Yes, she too was sacrificed, but her conduct interrupted the order of a male-dominated society. Jephthah, having been born illegitimately, is driven out by his half-brothers and takes up his dwelling in Tob, east of Gilead. Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2013. Jephthah tears his clothes and cries, "Alas, my daughter! Girard offers a helpful hermeneutical perspective by distinguishing between the sacrificial stories in Greek mythology[13] and those in Judeo-Christian revelation: where Greek mythology tells the story from the perspective of the one bringing the sacrifice, and where the victim is a ransom, Judeo-Christian revelation speaks from the perspective of the victim, who is the protg of God. I believe that, like Abrahams silence towards God who asks for his son and Isaacs silence towards his father, the powerlessness of Jephthahs daughter in the face of patriarchal tyranny should be interpreted not as submissiveness but as powerful powerlessness, or, to use Coakleys term, power in vulnerability. The debate continues as to whether or not Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering. Jewish and Islamic religious feminist exegesis of the sacred books: Adam, woman and gender. One limb would slough away and be buried in one location, and then another would fall off somewhere else and be buried there. In that case, the lamenting done by both father and daughter would have concerned the loss for the daughter of the normative Israelite roles of wife and mother (a tragedy for Jephthah, too, since she is his only child and, without her children, his patrimony will most likely be lost forever). It is, further, one of the most enigmatic stories in the Hebrew Bible. Weiler, Gabriele. Remember that Glorious Girl: Jephthah's Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture. The Jewish Quarterly Review97, no. Agamemnon and Jephthah are, moreover, relieved of their sorrow and receive consolation. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.Search in Google Scholar, Feldman, Yael S. Glory and Agony: Sacrifice and National Narrative. Trible, Phyllis. In revealing the authors intentions to commit the literary murder of Jephthahs daughter and so prove her father culpable, we should be wary of committing the same crime. King James Bible And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. But while Jephthah bemoans the fate to which his vow has brought him, his daughter merely affirms that he must do what he has vowed to do. New York, NY: Zone, 1992.Search in Google Scholar, Berry, Wanda W. Kierkegaards Existential Dialectics: The Temporal Becoming of the Self. The Journal of Religious Thought 38:1 (1981), 2041.Search in Google Scholar, Bledstein, Adrien J. Its position, as well as the events that it narrates, suggests that it functions primarily, though not necessarily solely, as a further explication of the character of her father. However, because Jephthah did not do anything extraordinary immediately after the Spirit of the Lord came upon himhe simply set off for the battlefield some distance away[30]one could argue that he might not have known that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. Baumgarten, Elisheva. Idomeneus had asked the gods to calm a storm, promising in return that he would sacrifice the first living thing he saw upon his return, which turned out to be his son.[31]. What comes to him freely, he seeks to earn and manipulate. Nineteen female characters grace the book, but only four are honoured with a proper nameAchsah, Deborah, Jael, and Delilah; the others remain nameless and defined by their affiliation to men. Updated on January 09, 2020. If Jephthah did sacrifice his daughter in order to fulfill his vow, then it is obvious that God allowed him to kill his daughter and it is obvious that God allowed his daughter to give herself as a sacrifice. in the Bible but in Greek mythology: Idomoneus, King of Crete, caught in a storm at sea, vowed to Poseidon that if he reached shore safely he would sa- . The answer is twofold: she is a woman fully responsible for herself; however, the responsibility for her premature and violent death is shared by her father, herself, and the biblical authorredactor. Rmer, Thomas C. Why Would the Deuteronomists Tell about Sacrifice of Jephthahs Daughter. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 77 (1998), 2738. Whose Story? This standard combined with the low status of women, epitomized by the gang rape of the Levites concubine (Judg. Do to Me According to What Has Gone Out of Your Mouth: A Reformation Debate on the Tragedy of Jephthah and his Daughter. Reformation & Renaissance Review 21:1 (2019), 326.10.1080/14622459.2019.1568369Search in Google Scholar, Sjberg, Mikael. According to him, the right translation of this passage is: "whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, or I will offer it up as a burnt offering." By contrast, in the Bible the characters decide for themselves and are therefore responsible for the outcome of their own actions. Child sacrifice. Jephthah meets his end soon after the sacrificial event, but not before winning one last battle against the Ephraimites. It is wrong to be critical of Jephthah for sacrificing his daughter and to ignore . [by whom? . The text does not explicitly state that Jephthah actually kills her. It may have been first written down in the 8th century BCE, when the Northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) began to collect its heroic tales, royal stories, and foundation myths. An in-depth study regarding this vow, however, points to a different outcome. "Outlaws collected around Jephthah and went raiding with him. That sacrifice, however, wasYHWHs idea in the first place(Gen 22:114). Ren Girards Theory of Sacrifice, or: What is the Gift of Death? Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 15:1 (2015), 10518. [7], In the field of Jewish exegesis, the work titled Dirshuni: Contemporary Women's Midrash names Jephthah's daughter as "Tannot" (or "Tanot") and appears in various chapters. Artist: Bertholet Flemalle (1614-1675) Divergent Perspectives on Human Sacrifice in the Bible As everyone knows, nothing could be more repugnant to the God of Israel than human sacrifice. And Jephthah vowed a vow to the Lord, and said, "If You will indeed give the children of Ammon into my hand. Women in Scripture. Kierkegaard insists that both Jephthah and his daughter were understood and admired by those who witnessed the event, but reception history disagrees, certainly in Jephthahs case. If you have, He wants you to keep it.[1]. They also happen to women and not men,[61] powerful powerlessness does not in the broader picture appear to be gendered. Melbourne: Scribe Publishing, 2007.Search in Google Scholar, Exum, Cheryl J. Born out of wedlock, Jephthah was driven from his home by his half-brothers. In the Girardian system, it is crucial that the victim is proclaimed guilty. The sacrifice is inevitable for the greater good, for the sake of the community. In verse 32 of Hebrews 11, listed among faithful men such as Gideon, Samson, King David and Samuel is Jephthah! We are the ones who choose to sin, not God. However, in the Hebrew Bible, the same word for 'burnt offering' (Hebrew, lh) used in reference to Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11:31 is also used in other Biblical stories alluding to human sacrifice, such as the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) and Mesha of Moab and his son (2 Kings 3:27). London: Bloomsbury, 2013. // Javascript URL redirection Kierkegaard, Sren. Praha: Oikoymenh, 2002. The Old Testament warns us to pay our vows rather than make vows we do not fulfill. [2], The story of Jephthah is found in the Book of Judges, chapters 1112. The book of Judges is one of the most unusual books in the Hebrew Bible, and in few places is its eccentricity more evident than in the sacrificial story of Jephthahs daughter (Judg. The request of the daughter makes no sense if we assume she understood the vow as costing her life. In Gender Difference and the Rabbis: Bat Yiftah as Human Sacrifice, Tal Ilan suggests that behind the unnecessary death of the young woman might have been simply the pride and ignorance of Jephthah and the priest Phineas; Mikael Sjbergs Jephthahs Daughter as Object of Desire or Feminist Icon depicts the violent and gendered aspects of the story against a background of two modern novels; and N. Scott Amoss article Do to Me According to What Has Gone Out of Your Mouth wrestles with medieval interpretations of the story to determine whether Jephthahs daughter was sacrificed or whether she entered into a life of dedication to the Lord. Agamemnon, on the other hand, was informed that his fleet could not sail back to Greece if he refused to sacrifice Iphigenia. Coakley, Sarah. New Revised Standard Version He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech. 1. "Did Jephthah Kill his Daughter? Thus, without passing over the potential danger of the text, I suggest overcoming this dialectical reading of the story of Jephthahs daughter and thereby making the sacrifice of Jephthahs daughter a story worth reading even today. The most reasonable conclusion is that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering. Judges. [1] . Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. [10] The possibility of dynastic concerns is already a feature of the Book of Judges with the offer to Gideon to become king, which he refused, and the attempt of his son Avimelech to attain such a role by violence. Source: The Jewish Museum. Jephthah's daughter asked for a two month "reprieve," and Jephthah granted her request ( Judges 11:36-38 ). Fear and Trembling. In Kierkegaards Writings Vol. ", Solomon Landers, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, "Jephthah's Daughter: Midrash and Aggadah", "Did Jephthah really sacrifice his daughter? When the vow is fulfilled we are told she never knew a man (a strange thing to say after recording the sacrifice of a virgin). Rethinking Faith and Belonging in the Pandemic, Downloaded on 28.6.2023 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opth-2020-0167/html, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Library and Information Science, Book Studies, Women and Gender in the Bible and the Biblical World II: Editorial Introduction, Reading Esther as a Postcolonial Feminist Icon for Asian Women in Diaspora. The Feminist Companion to the Bible 4. We are responsible. Jephthah swears an oath: ". If we promise to do something, God says do it! 1094 Words. The author created the daughter not as a mute puppet but as an independent woman with her own mind. The text does not state explicitly that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, but only that he did to her as he had vowed (Jud. The short phrase "And she knew no man" is meaningless if the child (likely a teenager) would soon be offered as a sacrifice to God. Genesis 19:30-38 accounts for the origins of the nation of Moab. Such offerings were common to heathen nations at that time, but it is noteworthy that Israel stands out among them with this great peculiarity, that human sacrifices were unknown in Israel. Trible, Phyllis. Bullinger goes on to give examples from the Bible where the same word has been translated as "or". "Daughter of Jephthah: Bible." Perhaps he merely offers her up to the service ofYHWH; presumably she would have then gone to work for a lifetime in a sanctuary dedicated toYHWH. Secondly, I will analyse Jephthahs (hasty) vow to God; thirdly, I will carry out a rhetorical analysis of the exchange between Jephthah and his daughter upon Jephthahs return from his victorious battle; finally, I will provide a philosophicaltheological synthesis of the story against a background of the existentialphenomenological discourse on sacrifice. I noted this when I first began to move in Christian circles. Exum, J. Cheryl. . In the narrative of Abrahams near sacrifice of his son, Isaac,YHWHsends an angel to prevent the killing. The Hebrews (and especially the authors of Scripture) were aghast at the practice of human sacrifice in the cultures around themeven though some of their own rulers were sometimes guilty of it. Jephthah (pronounced /df/; Hebrew: , Yft), appears in the Book of Judges as a judge who presided over Israel for a period of six years (Judges 12:7). Those who believe that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter havewondered, Why did God allow Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter? This is an important question if Jephthah, did in fact, kill his daughter and offer her as a burnt offering. The Girardian Theory and Feminism: Critique and Appropriation. Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 1 (1994), 1929. This is a timeless issue, and one which can be applied in a variety of contexts. Hers is hardly the victorious statement of someone who sees herself as the saviour of all Israel. Abraham is ordered to sacrifice Isaac; Jephthah acts alone. Or we can proceed with caution, or even suspicion. Oops! Being Migrant People(s) of the God of All the Earth, Reading Stephens Speech as a Counter-Cultural Discourse on Migration and Dislocation, The Deportation of Juan: Migration Rhetoric as Decolonial Strategy in Revelation, Setting a New Course? Have you made a vow to God? According to Judges, he lived in Gilead. Fuchs, Esther. Jephthahs move may well be understood within the realm of the patriarchal power structure and the powerful/powerless dialectic. After discussing many of the authors Watt lists as tackling the issue of sacrifice from their various points of interestincluding Robertson Smith, Hubert and Mauss, Burkert[2]I came to the same conclusion. Judges 11:29-40 is the story Jephthah and his unnamed daughter. Jephthah was not an ignorant man. She is openly powerless in facing the powerful but refuses to accept responsibility for her fathers vow and hands it back to him. This request is granted. Human Sacrifice and Greek Culture, In Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition, edited by Diethard Rmheld, Armin Lange and Karin Finsterbusch, 3564. [20] This view is put forward also by Christian scholars from the 14th century[21] and continues to be propounded today, as by Solomon Landers, who considers it most likely that the fate of Jephthah's daughter was perpetual virginity or solitary confinement.[22][23]. Hagedorn, Ludger. [27], The Order of the Eastern Star refers to her as Adah. Krebs, Ronald R. The Binding of Isaac and the Arts of Resistance. In Reading Genesis: Beginnings, edited by Beth Kisssileff, 13148. If Jephthah did sacrifice his daughter in order to fulfill his vow, then it is obvious that God allowed him to kill his daughter and it is obvious that God allowed his daughter to give herself as a sacrifice. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg and his ordination from Leo Baeck College. Similarly, in his interpretation of the binding of Isaac in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling, Simon Podmore suggests a similar untangling of tyrannical power by powerlessness: In the radically Lutheran terms, Abraham overcomes God by his powerlessness, expressing faiths secret and the link between sacrifice and silence through the word that God will provide for himself.[] Abraham concedes that he will not oppose God but will instead, like Job, embrace powerlessness in the face of his ordeal [Prvelse], placing his faith in the unchanging love of God.[51]. Since even Bible scholars are divided on the question, it is hard for laypeople to find the answer. At the grimmest end of the spectrum of father-daughter relationships of the Hebrew Bible is the narrative of a father, Jephthah, who sacrifices his daughter in fulfilment of a vow. God allows us to sin! Copyright Like The Master Ministries. Second Kings 6:24-30 presents an astonishing narrative wherein two Israelite mothers agree to eat their children. London: Routledge, 2015.Search in Google Scholar, Podmore, Simon D. The Sacrifice of Silence: Fear and Trembling and the Secret of Faith. International Journal of Systematic Theology 14:1 (2021), 7090.10.1111/j.1468-2400.2011.00591.xSearch in Google Scholar, Pressler, Carolyn. Perhaps rashly, he vowed to sacrifice as a burnt offering "whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return" if the Lord would only grant him a victory over the Ammonites (Judges 11:30-31). Therefore, why does God allow us to curse others? Verse 39 of Judges 11 tells us what happened when the daughter came home. It is wrong to be critical of Jephthah for sacrificing his daughter and to ignore her statement in Judges 11:36-37, So she said to him, My father, you have given your word to the LORD; do to me as you have said, since the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon. She said to her father, Let this thing be done for me; let me alone two months, that I may go to the mountains and weep because of my virginity, I and my companions. Judges 11:36-37 (NASB). He triumphed over rejection, yet lost someone very dear to him because of a rash, unnecessary vow. Kierkegaards fascinating exposition clarifies the distinction between Christian revelation and Greek myth and recalls the close connection between Abraham, Jephthah, and Agamemnon. 6 Manasseh also sacrificed his own son in the fire. [1] Jephthah led the Israelites in battle against Ammon and, in exchange for defeating the Ammonites, made a vow to sacrifice whatever would come out of the door of his house first. The ensuing conflict proves victorious for Jephthah and his forces. From a slightly later period we have the women coming from all the cities of Israel to celebrate Sauls victory over the Philistines, also with timbrels and dance, chanting the words that angered Saul:Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands (1 Samuel 18:6-7).
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