God didn't save her

Study for "Jephthah's Daughter" by Benjamin West

There’s a story of a boy in the Bible that has been told and retold for thousands of years. Generation after generation has wrestled with the story, its implications and theology. 

There’s a story of a girl that is far more radical, and has received almost none of the wrestling.

The boy is Isaac, second son of Abraham, “child of the covenant.” In the story (Genesis 22), Abraham receives a command from God to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar. How Abraham reacted to God’s command, we’ll never know. Genesis simply narrates that the next day, Abraham took his son and went on a journey to the mountain where he would build the altar. After three days of trekking alongside his unsuspecting son, Abraham builds an altar, ties up Isaac with rope, and lays him down as the sacrifice. He raises his knife, ready to kill his son for God. At the last moment, God intervenes and an angel calls out to Abraham telling him to stop. God provides a ram to sacrifice instead of the boy. 

It’s not an easy story. Jewish and Christian listeners have struggled for centuries with the blatant questions: Why would God ask a father to kill his son? Why would a father accept such a command? What kind of trauma did Isaac experience from this? What kind of God would create such a test of faith? 

Likely, most of us who grew up in church have heard a plethora of answers to these questions about the binding of Isaac. Likely, we’ve discussed it in small groups, considered it in numerous sermons. 

Likely, far fewer of us gave such attention to the eerily similar tale of Jephthah’s daughter. 

Jephthah was a commander of the army of Israel, fighting against the Ammonites in Judges 11. He makes a vow to God, promising that is God helps him defeat the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first thing to come out of his house when he returns. He defeats the Ammonites, and returns home. Here is the rest of the story: 

“When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, ‘Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.’

‘My father,’ she replied, ‘you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request,’ she said. ‘Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.’

‘You may go,’ he said. And he let her go for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin."

 

The horror of the story is unmistakable, even at a first reading. I’ve known of this story for years, and my emotions have ranged from puzzled to uncomfortable to angry. But it wasn’t until a recent conversation with a friend that I suddenly realized the parallel between this story and that of Isaac’s. The juxtaposition made me feel sick. 

 

Abraham and Jephthah found themselves in the same situation: bound to sacrifice their beloved child to God. 

 

In the sermons I heard, God never actually wanted Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; he was only proving Abraham’s faith, and had a rescue plan all along. And while this never satisfied me, it was better than thinking that God had wanted the sacrifice and changed his mind at the last minute. 

 

But then this. 

 

How could the theology that saved Isaac hold true now? Where was God when Jephthah sacrificed his daughter? Why did God not intervene, tell Jephthah to break his vow? Why did he save the boy but not the girl? 

 

These questions came after scouring the scriptures for stories of women and finding far too many that ended in abuse, silence, or invisibility. Even Jephthah’s daughter is one of the many women whose names were not important enough to record. 

What bothered me most was not that these stories of women’s oppression existed. What bothered me most was how many times God did not intervene. Especially when the story of Isaac teaches us that he could. 

 

Where do we go with this? I don’t really know. I think we start by acknowledging it. Acknowledging her. 

 

The story of Jephthah’s daughter ends with this verse: “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.” I am not surprised that it was the women. Perhaps it’s time for us to reclaim this tradition in honor of the girl who was sacrificed, the girl with no name. 

 

In her honor, I will shed light on the oppression of women that runs throughout the Bible. I will work to help us understand that we can love the Bible without justifying or condoning its treatment of women. 

 

I don’t know how to explain why God didn’t intervene. But I will.

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If the story of Jephthah's daughter got you interested, confused, upset, or needing more, I am teaching a 5-week mini-course called "Woman, God, and the Bible," starting November 2nd. Register here! There we can address how the sorrow over sacrificing Jephthah's daughter is more over her virginity than her life itself...