"Undoing the Victory" Judges 11: 12-40; Hebrews 10: 1-18:

1. Jephthah saves Israel by defeating the Ammonites.  One problem -- before he goes into battle he makes a vow to God that he will sacrifice the first person he sees when he returns home from battle.  That becomes a problem because the first person he sees is his virgin daughter.

2.  We are not told why he made the vow.  There seems to have been no request from God for the vow.  It appears that Jephthah is negotiating with God like he negotiated with the other kings.  I find it ironic that he opens negotiations with God just after the Spirit of the Lord had come to him.  Did he not trust God?  Was the trying to gain some of the credit for himself? Does Jephthah adopt a win at all costs and consider the sacrifice of his daughter just part of the cost of his success?

3.  To further complicate the story, his daughter agrees to be sacrificed, but first she wants two months to spend with her friends.  He grants her the two month reprieve, and then she is sacrificed.

4.  I have paired this passage with a portion of the 10th Chapter of Hebrews in which the sacrifice of Jesus is lifted up as the final sacrifice for humanity and for our sins.  Ironically, Hebrews lifts Jephthah up as one of the heroes of the faith.  Not sure I would agree with that determination.

5.  Note that Jephthah's daughter celebrates his victory as she receives her death sentence.  She is innocent; Jephthah is ignorant.  In fact, Leviticus 27: 1-8 describes the process for redeeming a sacrifice.  In other words, there was a price Jephthah could have paid to keep his daughter from being a sacrifice.

6. One of my favorite quotes I've never used:  "The trouble with living sacrifices," observed a leader in the

Salvation Army, "Is that they always want to crawl off the altar."  Not sure if it fits since Jephthah's daughter willingly goes to be sacrificed, but maybe it works its way in somewhere.

7. I find myself hearing the words of Isaiah, "Have you not seen? Have you not heard?"  and wanting to shake Jephthah and ask him, "Have you not seen? have you not heard?" about the God who would never ask you to sacrifice you daughter.  

8.  Maybe being a father of three daughters makes Jephthah seem particularly bad.

9. Interestingly, in Handels oratorio entitled Jephtha, and angel intercedes (like what happens in Genesis just before Abraham is to sacrifice his son Isaac) before Jephthah sacrifices his daughter. The angels sings "no vow can disannul the law of God, nor such was its intent" and the sacrifice becomes his daughter remaining a virgin.  

10.  In biblical literature, the offering up of children as burnt offerings to the gods was views as an abhorrent practice of the pagan worshippers.  This practice was most associated with the Molech, the god of the Ammonites, the very people against whom Jephthah was fighting. (The New Interpreter's BibleVol. 2, 834).