And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed.- Jdg_11:39.
As is frequently the case, the chief interest and instructiveness of Jephthah's career gather round that event in his life which to himself and his contemporaries might seem to mar its symmetry and destroy its usefulness. It is the great blunder of his life, his unfortunate vow, that unceasingly draws back men's attention to him. He knew enough of war to understand that this undertaking he had entered into against the Ammonites would either make or mar him. It was the golden opportunity that comes once in a man's life. Through all his nature he was moved in prospect of the approaching battle. It made him thoughtful, concentrated, grave. He felt more than usually thrown back upon God's help; he wished to feel sure of God, and so, according to his light, vowed a vow.
Was it right of Jephthah to make a vow? We know he was wrong in the terms of it, but was he wrong in making any vow in the circumstances? It is open to any one to say that he had a merely heathen idea of God, as a Being to be bribed, to be secured by gifts and promises. It was very common with heathen generals to record such a vow before engaging; and it is common still to see men who wish to acknowledge God in some way, but do not know how to do it. They wish to be religious, think it a good and right thing, but neither knowing nor loving God, they are pitiably awkward in their demonstrations of religious feeling. But as we have no distinct evidence regarding Jephthah's state of mind in making this vow, it is the part of charity to believe that though he was incomprehensibly rash in the terms of his vow, yet he was justified in vowing to make some offering to God should He deliver the Ammonites into his hand.2 [Note: Marcus Dods.]
1. Jephthah vowed that if victory attended his campaign he would sacrifice to God the first of his household that should meet him. And it was his own beautiful daughter who met him, and then his vow hung heavily on his soul, and robbed him of all the joy of conquest. But, right or wrong, Jephthah was a man of his word. And while we shudder at the awful sacrifice, we cannot but admire the grim determination of this half-wild, barbaric chieftain, as he holds to the terms of his terrible vow, and at the expense of rendering himself childless, proceeds to fulfil it.
Jephthah, although the Spirit had come upon him, made a foolish and superstitious vow, that after he gained the victory he would sacrifice his own daughter. If there had been a godly and reasonable man present, he could have made him sensible of the folly of this vow, and have said, “Jephthah, thou shalt not slay thy daughter on account of thy foolish vow; for the law concerning vows must be interpreted according to justice and fitness, not according to the letter.”1 [Note: Luther, Table-Talk (ed. by Förstemann), i. 293.]
In 1869 a farmer who lived near Eye, in Suffolk, after reaping five acres of wheat, stacked it, and vowed that it should not be threshed as long as wheat was under forty shillings a coomb-a coomb being four bushels. And for thirty-four years he kept his word, preferring to break God's law rather than his own rash vow. For thirty-four years those stacks of grain stood up, unused, refusing to make obeisance, an affront to God, who gave them for man's food, and a proclamation to every passer-by of their owner's pride and obstinacy.
That farmer died six weeks ago, and one or two days afterwards his executors sold what little was left of the wheat amongst the bundles of decayed straw, for twenty shillings the coomb. Some of the man's acquaintance made two wreaths-corruptible crowns indeed!-out of the remnant that was saved, and laid them on his grave. Doubtless, like the man himself, they said, “He died game!” but God said unto him, “Thou fool!”2 [Note: The Morning Watch, 1903, p. 53.]
Take ye no vow in jest; but still be strong
To keep your vow; yet be ye not perverse-
As Jephthah once, blindly to execute a rash resolve.
Better a man should say, I have done wrong,
Than keeping an ill vow, he should do worse.3 [Note: Dante, Paradiso, v. 64 (trans. by Paget Toynbee).]
