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Jdg_11:34-40.
[2 Jdg_11:35.— äָéִéú áְּòֹëְøָé might be rendered: “thou art among those who afflict me.” But the á is probably the so-called á essentiœ (Keil), and simply ascribes the characteristic of a class to the daughter (cf. Ges. Gram. 154, 3, a). Dr. Cassel’s “only” is not expressed in the original, but is readily suggested by the contrast, of the sad scene with all the other relations of the moment.—Tr.]
[3 Jdg_11:36.— òָùָׂä , lit. “done,” with evident reference to the same word used just before: “do, since Jehovah hath done,” cf. the Commentary.—Tr.]
[4 Jdg_11:37—Dr. Cassel makes this clause refer to the fulfillment of the vow, and renders: “Let this thing be done unto me, only let me alone two months,” etc. But it clearly introduces the request for a brief period of delay, and is rightly rendered by the E. V., with which Bertheau, Keil, De Wette agree, cf. the Commentary.—Tr.]
[5 Jdg_11:37.— åְéָøַãְúִּé , “descend,” i. e. from the elevated situation of Mizpah (cf. on Jdg_11:29; Jdg_11:33), to the neighboring lower hills and valleys (Keil). éָøָã does not mean to “wander up and down,” a rendering suggested only by the apparent incongruity of “descending” upon the “mountains.”—Tr.]
The scene of Jephthah’s meeting with his daughter has no equal in pathetic power. Her we see advancing with a radiant face, giving voice to her jubilant heart, surrounded by dancing companions, and longing to hear her father’s happy greeting; while he, in the midst of sounding timbrels and triumphant shouts—hides his face for agony! What might have been a moment of loudest jubilation, is become one of the deepest sorrow. That on which his imagination had fondly dwelt as the crowning point of his joy—the honor with which he could encircle the head of his only child, his virgin-daughter, now the first in all the nation—was instantly transformed into the heaviest woe. “O my daughter, deeply hast thou caused me to bow, and thou alone distressest me.” He borrows the words perhaps from the panegyrical song in which she celebrates him as “having caused the enemy to kneel, and to be distressed;” and in the extremity of his grief applies them to his child, thus suddenly astonished and struck dumb in the midst of her joy. “But,” continues the hero, though his heart weeps, “I have opened my mouth unto Jehovah, and I cannot go back.” I promised God in the spirit of sincerity, and must perform it in the same spirit. And there is not in all antiquity, no, nor yet in Holy Scripture, an instance of a maiden uttering a more beautiful, more profoundly pathetic word, than that which Jephthah’s daughter, a hero’s daughter, a true child of Israel, speaks to her father, even while as yet she knows not the purport of the vow: “Hast thou opened thy mouth to Jehovah, then do according to that which proceeded out of thy mouth; for Jehovah also hath done according to thy word, and hath taken vengeance on thy enemies.” She neither deprecates nor laments, gives no start, exhibits no despair—does nothing to make her father waver; but, on the contrary, encourages him, refers him to what God has done, and bids him do as he has promised, not to think, as he might perhaps be tempted to do, of change or modification in her favor. Such is the delicacy and tenderness of the narrative, that the modes of thought and feeling characteristic of this heroic daughter, as such, stand out in full relief; for it is in true womanly style that she says to her father: “Since Jehovah hath taken vengeance of thine enemies.” The utterance is altogether personal, as her womanly interest was personal. She concentrates the national victory in that of her father; the national enemy in the enemies of her father. God has given him vengeance ( ðְ÷ָîåֹú ); consequently he is bound, personally, to give to God what he has promised.
Jdg_11:37-40. And she said to her father, Let this thing be done to me. The noble maiden may boldly take her place by the side of Isaac, who, according to the narrative in Genesis, was not aware of the sacrifice to which he was destined. She gives herself up to her father, freely and joyfully, to be dealt with as his vow demanded. Heathen antiquity, also, has similar instances of virgins voluntarily offering themselves up for their native land. But comparison will point out the difference between them and the case of Jephthah’s daughter, and will help to show that here there can be no thought of a literal sacrifice of life. Pausanias (i. 32) relates the legend, dramatically treated by Euripides, that when the Athenians, who harbored the descendants of Hercules, were at war with the Peloponnesians, an oracle declared the voluntary death of one of those descendants to be necessary in order to secure victory to the Athenians; whereupon Macaria killed herself.—When the Thebans were waging war with the Orchomenians, the oracle advised them, that, if they were to conquer, their most distinguished fellow-citizen must sacrifice himself (Paus. ix. 17). Antipœnus, who is this most distinguished citizen, despises the oracle; his daughters, on the contrary, honor it, and devote themselves to death.—In the war of Erechtheus with Eumolpus, the oracle required of the former the sacrifice of his daughters. They voluntarily killed themselves (Apoll. iii. 15, 11; cf. Heyne on the passage). The same thing is told of Marius by Plutarch. Defeated by the Cimbrians, a divine oracle informed him that he would conquer, if he offered up his daughter, which he did. In all these legends, which might be greatly multiplied, an oracle commands the virgin-sacrifice; in all of them, a vigorous, superstitious belief in the atoning efficacy of pure, blood, such as appears in the German legend of Poor Heinrich, is the underlying motive; in all of them, also, the virgin-sacrifice forms the preliminary condition of victory. But in the history of Jephthah all this is changed. Jephthah makes a vow, but does not think of his daughter. In his case, the vow is a recognition of the fact that victory belongs, not to men, but to God. He makes a vow, although God has not required one. He keeps it, even after victory, although the extent of the sacrifice had not been anticipated. Neither he nor his daughter think of evasions, such, e. g., as Pausanias (iv. 9) speaks of in connection with similar histories in Messenia. And yet, the offering which each of them brings is as trying as death would be, although it cannot actually involve death. For that point is decided, not only by the different statements of the history itself, but especially by the fact that the offering is made to Jehovah, who, even when, as in the case of Abraham, he himself requires a sacrifice, will not suffer obedience to consummate itself in deeds of blood.
Let me alone two months, that I may go and descend upon the mountains, and weep over my virginity, I and my companions. No equivocal intimation is here given of the fate which befell the daughter of Jephthah. She was still in her father’s house, an only daughter, not yet married. Since the vow touches her, and devotes her entirely as an offering to God, she must belong to no one else, consequently not to her father, nor to a husband. She cannot be married, and will never rejoice over children. That is Jephthah’s sorrow—his house is withered away ( òֲøִéøִé ), his family disappears. The highest happiness in Israel, to have children, and thus to see one’s name or house continued, will not be his. The dearest of all beings, his only child, is dead to him. The same sorrow, and in accordance with ancient feelings with even greater severity, if that were possible, falls on the virgin daughter herself. An unmarried life was equivalent to death for the maidens of ancient Israel. For the bud withers away. Conjugal love and duty, the blossoms of life, do not appear. Unmarried maidens have no place in the life of the state. Marriage forms the crown of normal family life. The psalm (Psa_78:63) notes it as part of the utmost popular misery, that “the, fire (of war) consumes the young men, and the maidens are not celebrated” (in marriage songs). Analogous sentiments are frequent in the life of ancient nations. The Brahminism of India looks upon a childless condition as in the highest degree disgraceful. A woman is always in need of manly guidance and protection; be it as daughter from her father, as wife from her husband, or as mother from her sons (cf. Bohlen, Altes Indien, ii. 141 ff.). The laws of Lycurgus concerning marriage, and their penalties against men who did not marry, are familiar. Noteworthy, with reference to the customs of Asia Minor, is an episode in the history of Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos. Being urgently warned by his daughter against leaving his island to go to Oroetus, who was on the continent, he became angry, and threatened her, that in case of his safe return home, she should long afterwards continue to be a virgin; to which the dutiful daughter replied, that she would gladly remain virgin much longer still, if only she did not lose her father (Herod. iii. 124).
