Judges 11: Debunking The Myth That Jephthah Burns His Daughter As A Human Sacrifice to God

Judges 11 is often brought up in polemic attacks on the Bible. (And this post as a response seems to have gotten some attention online.)

After a shallow reading of certain verses, often without taking the context of the rest of the chapter into account and almost never considering other relevant portions of the Bible, the critic will spew the following accusations:

1) Jephthah burns his daughter up as a sacrifice
2) God approves of this or even commands it
3) The Bible therefore condones evil
4) Christians are also evil and are just waiting for a chance to kill us all!!!

More often than not the critic never actually read or studied the passage in question, and is merely parroting of a website or message board posting by someone else – who also may not have ever actually looked inside a Bible before either.

Here is one such example of the above-mentioned unhinged hysterics: Evil Bible – Ritual Human Sacrifice.

So here I present to you a systematic debunking of this puerile, amateurish claim that the Christian God demands human sacrifice.

You will see how logic and reason will easily dismiss such shallow polemic attacks by noobs, and how making such Scripturally uneducated accusations is only possible through a total ignorance of the detailed system of Mosaic laws.

First, relevant excerpts from the passage in question with emphasis added (which many anti-Christian myth-spreaders will be reading for the first time ever, if they even bother to read it below at all):

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Judges 11

 1 Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior.

 4 Some time later, when the Ammonites made war on 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.”

 12 Then Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king with the question: “What do you have against us that you have attacked our country?”

 13 The king of the Ammonites answered Jephthah’s messengers, “When Israel came up out of Egypt, they took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, all the way to the Jordan. Now give it back peaceably.”

 14 Jephthah sent back messengers to the Ammonite king, 15 saying:
       “This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites.”

 19 “Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, who ruled in Heshbon, and said to him, ‘Let us pass through your country to our own place.’ 20 Sihon, however, did not trust Israel to pass through his territory. He mustered all his men and encamped at Jahaz and fought with Israel.

 21 “Then the LORD, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his men into Israel’s hands, and they defeated them. Israel took over all the land of the Amorites who lived in that country, 22 capturing all of it from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the desert to the Jordan.

 23 “Now since the LORD, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, what right have you to take it over? 26 For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time? 27 I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the LORD, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”

 28 The king of Ammon, however, paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him.

 29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites.

 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. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.

 34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! 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 made me miserable and wretched, because 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 the girls 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 custom 40 that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

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And now for the complete and total refutation, presented in five simple points:

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1) Jephthah’s daughter was ‘sacrificed’ by becoming a nun, not by being burnt alive

Category: Jephthah did not murder-sacrifice his daughter

The clues that lead to this logical conclusion are found in verses 37-39:

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 the girls 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.
    
Why such a focus on the fact that Jephthah’s daughter ‘will never marry’?

Wouldn’t we expect Jephthah’s daughter to weep in the hills for two months over the fact that she was going to die, instead of mourning that she would never experience the joys of sex? Kind of fretting over the least pressing concern, if she were really condemned to die, isn’t it?

And why does it end with the words, ‘And she was a virgin.’?

Shouldn’t it rather end with something like, ‘And she was set on fire and died in screaming agony, a pleasing sound to Jephthah’s ears.’ if he really did kill her?

All these facts makes much more sense if Jephthah’s daughter was actually ‘sacrificed’ to God by becoming a nun for the rest of her life. After all, the heart of Jephthah’s vow was to please God – and as points 3 and 5 further down this post show, burning his daughter would have achieved the exact opposite.

Serving God for her lifetime also makes much more ‘economic sense’ than a pointless, one-shot combustion as well, if one were to be mercenary about it.

Rephrase ‘And she was a virgin’ (NIV), or ‘And she knew no man’ – ‘And she remained unmarried’. Does this not make sense in the context of the ‘bewail my virginity’ (KJV)?

And though it was Jephthah’s vow that leads to his daughter’s personal sacrifice, note that Verse 36 clearly shows her personal willingness to make such a sacrifice for God. It is a choice made of her own free will.