2. The fatal vow at the battle of Aroer belongs naturally to the spasmodic efforts of the age; like the vows of Samson or Saul in the Jewish Church of this period, or of Clovis or Bruno in the Middle Ages. But its literal execution could hardly have taken place had it been undertaken by any one more under moral restraints, even of that lawless age, than the freebooter Jephthah, or in any other part of the Holy Land than that separated by the Jordan valley from the more regular institutions of the country. Moab and Ammon, the neighbouring tribes to Jephthah's native country, were the parts of Palestine where human sacrifice lingered longest. It was the first thought of Balak in the extremity of his terror (Mic_6:7); it was the last expedient of Balak's successor in the war with Jehoshaphat (2Ki_3:27). Melech, to whom even before they entered Palestine the Israelites had offered human sacrifices (Eze_20:26), and who is always spoken of as the deity thus honoured, was especially the God of Ammon. It is but natural that a desperate soldier like Jephthah, breathing the same atmosphere, physical and social, should make the same vow, and, having made it, adhere to it. There was no high priest or prophet at hand to rebuke him. They were far away in the hostile tribe of Ephraim. He did what was right in his own eyes, and as such the transaction is described.
But the narrative itself trembles with the mixed feeling of the action. The description of Jephthah's wild character prepares us for some dark catastrophe. Admiration for his heroism and that of his daughter struggles for mastery in the historian with indignation at the dreadful deed. He is overwhelmed by the natural grief of a father. “Oh! oh! my daughter, thou hast crushed me, thou hast crushed me!” She rises at once to the grandeur of her situation as the instrument whereby the victory had been won. If the fatal word had escaped his lips, she was content to die, “forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.” It is one of the points of sacred history where the likeness of classical times mingles with the Hebrew devotion. It recalls to us the story of Idomeneus and his son, of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. And still more closely do we draw near, as our attention is fixed on the Jewish maiden, to a yet more pathetic scene. Her grief is the exact anticipation of the lament of Antigone, sharpened by the peculiar horror of the Hebrew women at a childless death-descending with no bridal festivity, with no nuptial torches, to the dark chambers of the grave. Into the mountains of Gilead she retires for two months-plunging deeper and deeper into the gorges of the mountains, to bewail her lot, with the maidens who had come out with her to greet the returning conqueror. Then comes the awful end, from which the sacred writer, as it were, averts his eyes. “He did with her according to his vow.” In her the house of Jephthah became extinct. But for years afterwards, even to the verge of the monarchy, the dark deed was commemorated. Four days in every year the maidens of Israel went up into the mountains of Gilead-and here the Hebrew language lends itself to the ambiguous feeling of the narrative itself-“to praise,” or “to lament” the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
The following little story of Carlyle, which we find in a pamphlet by John Swinton descriptive of a recent brief visit to Europe, will disclose to many readers of that rugged and vehement essayist an almost unsuspected trait of gentleness in his character. It is a very touching picture of Carlyle in his lonely old age which it presents. Mr. Swinton found the grave of Mrs. Carlyle in the ruined church at Haddington, and on the stone is cut Carlyle's tribute to her, in which, after referring to her long years of helpful companionship, he says that by her death “the light of his life is gone out.” Mr. Swinton continues-“And Mr. Carlyle,” said the sexton, “comes here from London now and then to see this grave. He is a gaunt, shaggy, weird kind of old man, looking very old the last time he was here.” “He is eighty-six now,” said I. “Ay,” he repeated, “eighty-six, and comes here to this grave all the way from London.” And I told him that Carlyle was a great man, the greatest man of the age in books, and that his name was known all over the world; but the sexton thought there were other great men lying near at hand, though I told him their fame did not reach beyond the graveyard, and brought him back to talk of Carlyle. “Mr. Carlyle himself,” said the gravedigger softly, “is to be brought here to be buried with his wife. Ay, he comes here lonesome and alone,” continued the gravedigger, “when he visits his wife's grave. His niece keeps him company to the gate, but he leaves her there, and she stays there for him. The last time he was here I got a sight of him, and he bowed down under his white hairs, and he took his way up by that ruined wall of the old cathedral, and round there and in here by the gateway, and he tottered up here to this spot.” Softly spake the gravedigger, and paused. Softer still, in the broad dialect of the Lothians, he proceeded-“And he stood here awhile in the grass, and then he kneeled down and stayed on his knees at the grave; then he bent over and I saw him kiss the ground-ay, he kissed it again and again, and he kept kneeling, and it was a long time before he rose and tottered out of the cathedral, and wandered through the graveyard to the gate, where his niece was waiting for him.”1 [Note: Mrs. A. Ireland, Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 323.]