And weep over my virginity. Not, then, it appears, to mourn her own untimely death. If she was to die, it would have been unnatural to ask for a space of two months to be spent on the mountains in weeping. In that case, why depart with her maiden companions? why not remain at home with her father? A person expecting death and ready for it, would ask no time for lamentation. Such a one dies, and is lamented by others. But Jephthah’s daughter is to live—a virgin life, to which no honor is paid, from which no blossoms spring—a life of stillness and seclusion. No nuptial song shall praise, no husband honor, no child grace her. This weeping of virgins, because they remain without the praise of wedlock, is characteristic of the naïve manners and candid, unaffected purity of ancient life through wide-extended circles. Sophocles, in “King Œdipus” (11:1504), makes the father express his fears that “age will consume his children, fruitless and unmarried.” Electra, in the tragedy which bears her name, says of Chrysothemis (11:962 f.): “Well mayest thou lament that thou must grow old so long in unmarried joylessness;” just as she is herself commiserated by Orestes (11:1185): “Oh, the years of unmarried, anxious life which thou hast lived.” In many other instances of virgins who must die or have died, the fact of their dying unmarried is lamented. So, for example, in the beautiful inscription of the Anthology (cf. Herder, Werke, xx. 73): “Dear daughter, thou wentest so early, and ere I adorned thy bridal couch, down to the yellow stream under the shades,” and in the plaint of Polyxena (Euripides, Hecuba, 11:414): “Unmarried, without nuptial song, which nevertheless is my due.” The daughter of Jephthah laments not that she must die as a virgin, but with her maiden companions bewails her virginity itself.
From year to year the daughters of Israel go to celebrate in songs ( ìְäַðּåֹú , cf. Jdg_5:11) the daughter of Jephthah. Of this festival nothing further is known. A reflection of the feelings it expressed might, however, be found in very ancient analogies. After the maiden, with her companions, has wept on the mountains for two months, over the vain promise of her youth, she returns to her father. The mountains are the abode of a pure and elevated solitude, in which her own chaste heart and those of her companions can open themselves without being overheard. On mountains, also, and in unfrequented pasture-lands and forests, abode the Greek Artemis, the virgin who goes about alone, without companions, like the moon in the sky. It was on account of this her virginity, that Greek maidens celebrated her in many places with song and dance; from which practice she derived the name Artemis Hymnia, especially current in the mountains of Arcadia. The hymns were sung by virgin-choirs (cf. Welcker, Griech. Mythol. i. 585). A similar festival was devoted to Artemis on Mount Taygetus. At Caryæ, also in Laconia, festive choral dances were yearly executed in her honor (Paus. iii. 10). The virgin goddess was also called Hecaerge (‛ ÅêáÝñãç ), and Opis or Oupis ( Ὦðéò or ïὖðéò ). Ïὔðéããïò is the song of praise, with which, especially in Delos, and in accordance with peculiar myths, virgins celebrated the chaste Oupis, and brought her, as soon as they married, a lock of their hair (Callim. in Del. 11:292; Paus. i. 43). The same custom was observed at Megara with reference to Iphinoe, who died a virgin (Paus. i. 43). Here also tradition leads us back to Artemis, who is styled protectress of her father. That it is the attributes of chastity and virginity which are thus celebrated, is indicated by the transfer of the custom in honor of a man, in the legend of Hippolytus. “Him,” Euripide makes Artemis say, “shall virgins ever praise in lyric songs;” and locks of hair were dedicated to him by Trœzenian brides (cf. Euripides, Hippol. 11:1425; Paus. ii. 32).
These observances are a reflection of the narrative concerning Jephthah’s daughter, for the reason that they present us with virgin festivals, and with songs to the goddess who did not die, but remained a virgin. In point of fact, the existence of such festivals points to conceptions of life under whose influence woman, contrary to the common rule, lived in a state of virginity. The circumstance, also, that it became a custom in Israel to “praise” the daughter of Jephthah four days in every year, is itself a proof that the practice did not refer to a maiden who had been put to death. For what would there have been to praise in what was not necessarily dependent on her own free will? As in Artemis, so in her, it is voluntary, self-guarded chastity that is praised, just as Hippolytus also is not celebrated because he died unmarried, but because his life fell a sacrifice to his virtuous continence.
And he did with her according to his vow, and she knew no man. Had she been put to death, that fact must here have been indicated in some way. The narrator would have said, “and he presented her as a sacrifice at the altar in Mizpah,” or, “and she died, having known no man,” or some other similar formula. At all events, it does not “stand there in the text,” as Luther wrote, that she was offered in sacrifice. Much rather does this sentence show the contrary. For its second clause is explanatory of the nature and purport of the vow as it was fulfilled. The end to which it looked was the very thing which it is stated was actually secured, that she should know no man. On any other interpretation, the addition of this clause would be inexplicable and questionable. For the fact that she was a virgin in her father’s house, has already been twice brought forward. Moreover, it is surely not an event of very rare occurrence, for young women to die before they are married. And why should the narrator have hesitated to speak of the transaction in such terms as properly and plainly described it? In other cases he does not fail to speak of the most fearful aberrations just as they are. The truth is, the whole narrative derives its mighty charm only from the mysterious, and at that time in Israel very extraordinary fact, that the daughter of the great hero, for whom a life of brilliant happiness opened itself, spent her days in solitude and virginity. Death, even unnatural, was nothing uncommon. But a life such as Jephthah’s daughter henceforth lived, was at that time unparalleled in Israel, and affords therefore profound instruction, not to be overlooked because issuing from the silence of retirement.
Jephthah performs his vow. That which comes to meet him, even when it proves to be his daughter, he consecrates entirely to God, as a true offering of righteousness (cf. Psa_51:19 : òåֹìָä åְëָìéì æִëְçֵéÎöֶãֶ÷ ). He fulfills his vow so fully as to put it beyond his own reach to annul or commute us purport. For he fulfills, as he vowed, voluntarily; no one called on him to make his promise good. The background of the history, without which it cannot be understood, is life in and with God. The providence to which the hero commits the definition of his vow, is that of Jehovah. And if God leads his daughter forth to meet him, and thus in her receives the highest object in the gift of Jephthah, the consecration of which she becomes the subject cannot be of a nature opposed to God.
The event throws a brightness over the life of perpetual virginity which rescues it from ignominy and dishonor. Jephthah’s daughter typically exemplifies the truth that a virgin life, if it be consecrated to God, is not such an utter abnormity, as until then it had appeared. In Jephthah’s fulfillment of his vow and the consequent unmarried life of his daughter, there is a foreshadowing of those evangelical thoughts by means of which the Apostle liberates woman from the dread of remaining unwedded. Not, however, that we are to look here for the germ or type of the nunnery system; but for an example of belonging wholly to God, and of living unmarried, without being burdened or placed in a false position.
That Jephthah through his vow became the occasion of such an example, is already some mitigation of his fate. He has become the father, not of children who inherited his house, but of countless virgins who learned from his daughter to remain free and wholly devoted to God. Jephthah is a truly tragic hero. His youth endures persecution. His strength grows in exile. His victory and fame veil themselves in desolation when his only daughter leaves his home. But everywhere he is great. Whatever befalls, he comes out conqueror at last. God is always the object of his faith. He suffers more than Gideon; but what he does at last does not become a snare to Israel. He also had no successors in his office of wisdom and heroism—just as Gideon, and Samson, and Samuel had none; but it was not his fault that he had them not. His daughter, who resembled a Miriam, gave herself up to God.
