GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 11:36-37
36 Then she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have promised, for the LORD brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites.” 37 “But permit me this one thing,” she said. “Let me wander two months through the mountains and mourn my virginity with my friends.”
As we draw closer to the end of the Jephthah story and the fate of his daughter, one detail stands out above all others, and anyone who sees the whole Bible as a unified whole narrative will not fail to see it. A great many scholars, especially in the last two centuries, have missed it altogether, but that is not surprising when one considers their attitude toward the inspired text of the Bible.
Certainly the mystery of the girl’s request and the meaning the two months that she and her friends spent roaming the hills is interesting, but it remains a mystery. The question as to why she mourned her virginity remains a debate: was it because she would never know a man because she would be dedicated to a lifetime of celibate service in the tabernacle or because she was about to be sacrificed as a burnt offering? This is the chief issue for almost all commentators. But there is nothing we should pay more attention to in this account—indeed, in the whole chapter, if not the entire book—than the girl’s confession of faith in verse 36.
In this way, Jephthah’s daughter stands out (along with Deborah) as one of the two most important women of the book. And it is not a book without a good variety of women: Acsah, Jael, Siserah’s mother, Siserah’s mother’s ladies-in-waiting, the women of Shechem, the miller’s wife (if I may call her that) of Thebez (the one who killed Abimelech), Jephthah’s mother (the prostitute), Jephthah’s daughter (the saint—I will explain this later) and her friends (and the women of Israel in later days), Ibzan’s thirty daughters, Manoah’s wife, Samson’s first wife (Samson’s Philistine woman #1), the prostitute of Gaza (Samson’s Philistine woman #2), Delilah (Samson’s Philistine woman #3), Micah’s mother the idolatress, the Levite’s concubine, the virgin daughter of the old man of Gibeah, the four hundred virgins of Jabesh Gilead, and the girls of Shiloh.
Why is Jephthah’s daughter a saint? Because of her confession of faith (and nothing else makes a man or woman a saint apart from their faith in Christ, as when all God’s people are called “his saints” in Psalm 85:8, in Daniel 7:27, and in Jude 3). She knew the LORD, and she knew the importance of a vow made to the LORD. She honored and respected her father, and she fully understood what her importance was to her father and the future of their family. Apart from Deborah and perhaps Othniel, she shows the strongest evidence of her faith of anyone in the book. At a time when “everyone did as he saw fit,” she did not. She gave glory to God and she honored her father. She kept the Law of Moses. This is not to say that she was sinless, since like all mankind she was stained with original sin from Adam and Eve. But she is an example of faith to be imitated by us all.
In 1986, David Marcus wrote a short book (a monograph) titled “Jephthah and his Vow.” In it, he mentions a list of “over 300 literary works in nearly every modern language,” ranging in time from the middle ages to the present day (literature, sculpture, manuscript illustration, tapestry, and music) and another 100 musical oratorios (including one by George F. Handel) all depicting the story of Jephthah and his vow. This flurry of illustrations may baffle some scholars, but to a Christian, the reason for the popularity of this story is clear: Here, just after the center of the book, in the middle of a world of bloodthirsty men (and women) wandering around like sheep without a shepherd, there is a girl with faith, a girl who kept the commandments and who did her duty even when it was not convenient for her. Here in the historical account of this virgin girl we find someone I would prefer to call a Type of Christ. She foreshadows Jesus—even to the point of being willing to lay down her life (and perhaps actually doing so) because of the sins of her own father. Her action did not atone for Jephthah’s sin—only Christ could and did do that—but the girl’s act points to Christ, just as directly and as clearly as the sacrifices of Leviticus, Noah’s salvation in the wooden ark, and the saving Exodus from Egypt.
Perhaps the ambiguity of the other details of the story are intentional so that the girl’s actual fate will remain blurry to us in order that her confession of faith will stand out crystal clear. She had faith, and we pray that we will have a faith in our hearts and a faith put into action like hers.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota