‘ And Jephthah vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be, that whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, they shall be Yahweh's, and I will offer them up for a whole offering.” '
Before going into battle Jephthah made a vow to Yahweh. He promised to ‘offer as a whole offering' to Him whoever first came to meet him from the doors of his house, to be Yahweh's for ever, a precious gift to God which God could choose for Himself. He possibly also hoped that news would filter through to the Ammonites of what he had done so that they would hear and fear. He may even have ensured that it did. That may well be why he put it in sacrificial terms. They would interpret his words in terms of their own god Melek who demanded such sacrifices. (His previous speech demonstrated the value he put on propaganda).
The question of what Jephthah actually intended here has been hotly debated. At face value, in terms of the system of sacrifices in Israel, it appears to mean that he would offer such a person up as a burnt offering, a human sacrifice, for that is what the technical phrase ‘offer up as a whole offering', when used of animals, always indicated (e.g. Genesis 22:13). It was also what Abraham originally understood of his son in Genesis 22:2, until God then reinterpreted it. But is that what Jephthah, who probably intended Ammon to see it in that way, actually meant Israel to understand by it?
In considering the matter we should consider the following:
· That the only reference up to this time of a human being being ‘offered up as a whole offering' resulted in his being substituted by a ram and himself dedicated to the covenant of Yahweh (Genesis 22:2; Genesis 22:13; Genesis 22:17-18). The letter to the Hebrews can actually say of this, “By faith Abraham offered up Isaac”. Thus the whole transaction was seen as ‘the offering up of Isaac'.
· That all mentions of actual human sacrifices up to this time were rather described in terms of being ‘passed through the fire' (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 18:10).
· That all human sacrifices in this area (to Melek and possibly to Baal) mentioned in the Old Testament were of children, and probably children of the offerer. Thus the offering of a servant, which Jephthah probably anticipated, would have been an insult to Yahweh.
· That when the firstborn of Israel were ‘due' to be sacrificed to Yahweh, they were redeemed by the substitution of a lamb and themselves dedicated to serve in the Tabernacle as ‘belonging to Yahweh' (Exodus 34:19-20; Numbers 3:12-13).
· That in the cult of Israel the offerings of a human being or of an ass were unacceptable. They were ‘unclean'. Thus they had to be replaced by a substitute.
· That this had been a time of Yahwist revival (Judges 10:16) and it is therefore unlikely that a human sacrifice would be permitted.
· That it is unlikely that a priest would be found to make the offering, or that the tribal confederacy would have permitted it or done nothing about it.
· That what is said about the actual event fits well with Jephthah's daughter being dedicated as a virgin to service at the door of the Tabernacle.
Excursus.
We will now consider this in more detail. In Genesis 22 Abraham was told to ‘offer up as a whole offering' his son Isaac. But as we know God Himself restrained him from doing it, and so he offered up a substitute instead, and was thus seen as obeying Genesis 22:2 (compare Hebrews 11:17). It could be therefore that ‘to offer up as a whole offering' a human being was later seen as accomplished when that person was wholly dedicated to the service of Yahweh, and ‘offered up', like Isaac was, by the offering up of a substitute, thus making the person in question ‘sanctified to Yahweh', which is what finally resulted for Isaac. Alternately it may be that Jephthah, knowing the story of Abraham's offering, himself interpreted it that way.
It is significant that there are no other examples of the use of the phrase ‘offered up as a whole offering' of human beings, apart from 2 Kings 3:27 (much later than Jephthah) where the king of Moab ‘took his eldest son who should have reigned in his place and offered him for a whole offering on the wall'. But Moab were a very different kind of nation. They were very familiar with Melek (Molech). Melek was the god of Ammon, their neighbouring ‘brother' state, and he was also clearly widely worshipped and included in the pantheons of other nations, including probably Moab, as witness the verses soon to be considered And he demanded human sacrifice. We are not told in the case of Moab to whom the offering was made, but the likelihood from what follows below is that it was made to Melek. It was an extreme sacrifice to an extreme god. We cannot determine Israel's position from Moabite behaviour.
The writer spoke there in terms of what Israel saw. They saw the setting up of a sacrifice, they saw the son offered by fire, and they described it in shocked tones in their own terms of ‘a burnt offering, a whole offering'. Moab may well have described it in terms of ‘passing through the fire'. This cannot be used as determinative of the meaning of the phrase to Jephthah hundreds of year before. It demonstrated that such language could be used of a human sacrifice, but not that that was what the language would have meant to Israel previously.
We should further note that, with the possible exception of 1 Kings 16:34, which may not be speaking of human sacrifice but of providential accidents, (and was anyway referring to his own children), all human sacrifices mentioned in Scripture were of young children, and usually specifically people's own children (see below), and they were never made to Yahweh, nor were they described as ‘being offered as whole offering'.
In contrast the impression given here is that Jephthah was not expecting his daughter to be the one who came out and that he was not thinking of ‘offering' his own child but was thinking in terms of a servant. However the idea of offering a servant would seemingly not only be unique in Israel, but unique in that whole wider area as far as we know. For when human sacrifices were made it was their sons that they sacrificed not their servants. The latter is a practise unknown elsewhere in Scripture.
So if Jephthah had really intended an ‘acceptable' human sacrifice involving death surely he would have offered, right from the beginning, to sacrifice his own child in accordance with custom, for that was the concept which in the area in question lay behind such sacrifices. To do anything less would indeed be an insult to Yahweh. On the other hand if he was thinking of someone being sanctified to the service of the Tabernacle he would think in terms of a male, and would thus consider a male servant acceptable as he had no son. The man would then be ‘adopted' as a Levite, servicing the sanctuary, like Samuel.
Finally we must consider the confirming fact that under Israelite cultic requirements a human being was no more an acceptable offering than an ass. The Law made clear that neither man nor ass could be offered as a whole offering to Yahweh. Both had to be redeemed, a man compulsorily (Exodus 13:13). For an ass there was the alternative of breaking its neck. There would therefore be no question in the mind of Israel that if a human being was ‘sanctified to Yahweh', whether by oath or any other way, that human being must be ‘offered' by being redeemed and replaced by a clean animal, as originally happened with their firstborn. The situation would not otherwise be acceptable to Him.
Additional Note on Human Sacrifices.
We know from archaeology that human sacrifices did take place in Canaan. But they were not commonplace. To a large extent they appear to have been connected with the god Melek (Molech) who, although the god of Ammon, was widely worshipped (as in Israel at times), and that kind of sacrifice formed a pattern, a pattern which does not fit in with that above.
As we have already seen to speak of a human sacrifice as ‘offered up as a whole offering' only occurs twice elsewhere. The first was Genesis 22:2, where Abraham was told to do so for Isaac and fulfilled it by offering a substitute. The only other example is 2 Kings 3:27 mentioned above where it is Israel's description of what the king of Moab did in the direst extremity against a Moabite background. The closest phrases otherwise were Abraham's offering of Isaac where he raised his knife to ‘slay' his son as ‘a whole offering' (Genesis 22:10), and Jeremiah 19:5 where it says, ‘they have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire for whole offerings to Baal', the latter hundreds of years after the time of Jephthah. Notice the specific emphasis on burn, not used by Jephthah. This may indicate that Jeremiah knew that in Israel to ‘offer up as a whole offering' could, when used of a human being, have a different meaning.
But this latter use may in fact have been Jeremiah's own ironic and sarcastic way of describing what was usually described as being ‘passed through the fire to Molech', for the idea appears nowhere else. And it seems clear that Jeremiah was not intending to be taken literally for he immediately connected this with Topheth and the valley of Hinnom which was the very place where children were ‘passed through the fire' to Melek (Molech) (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35), not Baal. It would seem that to Jeremiah they could possibly both be dismissed in the same breath.
There may indeed have been some considerable interconnecting in people's minds between ‘the lord' Baal and ‘the king' Melek, and we should especially note that later Jeremiah speaks of ‘building the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through to Molech' (Jeremiah 32:35), thus connecting the two intimately. So his sarcastic reference to ‘burning their sons as a whole offering to Baal' may well be his way of describing being passed through the fire to Molech
In view of this, and what our examination below reveals, his words may well not have been a technical description but Jeremiah's own rather scathing irony.