1. Thus it appears that a child who loves its father, can also love God. In true devotion of children to parents, there lies a germ of the like relation to God. The daughter of Jephthah loves her father so dearly, that for his sake she calmly submits to that which he has vowed to God. It is written: Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. To Jephthah’s daughter this was fulfilled in the spirit. Her memory has never faded from the books of Israel, nor from the heaven of God, where all sorrows are redeemed.
2. Jephthah might have conquered without a vow; but having vowed before his victory, he fulfills it after the same. Faithfulness to his word is man’s greatest wisdom, even though he moisten it with tears. Faithfulness towards a sin is inconceivable; because unfaithfulness lies in the nature of sin. Faithfulness has the promise: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.
3. Jephthah’s daughter does not die like one sacrificed to Molech: she dies to the world. She loses a thousand joys that are sweet as love. But no one ever dies to the world and lives to God, without experiencing sorrow. A virgin life is a nameless life, as Jephthah’s daughter is nameless in Scripture. But the happiness of this world is not indispensable; and like the solitary flower, the unmarried woman can belong to her God, in whose heaven they neither give nor are given in marriage.
Gerlach: That the Judges whom God raised up, when they thus offered to the Lord even that which they held most dear, did not deliver the estranged and deeply fallen people in a merely outward sense, is shown by this act of believing surrender.
Footnotes:
[Jdg_11:34.— îִîֶּðּåּ , for îּîֶּðָּä , because the neutral conception “child” floats before the writer’s mind, cf. Bertheau. The explanation of îִîֶּðּåּ by ex se, implying that Jephthah, though he had no other child of his own, had step-children, would, as Bertheau says, be “unworthy of mention,” were it not suggested in the margin of the E. V.—Tr.]
[Jdg_11:35.— äָéִéú áְּòֹëְøָé might be rendered: “thou art among those who afflict me.” But the á is probably the so-called á essentiœ (Keil), and simply ascribes the characteristic of a class to the daughter (cf. Ges. Gram. 154, 3, a). Dr. Cassel’s “only” is not expressed in the original, but is readily suggested by the contrast, of the sad scene with all the other relations of the moment.—Tr.]
[Jdg_11:36.— òָùָׂä , lit. “done,” with evident reference to the same word used just before: “do, since Jehovah hath done,” cf. the Commentary.—Tr.]
[Jdg_11:37—Dr. Cassel makes this clause refer to the fulfillment of the vow, and renders: “Let this thing be done unto me, only let me alone two months,” etc. But it clearly introduces the request for a brief period of delay, and is rightly rendered by the E. V., with which Bertheau, Keil, De Wette agree, cf. the Commentary.—Tr.]
[Jdg_11:37.— åְéָøַãְúִּé , “descend,” i. e. from the elevated situation of Mizpah (cf. on Jdg_11:29; Jdg_11:33), to the neighboring lower hills and valleys (Keil). éָøָã does not mean to “wander up and down,” a rendering suggested only by the apparent incongruity of “descending” upon the “mountains.”—Tr.]
[Dr. Cassel manifestly views Jephthah’s vow as sui generis—not belonging to the class of vows treated of in Lev_27:1 ff. and therefore not falling under the provisions there made. Jephthah proposes a whole burnt-offering—spiritual indeed so far as its possible human subjects are concerned, but still bound by the law of whole burnt-offerings. Now, that law requires that offerings shall be of the male gender; whereas ordinary vows might embrace females, Lev_27:4. This view will impart clearness to some of our author’s sentences farther on, where he intimates that Jephthah could not redeem his daughter without taking “refuge behind external formulæ,” i. e. without interpreting the vow, as if it belonged to a class of vows to which it was not originally meant to belong.—Tr.]
[Frauen, by which the author evidently means married women. But ðָùׁéí bears no such restricted sense, cf. Ges. Lex. s. v. Moreover, that maidens were confined to the house is a proposition decidedly negatived by all we know of the position of the female sex among the Hebrews. See Bible Dict., art. “Women.”—Tr.]
