Notas del episodio
Judges 11:29-40
(see it in its entirety below) is a section of Scripture I struggled with for some time. In this passage, Jephthah, a Judge, vows to God that he will sacrifice whatever comes first out of his house if God grants him victory in a coming battle. God does grant victory. His daughter is the first to come out of his house. Thus, he despairs, for he has sworn to God to sacrifice her. She is obedient, and asks only that she is given time to mourn that she is unmarried before Jephthah does “as [he] promised”.
Why is this passage difficult?
A number of questions arise: Do these verses imply that God condones human sacrifice? Did Jephthah actually kill his daughter? Did God really want Jephthah to kill his daughter?
Often web sites that feast on Bible difficulties will point to these verses to “demonstrate” that God condones human sacrifice (interestingly, they often cite the near-sacrifice of Isaac also, ignoring the fact that God would have known the outcome in advance, and so was clearly not condoning it to begin with–but that’s something for a different post, I suppose). I think there is more here than meets the eye.
Commentary
These verses questions have a couple different ways to answer. The first answer is perhaps the simplest. Jephthah did indeed kill his daughter because of his vow to God. A vow to God is higher than any other law, so this is what had to happen. Thus, Jephthah simply offered his daughter as a burnt offering.
I think this answer is unsatisfactory. It doesn’t seem to fit the text. A better solution is offered, I think, by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe in The Big Book of Bible Difficulties. They argue that Jephthah would have been aware of the law prohibiting human sacrifice (see Leviticus 18:21). Further, Jephthah could have offered his daughter as a living sacrifice, not a burnt offering.
The Hebrew word is olah, one meaning of which is “sacrifice” (Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon). This helps explain why Jephthah’s daughter doesn’t mourn her coming death, but rather that she will remain unmarried. The concept of living sacrifice entails remaining unmarried for one’s life.
Another answer that fits the text is to simply say that yes, Jephthah did offer his daughter as a burnt offering. But this doesn’t somehow mean that God condoned the action. One could very well vow to God that one would murder as many people as is physically possible, if only God would let the sun rise tomorrow.
This doesn’t somehow mean that the sun rising means God condones the action of murdering as many people as physically possible. The text never states God’s position on the matter. As far as I can tell, it is simply reporting what happened. Jephthah told God he’d offer a sacrifice of whatever came from his house, he did so, the end. It doesn’t say that God wanted this to happen or that God approved of the action.