The fact is that the predominant technical phrase in connection with human sacrifice was to ‘cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire' or even just ‘to pass through', with ‘fire' understood (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 18:10; 2Ki 16:3; 2 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 21:6; 2Ki 23:10; 2 Chronicles 33:6; Jeremiah 32:35; Ezekiel 16:20-21; Ezekiel 20:26; Ezekiel 20:31; Ezekiel 23:37). This was said of the action of Ahaz when he ‘made his son to pass through the fire' (2 Kings 16:3). In Leviticus 20:2 it was described as a person ‘giving their seed to Molech'. Sometimes it was ‘to slay their children' (Isaiah 57:5; Ezekiel 23:39), but there it was not technical language but contemptuous. Deuteronomy 12:31 refers to ‘their sons and their daughters do they burn in fire to their gods', Jeremiah 7:31 says, ‘they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in fire', while in 2 Kings 17:31, (compare 2 Kings 17:17 where the same is described as ‘being passed through the fire'), ‘the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adram-melech and Annam-melech' (both variants of Molech/Melek). Thus ‘burn in the fire' may have also been another semi-technical phrase, or it may simply have been a vivid description of what actually happened. But none parallel Jephthah's technical description. The emphasis in those cases is on ‘burning'.
With regard to other references Psalms 106:37-38 says, ‘Yes, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and their daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.' Ezekiel 16:20 says, ‘moreover you have taken you sons and your daughters whom you have borne to me, and these you have sacrificed to them to be devoured'. These latter two verses then do look on the child sacrifices as ‘sacrifices' (zebach), although not necessarily technically. Compare Ezekiel 16:20-21; Micah 6:7 is only speaking theoretically of something farfetched but says ‘shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' The reply expected is ‘no, it would be no use'. But none see them as ‘whole offerings'.
If we acknowledge that in Jeremiah 19:5 it was not technical language that was being used, it leaves the only serious technical references to the giving of ‘a whole offering' of a human being, (and in both cases a child of the offerer), as that of Abraham in Genesis 22 and the king of Moab in 2 Kings 3:27. But, as we have seen, in the former case the child was offered to God but not slain, as Jephthah would well know, while the latter was a much later description in an area closely involved with a god who demanded human sacrifices and is descriptive of what literally happened. So the message to Israel was clear. Yahweh does not want human sacrifice.
To summarise it would seem that such sacrifices were always of children, and the impression given is that it was of people's own children, in some cases specifically the firstborn (Ezekiel 20:26; Mic 6:7; 2 Kings 3:27; Genesis 22). They gave that which was costly. We also note that the main god involved was Melek (Molech), although similar sacrifices may have been offered to other Canaanite gods; that the technical term was ‘to pass through the fire'; that while they were looked on as sacrifices they were not described as such technically; and that the ‘offering as a whole offering' of a human being was only used in one case and that a unique one. It is so rare that it is only used to describe a human sacrifice which was not offered to Molech in the usual way, and that in a country with close association with Molech. All these factors are absent in the case of Jephthah who used it technically in terms of the cult.
(End of note.)
Additionally we must ask the question as to who, if this was a human sacrifice, would make this offering. Strictly such an offering had to be made by a priest (as head of his household before the time of Moses Abraham was a priest). But what priest of Yahweh would consent to offer such an offering? And would the children of Gilead as a whole also have allowed such an offering, even to a victor? It would have been seen as an abomination to Yahweh, and the substitutionary restriction appealed to. And certainly the tribal confederacy would have protested. This was especially so as it was a time of revival of Yahwism.
Consider the huge impact on Israel of what the king of Moab did in 2 Kings 3:27. They were so appalled that they no longer had the stomach to fight and returned home. They were devastated. It is thus difficult to see how Jephthah could have arranged such an offering with so little protest. And even more difficult to see how it could have caused so small a stir among his compatriots. Even to idolaters among them such sacrifices were made to Molech not to Yahweh.
The usual reply would be to the effect that Jephthah was an outcast who had a crude if rugged faith, and would ‘offer the whole offering' himself, but he grew up in Gilead, and his basic ideas were formed there, and we have no grounds to consider that his beliefs would be any more crude than those of another young man who lived under the same circumstances, the godly David. He would know as well as anyone else in Gilead that such a self-offered offering would not be acceptable to Yahweh. Such offerings could be made by individuals only when there was direct commandment from Yahweh. And even then we still have to take account of the lack of external reaction to what he supposedly did.
The simplest explanation which alone fits in with all the above facts is that ‘offering a human being as a whole offering' (Genesis 22:2) was seen as fulfilled in Israel when a person was specifically dedicated to Yahweh by a vow and a substitutionary burnt offering was then made in his stead. The person in question being then seen as belonging to Him and ‘sanctified to Yahweh', ‘offered as a whole offering'.
