Volumes have been written on the subject of " Jeph- thah's rash vow," the question being whether, in doing to his daughter " according to his vow," he really did offer her in sacrifice, or whether she was merely doomed to perpetual celibacy.
That the daughter of Jephthah was really offered up to God in sacrifice — slain by the hand of her father and then burned— is a horrible conclusion, but one which it seems impossible to avoid. This was understood to be the meaning of the text by Jonathan the paraphrast, and Kashi, by Josephus (Ant. v, 7, 10), and by perhaps all the early Christian fathers, as Origen (in Joannem, torn, vi, cap. 36), Chrysostom (Horn, ad pop, Antioclms, xiv, 3 ; 0pp. ii, 145), Theodoret (Qucestiones in Judices, xx), Jerome (Ep. ad Jul. 118 ; 0pp. i, 791, etc.), Au- gustine (Qucestiones in Jud. viii, 49; 0pp. iii, 1, 610);
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so also ill the Talmud {Tanchuma to Bechu-Kolhui, p. 171) ami Midrash (K. 1, § 71), in both of which great astonishment is expressed witli the dealings of the high- priest. For the first eleven centuries of the Christian a;ra this was the current, perliaps the universal opinion of Jews and Christians. Yet none of them extenuates the act of Jephthah. Josephus calls it neither lawful nor pleasing to God. Jewish writers say that he ought to have referred it to the high-priest , but either he failed to do so, or the high-priest culpably omitted to prevent the rash act. Origeii strictly conlincs his praise to the heroism of Jephthah's daughter.
The other interpretation Avas suggested by Joseph Kimchi. He supposed that, instead of being sacrificed, she was shut up in a house which lier father built for the purpose, and that she was there visited by the daughters of Israel four days m each year as long as she lived. This mterpretation has been adopted by many eminent men — as by Levi ben - Gerson and Bechai amongst the Jews, and by Drusius, Grotius, Estius, De Dieu, bishop Hall, Waterland, Dr. Hales, and others. More names of the same period, and of not less author- ity, might, however, be adduced on the other side. Lightfoot once thought (Krub/iiii, § IG) that Jephthah did not slay his daughter, but, upon more mature reflec- tion, he came to the opposite conclusion (Ilarmony, etc. ; Judges xi, Woi'ks, i, 51).
1. The advocates for the actual death of the maiden contend that to live unman-ied was required by no law, custom, or devotement amongst the Jews : no one had a right to impose so odious a condition on another, nor is any such condition implied or expressed in the vow which Jephthah uttered. It is certain that human sacrifice was deemed meritorious and propitiatorj' by the neighboring nations [see Sacrifice] ; and, consid- ering the manner of life the hero had led, the recent idolatries in which the people had been plunged, and the peculiarly vague notions of the tribes beyond the Jordan, it is highly probable that he contemplated from the first a human sacrifice, as the most costly offering to God known to him (comp. the well-known story of the immolation of Iphigenia, Iliad, ix, 144 sq.). It is diffi- cult to conceive that he could expect any other creature than a human being to come forth out of the door of his house to meet him on his return. His affliction when his daughter actually came forth is ([uite compatible with the idea that he had not even exempted her from the sacrediiess of his promise, and the depth of that af- fliction is scarcely reconcilable with any other alterna- tive than the actual sacrifice. In that case, the circum- stance that she "knew no man" is added as setting in a stronger light the rashness of Jephthah and the heroism of his daughter. If we look at the text, Jephthah vows tliat wliatsoever came forth from the door of his house to moet him "shall surely be the Lord's, and [Kimchi's rendering 'or' is a rare and harsh one] I will offer it up for a burnt-offering," which, in fact, was the regular way of making a thing wholly the Lortl's. Afterwards we are told that " he did with her arojnling to Ids vow," that is, according to the ])lain mcaiiiu:,^ of plain words, offered her for a burnt-offering. (^This circumlocutory phrase, and the omission of any direct term expressive of death, are attributed to euphemistic motives.) Then follows the intimation that the daughters of Israel la- mented her four days everj' j^ear. People lament the dead, not the living. The whole storj' is consistent and intelligible while the sacrifice is understood to have taken place, but becomes perplexed and difficult as soon as we begin to turn aside from this obvious meaning in search of recondite explanations. The Jewish com- mentators themselves generally admit that Jephthah really sacrificed his daughter, and even go so far as to allege that the change in the pontifical dynasty from the house of Eleazar to that of Ithamar was caused by the high-priest of the time having suffered this trans- action to take place. It is true, human sacrifices were forbidden by the law ; but in the rude and unsettled age
in which the judges lived, when the Israelites had adopt- ed a vast number of erroneous notions and practices from their heathen neighbors (see 2 Kings iii, 27), many things were done, even by good men, which the law for- bade quite as positively as human sacrifice. Such, for instance, was the setting up of the altar by Gideon at his native Ophrah (Judg. viii, 27), in direct but unde- signed opposition to one of the most stringent enact- ments (Dcut. vii) of the Mosaical code. — Kitto ; Smith. (See Kitto's Daih/ Bible I lluMratioiis, &A\oc.)