Apparently similar thoughts, it is true, are suggested from a heathen point of view, not only by such examples as that of Iphigenia (cf. Cicero, de Officiis, ii. 95), and of Curtius in Rome, but also by that of Anchurus, the son of the Phrygian king Midas, who deemed his own life the most precious sacrifice that could be offered from his father’s possessions to the gods. But in reality, these exhibit only the principles that underlie the practice of human sacrifices—principles, with which the spirit of the Scriptures, and their spiritual modes of conception, stand strongly in contrast.
Cf. Nägelsbach, Nachhomerische Theologie, p. 244, etc.
äַëְøֵòַ äִëְøַòְúִּðִé , from ëָּøַò , to kneel; Hiphil, to cause to kneel, to subdue. She sang perhaps about the enemies whom he had subdued (cf. Jdg_5:27); he sadly applies her words to what she is doing with reference to himself.
Similar customs may be found even in modern times. In a West-Slavic legend a maiden is blamed for having married without having taken leave of maidenhood, which it was customary to do in pathetic and elegiac terms Wenzig, West-Slav. Marchenschatz, pp. 13, 311.
On the statement of Epiphanius, that a festival of the daughter of Jephthah was still celebrated in his time, compare my article in Herzog, p. 476.
Hengstenberg, in his valuable essay on Jephthah’s vow (Pentateuch, ii. 105 ff.), seeks to explain the daughter’s destiny by means of an institute of holy women, into which she perhaps entered. This is not the place to treat that subject, which must be referred to 1Sa_2:22. This much only seems to me to be certain, that by the öֹáְàåֹú , Exo_38:8 and 1Sa_2:22, we are not to understand ministering women. It must be remarked, in general, that the fundamental signification of öָáָà is, not militare, but to be in a multitude.” From this the idea of the öáָàåֹú , the hosts, in heaven and on earth, is derived. öáָà derives its meaning “host,” not from military discipline, but from the assembling of a multitude at one place. The women of the passages alluded to are therefore not ministering women, but persons who collected together at the tabernacle for purposes of prayer, requests, and thanks-giving, like the wives of Elkanah (1 Samuel 1), or to consult with and inquire of the priests. Some, of course, were more instant and continuous in their attendance than others (cf. Kimchi on 1Sa_2:22). At all events, they were women who were either married or widowed. But the history of Jephthah’s daughter is related as something extraordinary. Her virginity must remain intact. On this account she is lamented, and a festival is celebrated for her sake. These are uncommon matters, not to be harmonized with the idea of a familiarly known institute. Even among the Talmudists, a female ascetic is a phenomenon unheard of and unapproved (Sota, 22 a).
Nor is it necessary to assume anything more to explain the lament of the daughter or the grief of the bereaved father. Even Roman fathers took it sorrowfully, when their daughters became vestal virgins, notwithstanding the great honor of such a vocation. They were glad to leave such honors to the children of freedmen (Sueton. Aug. 31; Dio Cass. 55, p. 563).
On this point, compare my article in Herzog, p. 474, note.
Poets, unfortunately, have almost without exception considered a sacrificial death more poetical, and have thus done serious injustice to the memory of Jephthah. It was done, among others, by Dante (Paradise, v. 66), who herein followed the Catholic exegesis of his day (cf. my article in Herzog, p. 470). To be sure, Herder did the same. Lord Byron also, in his Hebrew Melodies (see a translation of his poems in Klein’s Volkskalender, for 1854, p 47). The names in Händel’s Oratorio seem to have been borrowed from the poem of Buchanan, published in Strasburg, 1568. Cf. Gödeke, Pamphilus Gengenbach, p. 672. In Faber’s Historischer Lustgarten (Augsburg and Frankfort, 1702), the daughter is called “Jephtina.”