If you object that verse 31 clearly mentions a ‘burnt offering’, then see the next point.

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2) Jephthah originally stated his intention to give a burnt offering, but that doesn’t mean he had to burn whatever he eventually offered

Category: Jephthah did not murder-sacrifice his daughter

Jephthah’s mention of an offering by fire is found in verse 30:

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.”

Clearly, Jephthah expected that a living creature would come out and meet him as he reached home – in his mind a farm animal, and likely divinely orchestrated by God as the animal God wanted as a sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the living being that met him first was his only daughter, and due to the way he phrased his vow, he would have to offer her up to God. But does this mean that Jephthah necessarily had to offer her to God by fire?

Let’s envision a different scenario: As Jephthah returns home from war, the first thing that comes out of his house to meet him is… A stone pestle, thrown by his wife who is mad that he was off gallavanting around for so long. (Just for good measure, it bounces off his head with a resounding BONK.)

Yes, now Jephthah must offer that rock implement to God in sacrifice, because the way he phrased his vow does not exclude nonliving objects coming out to meet him!

But does this mean he has to offer the stone pestle by fire? What, you expect him to literally try and ‘cut its throat’ and let it bleed to death before cutting it into parts, some of which will be given to the priests for dinner?

And imagine the poor priests who would have to ‘burn up’ that rock as a pleasing aroma to God. They would be keeping the altar fire going day and night attempting to do so, and would still have been trying to ‘burn’ it when Jerusalem fell a few hundred years later.

Nonsense? You bet it is.

That’s because Old Testament Mosaic Law (i.e. the Laws given to Israel by God through Moses) presribes completely different methods for offering different things as a sacrifice to God. Even a burnt offering is not so simple as ‘Tie to a stake, set on fire, pray’ as point 3 below will show.

Jephthah would probably have broken the stone pestle to pieces in order to offer it up to God – if in fact such an item had been the first thing to meet him as he returned from victory.

And likewise, he would have dedicated his daughter to God by allowing her to serve as a nun the rest of her life.

(In fact, though I’m not 100% sure, there may exist a contingency in Leviticus 27 whereby a person or other object meant to be dedicated to God can be redeemed for an amount of money:

 1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If anyone makes a special vow to dedicate persons to the LORD by giving equivalent values, 3 set the value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty at fifty shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel; 4 and if it is a female, set her value at thirty shekels. 

So not only did Jephthah not intend to dedicate his daughter to God by burning her, he could even have ‘bought’ her back from nunhood according to Mosaic law. But as I said in Point 1, Jephthah’s daughter willingly agreed to serve God herself.)

So as I have demonstrated, Jephthah’s intention to offer a burnt offering does not automatically dictate the method by which he ultimately offers up his sacrifice to God.

And note that burnt offerings are not simply anything that is combusted in fire to God. Following strict and specific Mosaic laws of sacrifice, only a few specific animals are acceptable as a burnt offering to God. See the next point which focuses on that aspect.

Additional: According to Christian Courier.com:

Idiomatic language

The “and” (Heb., vau) of verse 30 may be an idiom in the sense of “or” (cf. Exodus 21:15 in the LXX [v. 17 Eng. text] — “he who curses his father or his mother shall be put to death”). Thus, this Old Testament character may have been merely suggesting that whatever met him as he returned home would be dedicated to Jehovah, or, offered as a burnt offering — depending upon which was appropriate. See Dr. Hales’ comments (Clarke, p. 153).

I will update with more once I research this further.

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3) The Mosaic Laws for sacrifice and for daily life forbid human sacrifice of any sort

Category: Jephthah did not murder-sacrifice his daughter

One of the things about the Mosaic Laws of sacrifice is that they are very specific and exclusive.

Perhaps the first and most important regulation is that only the ordained priests of God who are direct descendants from Aaron were allowed to offer sacrifices to God on behalf of anyone – not even a king could perform this task.

