israelites, took his eldest son and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall. And it says “…there was great indignation against Israel:…” (meaning the Israelites were filled with great indignation at this thing.) Another translation says, “Then he took his oldest son,…and to the horror of the Israeli army, killed him and sacrificed him as a burnt offering upon the wall. So the army of Israel turned back in disgust to their own land.” It horrified and disgusted them because they were not accustomed to any such practice. It was forbidden among them.
God told Abraham to take his son, Isaac, and offer him as a burnt offering. Abraham went forward to do this thing, but God stopped him and would not allow it to be done. When God saw that Abraham feared Him and would obey Him even to that extent, He stepped in and intervened in the matter, stopped the procedure, and would not allow it to go through. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that if Jephthah would have gone forward to slay his daughter and offer her as a burnt offering, God would have interrupted and not allowed it to be done because it would be directly opposed to His own nature and will, and also a direct violation of His strict command.
In regard to Judges 11:31, where Jepthah’s vow is actually spelled out thus: “Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering,” Adam Clarke says in his commentary that the translation according to the most accurate Hebrew scholars is this: “I will consecrate it to the Lord, or I will offer it for a burnt offering.” That is, if it be a thing fit for a burnt offering, it shall be made one; if fit for the service of God, it shall be consecrated to Him.
Adam Clarke further says, “From verse 39 it appears evident that Jephthah’s daughter was not sacrificed to God, but consecrated to Him in a state of perpetual virginity; for the text says, ‘she knew no man,’ for this was a statute in Israel, that persons thus dedicated or consecrated to God, should live in a state of unchangeable celibacy.”
I think this way, too. Verses 37-39 seem to answer this question this way to me. It is difficult maybe for us in our day to understand the sorrow and trouble to a Hebrew woman in that time if she were not married and had no children. It was a stigma on them as well. That is why Jephthah’s daughter bewailed her virginity. But why all that if she were going to be killed and offered as a burnt offering? That would have been no item in such a case. She seemed to have a clear understanding that she was being consecrated to God in a state of perpetual virginity and unchangeable celibacy, and that she could never be married nor have any children; she bewailed that.
