Thirdly, Nor does it seem probable that Jephthah had dedicated his daughter to God, that she should perpetually remain a virgin ; for neither hath God instituted any such kind of worship, nor could the forced virginity of the daughter by any means ever be reckoned to the account of the father, as any valuable consideration, in place of a victim.
As, then, there were two kinds of things devoted to God, the first of which was of the class of those which, as God did not order that they should be offered in sacrifice, it was made a statute that they should be valued by the priest at a fair valuation, and be redeemed, and so return again to common use. The law of these is delivered. Lev. xxvii. 1, 2, etc.: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them. When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the Lord by thy estimation. And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even th}^ estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels," etc. And verse 8 : " But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall pre- sent himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; ac- cording to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him."
ON HUMAN SACRIFICES. 635
But the second kind of these were called Cherem^ concerning wliicli it was not a simple vow "V^}., of which there was no redemption or estimation to be made by the priest. The law respecting these is given in the 28th and 29th verses of the same chapter: "Notwith- standing no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed ; but shall surely be put to death."
The question, to which of these two kinds the vow of Jephthah belonged, creates, if I mistake not, the whole difficulty of the passage.
That it belonged not to the first is as clear as the day; because if we suppose that it did, he might easily have extricated himself and family from all grief on that account by paying the estimation made by the priest. It was, then, a cherem which by his vow Jephthah had vowed to the Lord, by no means to be redeemed, but accounted " most holy unto the Lord," as in verses 28, 29, before mentioned.
But it is doubted whether a rational creature could be made a cherem; but, in fact, there can hardly remain any room for doubt. To the person who considers the text itself it will easily appear. The words are, " Every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed ; but shall surely be put to death.'' It is evident from the foregoing verse that the words, " of men," point not at the efficient cause but the matter^ of the vow; where the same words, in the original, cannot be other- wise rendered than by " of," or " touching man," or by " out of," or " from among mankind or men," or " of the class of men." • And all those writers interpi'et the words in this sense (and there are not a few of them, both among Jews and Christians), who are of opinion that the passage ought to be explained as relating to the enemies of God, devoted to universal slaughter and destruction.
As Jephthah, then, had devoted his daughter as a cherem, it seems hardly to admit of a doubt that the cause of his consternation and sorrow at meeting her was because that, according to the law, he had slain her, having devoted her to God in such a manner as not to be redeemed.
It would be foreign to our purpose to agitate this question any farther. We shall only say, then, that after having maturely weighed all the circumstances of the text and of the thing itself, according to the measure of our abilities, we have gone into the opinion of those who maintain that Jephthah gave up his daughter to death, she being devoted to God in such a manner as, according to the law^, not
1 A thing or person so devoted as not to be redeemed. — Tn.
2 That is, pointing not at the persons vowing, but at the oljcct of their vow, or at the thing vowed or devoted by them. — Tr.
536 A DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE. [PART I.
to be redeemed, that Supreme Being, Avho has the absolute right and power of life and death, so requiring^ it. The theologians of both nations^ who espouse this side of the question are both numerous and renowned. Peter Martyi- testifies that almost all the more ancient rabbins agreed in this opinion. Josephus in his Antiquities follows th^m, although he hath not determined Jephthah to be free of blame. Of the fathers, it is sufficient (for the matter is not to be determined by votes) that Jerome in his epistle to Julian, Ambrose on Virginity, book iii., Augustine on the book of Judges; and of those in later times, Peter Martyr in his commentary on the 11 th of Judges, and Ludovicus Cappellus in that excellent treatise of his concerning Jephthah 's vow, have either approved, or at least have not dissented from, this opinion. What Epiphanius^ relates concern- ing the deification of Jephthah's daughter favours this opinion. " In Sebaste," says he, "which was formerly called Samaria, having deified the daughter of Jephthah, they yearly celebrate a solemn festival in honour of her." Yea, more, the most learned agree that the fame of this transaction was so spread among the Gentile nations, that thence Homer, Euripides, and others, seized the occasion of raising that fable about Agamemnon's sacrificing his daughter, and that there never was any other Iphigenia than Jephthegenia, nor Iphianassa* than I(pdiavag(ra^ or Jephtheanassa.