These priests spent their entire lives memorizing and carefully carrying out the aspects of the Law given through Moses, particularly regarding their role in offering sacrifices. Therefore they would know for certain what was or was not considered an acceptable sacrifice to God.

In fact, the Hebrew word translated as ‘burnt offering’ in Judges 11:31 is the exact same word as that in the section of the Law pertaining to burnt sacrifices, Leviticus 1:3 – ‘olah, Strong’s number H5930.

So here I list down the various laws regarding sacrifices that immediately exclude the possibility that Jephthah’s daughter was an acceptable burnt offering:

Only young bulls, sheep, goats or doves/pigeons are acceptable as burnt offerings – nothing else.

Plus, if it is a bull, sheep or goat, it has to be a male. Recall that Jephthah’s daughter is female (duh). Pigeons are probably exempted from the ‘male’ criteria as it is difficult to tell their gender.

Grain, incense, oil and salt is also burnt up, but is counted as a ‘grain offering’ or other types of offering, and not the specifically named ‘burnt offering’. All these types of offering only involves plant-derived produce, by the way – the ‘grain offering’ is specifically one without blood.

Of the various sacrifices of animals, grain, oil, salt, incense, drink or others, humans are nowhere mentioned as an acceptable sacrifice.

The priests are supposed to eat a portion of the burnt offering that is set aside for them – but human flesh is not even ‘kosher’ to be consumed. EDIT: Sorry, my mistake – the priests do not get to eat any of the burnt offering, only other types of offerings.

And not to mention the Mosaic Laws that preclude taking the life of a person as a crime punishable by death, first and foremost of all Number 6 of the Ten Commandments: You shall not murder.

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4) No matter what Jephthah did or did not do, God is not to blame for it

Category: God did not command or approve of human sacrifice

Okay, so let’s say that despite all the evidence and reason I have just put forward, you still stubbornly refuse to let Jephthah off the hook.

In defiance of all logic and law, you insist that he MUST have burnt his daughter to death because… Well, because it neatly proves your point that Christians, the Bible and God are evil, and you already KNOW that they are evil, so you must be right about Judges 11 too.

But even if we assume that the virginity references were included because the burnt ashes of a virgin are somehow different from the burnt ashes of a prostitute, that Jephthah was mindlessly literal about his oaths and heartless to boot, and that the holy priests were happy to cut up and burn and eat a young girl…

That does not mean God Himself approved of it.

In fact, God is not mentioned as appearing or speaking at all in the entire of Judges 11. The closest the chapter comes is verse 29, where the Spirit of the LORD comes upon Jephthah.

(And lest you be confused, this does not refer to mind control by God. Humans always retain their own free will to choose their own actions, one of the most important considerations that God made as far back as the Garden of Eden.)

As that other passage in Judges says: In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. – Judges 21:25.

So God definitely was not the one who decided on a ‘human burnt offering’.

Just because something is mentioned in the Bible, doesn’t mean that the Bible approves of it. There are plenty of records of people, kings and even prophets sinning – lying, murder, adultery, betrayal, mocking Jesus – but such behaviour is denounced, not approved of, DUH.

To equate an imperfect man’s actions in the name of God to God Himself ordering or sanctioning such behaviour is a fallacy. It’s like condemning all science as a dementedly evil endeavor just because a psychotic phrenologist one day kills someone ‘in the name of science’.

And as the final point will demonstrate, the God of the Bible actually strongly hates and repeatedly condemns human sacrifice – a fact which shows up claims that God wanted Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter to be patently absurd.

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5) God declares His hatred of human sacrifice many times (versus one alleged sanctioning of human sacrifice)

Category: God did not command or approve of human sacrifice

A thought exercise first: Let’s say that a certain politician is well known to be a staunch opponent of abortion. Countless TV and radio recordings show him vehemently denouncing abortion as evil, ungodly and a sin.

