Texts of Terror: The Good Daughter

In the Bible, in the book of Judges, chapter 11, there’s a story, one of the infamous “Texts of Terror:

Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. 2 Gilead's wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. "You are not going to get any inheritance in our family," they said, "because you are the son of another woman." 3 So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.

    4 Some time later, when the Ammonites were fighting against Israel, 5 the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob. 6 "Come," they said, "be our commander, so we can fight the Ammonites."
    7 Jephthah said to them, "Didn't you hate me and drive me from my father's house? Why do you come to me now, when you're in trouble?"

    8 The elders of Gilead said to him, "Nevertheless, we are turning to you now; come with us to fight the Ammonites, and you will be head over all of us who live in Gilead."

    9 Jephthah answered, "Suppose you take me back to fight the Ammonites and the LORD gives them to me—will I really be your head?"

    10 The elders of Gilead replied, "The LORD is our witness; we will certainly do as you say." 11 So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and commander over them. And he repeated all his words before the LORD in Mizpah….

29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came on Jephthah… 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD: "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering."

    32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. ….34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, "Oh! My daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break."

    36 "My father," she replied, "you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. 37 But grant me this one request," she said. "Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry."

 38 "You may go," he said. And he let her go for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. 39 After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.  From this comes the Israelite tradition 40 that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”

    So, to summarize, before a battle, Jephthah said, ““If God lets me win, to celebrate my victory, I will kill someone and set them on fire, and say that it’s for the Big Guy!” Regardless of who had come out of the front door, it was an extraordinarily callous vow.  Maybe he just wanted to make a grand gesture to mark his return to polite society.    Even when it was his own daughter, he would rather have her die than go back on his vow and suffer humiliation or God’s judgment or a bruised ego.

    By the account given in this chapter, his daughter was a good girl, and obedient. She came out of the house to celebrate her father’s victory, singing and dancing in an impressive show of daughterly devotion.  When he told her she would be sacrificed, she asked permission for two months to mourn with her friends, after which, knowing full well what awaited her, she CAME BACK HOME.  Maybe she thought she’d be another Isaac, that this was just a test of her devotion, that God or Daddy would intervene at the last moment to save her. 

    But that’s not the way it happened:  Isaac got to be a patriarch of “the God of Abaraham, Isaac and Jacob” fame.  Jephthah’s daughter got to be a corpse. 

    I’ve heard people try to pretty this one up, to say the burnt offering bit was metaphorical, that Jephthah’s daughter just went to serve God in the temple, forgoing family and children.  Personally, I think he did her in, but either way, Jepthah got exactly what he wanted, and the good girl ended up either dead or a lonely virgin.  He lived, his daughter didn’t, and God didn’t do a thing.

    There is still no shortage of bad daddies in this world, both metaphorical and actual. Those of us trained to good girl status tell ourselves,  “Surely there must be a good reason for this. “

    What if there isn’t? What if Jephtha just liked killing, daughter or no daughter? He clearly felt that human sacrifice was an acceptable form of celebration. Some people will tie you to altars and tell you they have their Divinely-appointed reasons, but really – they do it because they can.  Wait too long for God to save you, and you might join Jephtha’s daughter, nameless, bound and flaming on an altar. In this story, whore, wife or daughter didn’t matter:  if you were a woman – respectable or not - you didn’t have a name, and you didn’t have a say. 

    Now, I think Jephthah’s daughter did the best she could, circumstances being what they were.  I don’t blame her.  There weren’t a lot of options for her outside the dubious protection of her father.  It’s not like she could fall back on her college degree.  Maybe she would have died if she didn’t come back, but still – I would like to have seen her give survival a shot. 

    So what does Jepthah - the disinherited bastard son of a whore-turned-bandit-turned general-turned-judge of Israel, with an impressive set of daddy (and brother) issues – have to say to me?   I think it’s this:  In an unjust and violent world, obedience is over-rated. 

    I’m glad Jepthahs’ daughter was remembered, and lamented by the daughters  - but not the sons - of Israel.  I’d like it better if she had made a run for it.  I’d like it better if I made a run for it.   I still have more of the good daughter in me than I would like to admit, and too often, I return home rather than striking out on my own across the hills.  I think I’m getting tired of paying the price to fulfill other people’s promises.  I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I would like to break more rules, be slower to sacrifice, forgive less, and in general, be less good and more alive.     

Since good girls die in such disproportionate numbers, I might as well kill mine myself. 

Comments

[AmericanRuth]

I like your last line! ;)

And your suggestion that maybe she thought she'd be saved like Isaac was. Yeeks.

I once watched on-line a sermon by Renita Weems, which agreed with you in terms of not accepting that this was right or good. I hope it's ok to quote her here, just as additional material for smoking in the pipe, as it were.