3. Nothing could reveal to us more significantly than the story of Jephthah the imperfect notions of the Divine Being entertained by the men of those times. He was a Being who could be bargained with and bribed; a Being who could be propitiated by blood, even human blood. It was a more than half-heathen idea of God that Jephthah possessed. And yet Jephthah, groping through the maze of a semi-barbaric theology, laid his hand upon this sure clue of truth: that God demanded sacrifice from those whom He loved; and the greater God's love, the greater His demand upon us.
Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux, in her autobiography, tells of her strong desire to become a Carmelite at the age of fifteen. Her father had already parted with two daughters who had the same vocation, and she dreaded to ask him to make another sacrifice. “In the afternoon when Vespers were over, I found the opportunity I wanted. My Father was sitting in the garden, his hands clasped, admiring the wonders of nature. The rays of the setting sun gilded the tops of the tall trees, and the birds chanted their evening prayer. His beautiful face wore a heavenly expression-I could feel that his soul was full of peace. Without a word, I sat down by his side, my eyes already wet with tears. He looked at me with indescribable tenderness, and, pressing me to his heart, said: ‘What is it, little Queen? Tell me everything.' Then, in order to hide his own emotion, he rose and walked slowly up and down, still holding me close to him. Through my tears I spoke of the Carmel and of my great wish to enter soon. He, too, wept, but did not say a word to turn me from my vocation; he only told me that I was very young to make such a grave decision, and as I insisted, and fully explained my reasons, my noble and generous Father was soon convinced.”
Her father took her to the Vicar-General. “As he took us to the door the Vicar-General remarked that such a thing had never been seen-a father as anxious to give his child to God as the child was to offer herself.”1 [Note: Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux, 79.]
4. The sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, taking it at its worst, was not a human sacrifice in the gross sense of the word-not a slaughter of an unwilling victim, as when the Gaul and the Greek were buried alive in the Roman Forum; it was the willing offering of a devoted heart, to free, as she supposed, her father and her country from a terrible obligation. It was indeed, as Josephus says, an act in itself hateful to God. But, nevertheless, it contained just that one redeeming feature of pure obedience and love which is the distinguishing mark of all true sacrifice, and which communicates to the whole story the elements of tenderness and nobleness.
The words of the preacher rekindled the fires of love half-smothered in the heart of Lull. He now made up his mind once and forever. He sold all his property, which was considerable, gave the money to the poor, and reserved only a scanty allowance for his wife and children. This was the vow of his consecration in his own words: “To Thee, Lord God, do I now offer myself and my wife and my children and all that I possess; and since I approach Thee humbly with this gift and sacrifice, may it please Thee to condescend to accept all what I give and offer up for Thee, that I and my wife and my children may be Thy humble slaves.” It was a covenant of complete surrender, and the repeated reference to his wife and children shows that Raymund Lull's wandering passions had found rest at last. It was a family covenant, and by this token we know that Lull had forever said farewell to his former companions and his life of sin.2 [Note: S. M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, 42.]
In Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, that splendid pageant of the illustrious women of history, the most lovely picture of all is Jephthah's daughter. Upon her breast the poet still sees the mark of the spear-wound, upon her face the gaze of tragic sorrow. Yet, when he would commiserate her, she refuses the proffered pity: she needs no pity.
So stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died
To save her father's vow;
The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
A maiden pure; as when she went along
From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and with song.
My words leapt forth: “Heaven heads the count of crimes
With that wild oath.” She render'd answer high:
“Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times
I would be born and die.
“My God, my land, my father-these did move
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave,
Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of love
Down to a silent grave.
‘When the next moon was roll'd into the sky,
Strength came to me that equall'd my desire.
How beautiful a thing it was to die
For God and for my sire!
“It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,
That I subdued me to my father's will;
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,
Sweetens the spirit still.
“Moreover it is written that my race
Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth.” Here her face
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.
She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
“Glory to God,” she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.1 [Note: Tennyson, A Dream of Fair Women.]