Then out of the blue, a lone blogger claims that a secret recording of this politician’s unreleased 30-minute Presidential Candidacy speech contains 2 seconds of sound bites where he fully supports abortion as a God-given, inalieable, moral and ethical human right.

Would you immediately believe this isolated claim of said politician’s pro-abortion stance, over the thousands of minutes of public anti-abortion speeches he has given before?

Isn’t it more likely that that one incident of a supposed declaration of pro-abortion is a misunderstanding on the blogger’s part?

Now with this perspective, you realize just how narrow and selective the Anti-Christian polemic’s field of vision is when they questionably claim that Judges 11 and a few other out-of-context verses debatably support human saccrifice to God, while amaeteurishly/intentionally ignoring the many passages that clearly condemn human sacrifice.

I mean, just look at the number of individual, separate times the Bible clearly and directly denounces human sacrifice (especially of children and babies) as evil:

Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.
 – Leviticus 18:21

The LORD said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him. I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. If the people of the community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to Molech and they fail to put him to death, I will set my face against that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech. – Leviticus 20:1-5;

You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. – Deuteronomy 12:31

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. – Deuteronomy 18:9-12

He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. – 2nd Kings 16:3 (referring to the ungodly kings of Israel after David and Solomon)

He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger. – 2nd Kings 21:6

He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech. – 2nd Kings 23:10

For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. – Jeremiah 19:4-5 

They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech, though I never commanded, nor did it enter my mind, that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin. –  Jeremiah 32:35

They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. – Psalm 106:38

When you offer your gifts — the sacrifice of your sons in the fire — you continue to defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. Am I to let you inquire of me, O house of Israel? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I will not let you inquire of me. – Ezekiel 20:31

And these are not counting God’s direct commands against general murder as covered in Point 4.

So I will repeat it again: Only total and utter noobs or intentionally dishonest cunning-snakes could pit one single misinterpreted Bible passage against at least eleven counter-citations, and still giddily claim proud victory over the ‘evil’ Christianity.

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CONCLUSION:

Well, that’s one passage of the Bible fully, exhaustingly and conclusively explained in defense of God’s holy and perfect character. And as it turns out, Jephthah himself wasn’t such as evil dude as claimed, after all.

So to summarize:

Jepthah did not sacrifice his daughter in fire. She became a nun of her own free will.

God does not condone human sacrifice, He says how hates it plenty of times in the Bible.

Christians are not generally evil, but anti-Christian polemics are often noobish amateurs.
 
Abortionists sacrifice far more human lives – millions of innocent babies every single day – and are the real child-killing monsters. (See below)

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PS. And now, back to modern times: Real religious fanatics really burn helpless real victim alive while chanting praise to their god! Video here.

PPS. While Christians are accused of looking up to Biblical characters as examples of how to murder children, and are accused of hoping to murder children again some day, liberals are murdering 1.2 million babies every single month (and don’t you dare tell me that these babies aren’t human until you look at the pics via this link.)

                            

             The real liberal monsters with their real child sacrifices.

      

Now do you understand why fundamentalist Christian Conservatives are so adamantly opposed to the unspeakably evil sin of abortion? God declares that He utterly despises such an abomination!

And this:

there would be something . . . incredibly appropriate about the pro-abortion Left wrapping its arms around Satan in the quest to preserve abortion on demand.

Someone go call Jephthah and tell him he’s being outdone several magnitudes over by Planned Parenthood.

No wonder liberal Moonbats are always so fanatically smearing Chrisians as potential children-sacrificers… It’s to assuage their own guilt over being worse murderers than even all the Communists put together.

PPPS. And in anticipation of those who might contend that since God hates human sacrifice and Jesus’ crucifixion was a human sacrifice, therefore Christianity is a bunch of hypocritical hate-speech, see Jesus Plus Nothing and Christian Think Tank.

See, Christians have thought these things out long in advance of puny and noobish polemic attacks in our era.

Tags: detestable, Evil Bible, human sacrifice in Bible, Jephthah, Judges 11, Molech