Thus our suggested alternative to a literal sacrifice is that the ‘offering of a whole offering' of a human being meant a total dedication of that person to the service of Yahweh, probably in relation to the Tabernacle, with a clean beast being offered as a literal ‘whole offering' in his place. This can be further confirmed by comparing the situation regarding the firstborn.
As a result of the slaying of the firstborn in Egypt every firstborn male that opened the womb belonged to Yahweh. ‘Sanctify to me all the firstborn. Whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast, it is mine' (Exodus 13:2). This was later amplified as referring to male firstborn (Exodus 13:12-13; Exodus 13:15). And it is clear that the primary idea behind this was that as Yahweh's they had to be sacrificed to Him. This is brought out in that the firstborn of cattle had to be offered up as sacrifices, and the firstborn of men redeemed by the offering up of a substitute.
Consider also ‘The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me' (Exodus 22:29). ‘All that opens the womb is mine --- the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem' (Exodus 34:19-20). See also Numbers 3:13, ‘I sanctified to myself all the firstborn in the land of Israel, both man and beast. They shall be mine. I am Yahweh.' This demonstrates that the basic principle was that, as Yahweh's, the firstborn sons should theoretically be offered to Him and sacrificed. But that their redemption was necessary because, as with asses, they were not cultically ‘clean', that is, they were not suitable for sacrifice. This was then to be followed by their total ‘dedication' to Yahweh because they had now been bought by Him, resulting in their subsequent service in His sanctuary, later substituted by the Levites.
And what was the purpose of this? That they may serve in the sanctuary of God. So all firstborn sons wholly belonged to Yahweh, in the case of the cattle to be offered as sacrifices, in the case of the men to be redeemed by a lamb being offered in their stead, and set apart to Yahweh to serve in the Tabernacle. Firstborn asses too could not be sacrificed because they were unclean, but they were not set apart for the Tabernacle but handed back to their owners in return for a substitute offering. They were not suitable for service in the Tabernacle. This brings out the difference between man and ass. Man was ‘unclean' as far as sacrifice was concerned but ‘clean' for Tabernacle service once redeemed and once they had gone through due process (in the case of Levites as in Numbers 8:6-14, including the offering of a whole offering), although not in the sanctuary itself which was only for the priests (Numbers 4:20). The ass was unclean for both.
This especially comes out in that God then chose to replace these firstborn with the Levites. ‘And I, behold I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn who open the womb among the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be mine. For all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified to me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast. They shall be mine. I am Yahweh' (Numbers 3:12-13). So the firstborn males were numbered as against the Levites, and when there were more firstborn males than Levites they had to be redeemed by the payment of five shekels to Aaron and his sons as representatives of Yahweh (Numbers 3:39-51). Then the Levites were to serve in the Tabernacle in their place (Numbers 18:14-18). From then on firstborn male humans had to be redeemed for five shekels once they were a month old, being constantly substituted for by Levites who were also being born (Numbers 18:15-17).
We can gather from this that, in the cases of these humans, service in the Tabernacle replaced their being sacrificed as an offering. They were ‘offered up', but as living sacrifices to God, while their deaths were symbolised and effected by the sacrifice of a lamb almost certainly as a whole offering. In the eyes of Israel they ‘died'.
Many suggest that that was exactly what Jephthah intended. He saw them as ‘offered up as whole offerings', and was probably indicating his intention to offer up to the service of Yahweh whoever Yahweh demonstrated that He wanted. What he did not expect was that it would be his daughter that would be involved. But that women did serve ‘at the door of the Tabernacle' we know (Exodus 38:8; 1 Samuel 2:22), and while they were not particularly required to be virgins, for after all they had not all been ‘offered up' to Yahweh, there may well have been some dedicated virgins there. But here Jephthah's daughter was given to Yahweh in a unique way. She was His, a whole offering to Him. A lifelong Nazirite who must touch nothing unclean. And that was why she had thus to remain a virgin.
Such a dedication to the Tabernacle of a human being is also found in the case of Samuel although not in the same terms (1 Samuel 1:11). Compare also Samson's dedication to Yahweh from birth as a Nazarite (Judges 13:5), although not to the Tabernacle. Such dedications were clearly a feature of the times.
(End of Excursus.)