P ver. 12 — 27. 1 Judg. x, G. f Judg. x. 16. = 1 Sam. xiv.45. t See Exoil. xxi. IG, 17. Lev. vi. 3, 5. 2 Sam. ii. 19.
272.] JEPHTHAIi's VOW. 57
house to meet me, shall surely be the Lord's, or I will offer it up for a burnt-offering ; " that is, it shall be consecrated to the Lord ; or, if it be fit to be offered in sacrifice to the Lord, (as a lamb or kid would be,) it shall be offered to him as a burnt- offering. It is really strange, that, when so easy and obvious a translation occurs, any one should prefer one so replete with difficulties, as that which has been usually received.
Thus in relation to the making of the vow, we have shewn, that no good man tvould make such a vow as this is supposed to be; that, if made, the law admitted of an exchange; and that the terms used on the occasion do not imply that she should be put to death.]
2. The execution of it —
[Observe the language used by all parties on this occa- sion, and it will manifestly lead to a very different conclusion from that which has been usually adopted.
Observe the language of his daughters acquiescence. There is a delicacy in it which throws considerable light on the sub- ject. In noticing the effect of the vow upon herself, she stu- diously avoids the mention of it. This, if we understand the vow as subjecting her to a state of perpetual virginity, is what might have been expected from her; but, if she was to be offered in sacrifice to God, there is no reason whatever why so solemn an event should not have been expressed in plainer terms. In requesting a respite of the sentence, which involved in it a seclusion from the world, somewhat like that which has been practised by Nuns in later ages, she does express what in the first instance she had only glanced at ; " Let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows." Here she mentions that which constituted the substance of the vow. Had she been consigned to death, she would rather have bewailed her premature death, and not merely her virginity. If it be thought, that her piety kept her from bemoaning her death, and that she bemoaned her virginity merely as a circumstance that seemed to render her death opprobrious; I answer, that the same piety that reconciled her to death, would certainly have reconciled her to the opprobrium of dying in a virgin state ; exactly as Isaac was willing to forego his prospects in relation to the promised Seed, when he yielded up himself to be slain in sacrifice to God.
If it be said, that, on a supposition she was doomed only to a state of perpetual virginity, there was no occasion for her having two months given her to bewail her fate, since she would have had her whole life wherein to bewail it ; I answer, that, in the apprehension of Jewish women, it was a great calamity to be childless, since they had not the honour of