In his zeal to prove that he was a man of honor he convinced himself that sacrificing his daughter’s life was the right thing to do. ... I am reminded of something Jesus once said to his disciples: They will put you out of the synagogues; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God (John 16:2). Not only enemies, but friends, fellow believers of God will dis-fellowship you from their temples and synagogues, excommunicate you from their churches, turn their backs on you thinking they are doing the will of God. Assassins will assassinate claiming to be following God’s will. Parents will banish their children that are homosexual, they married someone different, because of some perceived wrong, thinking they are doing the will of God. Sincere, but wrong.

[one billion daleks]

Well, there's a LOT going on in that post! :)

My own equivalent counter-attack on the 'cultural-conditioning' that originally indoctrinated me was um, a little more low-key than yours ...

As I recall, my approach went something along the lines of ...

"Hey, how come there aren't any jokes in The Bible ...?!"

Obviously, everyone is subjected to cultural indoctrination of one kind or another, it's the glue that binds societies together. But at the personal level, it's also a mechanism for providing us with a set of ready-made 'off-the-shelf' bearings for initially establishing us in the world, during our early years, before we have acquired the ability to 'think for ourselves'.

And the fact that you are now doing that - thinking for yourself - is a sign that you're now ready to navigate on your own behalf, that you no longer have any need for what are, after all ... easily-critiqued, half-baked 'off-the-shelf' doctrines for undeveloped childlike minds. It's all quite normal to go through this phase y'know! :)

But in that respect, it can be helpful to remember that Jephthah was - in his turn - a product (and victim) of the culture he grew up in. Even today, "Honour" killings of young women is regrettably a routine occurence throughout the Middle East.

And perhaps the act of writing down his story in the Old Testament was Jephthah's way of blogging - it may have been cathartic for him - as like yourself, he grappled with the consequences of his own cultural indoctrinations.

So in a very odd sort of way, perhaps you have something in common with Jephthah after all ...

Sooner or later we all create our OWN 'culture', one that reflects our own values, rather than the second-hand values handed down from a bunch of desert nomads from several thousand years ago. And I have to say - one positive consequence of this process is that I am delighted not to have slaughtered any Ammonites lately!

Oh, and to correct that glaring omission of humour in The Bible, I have er, been spreading it about that that due to all the unfair bad press they'd received over the years, one of the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse (Pestilence I think it is), has decided to rename his horse Fluffy ...

OK then,
Ciao for now! :)

[Heather]

I think this is it, C. You now have enough Texts of Terror to collect them into a manuscript and submitting for publication.

[maggi]

you should publish this. :)

[sonja]

Wow ... well done.

I'd say this however, I think God did not step in and "save" Jepthah's daughter as he did Isaac because he never asked for the sacrifice. That was J's rather putrid and grandiose idea. We're not told anything about God in the whole text, other than that both J and his daughter were blindly obedient to a vow to God. So that's really one step removed from God. It could be that God was hoping that one of them was going to save her themselves from the stupid vow.

Maybe the whole story is in the Bible itself as a cautionary tale, rather than a tale about how we're supposed to be blindly obedient.

Maybe you are getting the right ideas out of it afterall ... and our pastors have been reading it wrong all along.

[Vinaigrette Girl]

Just discovered your wonderful blog; thank you for posting. And I do hope you find a publisher for your Texts of Terror series.

[Westerngirl]

I think this story after reading it is a cautionary tale. No doubt Jephthah seemed to have his own world view. (Like people in this day and age). For example he only had one child something which was out of ordinary in that day and age. However, one moral of the story would be zeal based on ignorance will lead to disaster. Had he known mosaic law he would know human sacrifice was an adomination and that a priest must perform the sacrifice. It is clear when reading Judges 10 and seeing the spirit of God come upon him that God already decided to give him victory. He did not need to make this vow and God did not expect him to make a vow.

[Liz]

Westerngirl, that is a VERY interesting interpretation of this. I always get very skittish when people start discrediting scripture because of their own backgrounds. Especially with the OT, it is far, far too easy to strip the texts of their divine nature in an attempt to squeeze things into our own experience. I have found it is always good to step back and say that I am going to trust the reliability of the document and trust God that there is a reason this is in the Bible and then ask Him to reveal that to me. If I even need to know. It is too easy to let our own bad experiences lead us away from biblical orthodoxy when something in the Bible appears to contradict a God who cares for and loves us.
You are absolutely right: NO WHERE in the bible is human sacrifice (other than that of Jesus himself) condoned. There are other pieces too, as you pointed out.
BTW, I found this blog through completely non religious channels: I was looking for examples of phoenix tattoos on forearms.
Yours is beautiful