An analysis of the Jephthah situation

Nihilist Virus said:

OK... so why did God specifically choose him (and by extension his family, seeing as how a man's family was considered property)?

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You've got a question for everything, don't you, NV? I wish I had an answer for everything, but we both know that the Bible is a finite book, both in quantity and quality, and I don't think God intended for us to be able to satisfy our every epistemic itch--

But in the case of Noah, I'm guessing his name made it onto the "Hall of Fame" list in Hebrews 11 because...he had faith. And the bible does mention some little tidbit about Noah being upright in his walk before God, or something to that effect. But, regardless, I can see how even Noah might have felt depressed over seeing the destruction of human life and then felt compelled to take a swig or two of alcohol.

Fornication with consent of your spouse is immoral but plotting to kill your own son for no reason whatsoever is righteous? Right, but it wasn't for "no reason" because he was following God's orders who told him to do it for... well... no reason whatsoever.

Only the second part of that is bad.

You forgot to mention that Jacob slaughtered a bunch of guys after cutting their penises.

A man who argued with God and won.

What is wrong with being a prostitute?

Also, doesn't Ruth's existence in the lineage of Christ mean that every apologist who defends the Jacob genocides as being "ethnic cleansing to preserve the line of the messiah" is simply lying?

But idolatry is no big deal, even if you've seen God in action. Right?

2PV, you seem pretty liberal to me. What exactly is wrong with any of that? I can't picture you as a bigot.

But God tortured and killed David's son so that issue is dealt with, right?

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NV, you're trying to sideline the point I'm making. My point is that all of the people on the "Hall of Fame" list were known for trusting in God and doing some great things (biblically speaking, of course)--it's just that some of them also failed in having faith at all times and they also did some things that ... weren't so great, too.

(And since this is a thread about Jepthah, I'm not going to get all tangential and attempt to address here every other aspect, name, direction, implication or possibility we can conceive of. )

OK, so if Jephthah "fits in just fine" with a list of people "who did something great for God WHEN they did those things by faith" then could you tell me what exactly was great that Jephthah did? Was it the slaughtering of people on a battlefield or the burning of his own daughter?

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Well, what you so perceptively call "slaughter on the battlefield" is what the book of Judges calls 'liberation from the Ammonites.' What else were the Judges for?

Yet I see no link...?

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You're quite right. You don't.

I have no idea what any of this means.

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It means that Jephthah could have just "manned up," or maybe we should say, "fathered up" and said to God, "Lord, y'know that little vow I made to you right before I fought the Ammonites on the battlefield......well, I kinda screwed up, ...te, he, he, he!" In other words, Jephthah should have taken the brunt of his egregious mistake, and he should have figured out that he could have consulted the priests for further possibilities about how to deal with the sin of a stupid vow .... or just had the integrity and fortitude to not followed through with his very ill-informed vow. (Uh, duh, Jephthah?!)

But, let's face it....all of this moral failure on the part of Jephthah is a part of the overall meaning of the book of Judges, which is that corruption easily finds its way into the social milieu when moral relativism is applied instead of hearkening to the Will of God. Everyone in Israel in the book of Judges was pretty much doing what was right in their own eyes, even some of the judges. And we won't name names --- GIDEON! SAMSON! JEPHTHAH!...oops.

At least in Jephthah's case, there is the tinsy winsy possibility that what really happened is that his daughter had to give up marriage and serve the temple as a 'nun' for the rest of her life. Maybe Josephus was wrong about the outcome of Jephthah's vow; if so, Josephus wouldn't have been the first Pharisee to make an interpretive mistake. (Thus, perhaps, we have a reason by which to understand why there are two seemingly out of place statements in the Jephthah story, both of which pertain to his daughter still being a virgin. As if her sexual status mattered since she was slated to be a burnt offering. Sheesh! Who cares?..............well, maybe the author of the book of Judges cares. [Those sneaky ancient Israelite authors, what with all of their constant use of hidden insinuations and typologies, and all the rest! It can drive a Modern, 21st century reader...CRAZY!!!])

As a mere human being I cannot be omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent. But I could be omnibenevolent. Why isn't God?

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You must have in mind a very different definition for "omnibenevolent" than I do, NV ...

At last we agree on one thing.

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Well, yeah.....why wouldn't we? I'm educated. You're even more educated. What's there not to agree on?

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

Nihilist Virus said:

I think the book of Judges is literally true about little to nothing. Judges 19 is a darker retelling of the story about Lot (Lot offered his daughters to a mob of rapists but did not actually give them; in Judges 19, the priest actually does give his concubine to a mob of rapists who raped her to death). The story of Jephthah is a darker retelling of the story about Abraham and Isaac: while Abraham, of course, did not end up killing his own son, Jephthah actually did kill his own daughter.

The reader was supposed to interpret this and connect the dots for himself: without a king, the nation of Israel heads into darkness.

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While I do believe that Judges is historical I also agree that the main point of Judges is to act as an apology for the Davidic Kingship (and also to disparage Saul's line).

So I actually have no problem with your analyses of this passage.

Nihilist Virus said:

While the Bible does not explicitly forbid every kind of human sacrifice (and how could it if it promotes Christ's sacrifice?), Deuteronomy 18:10 forbids the exact thing that Jephthah did: a burnt offering of one's son or daughter (note that verse 31 has Jephthah specifying that he will give a burnt offering).

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It is interesting here that critical scholarship quite often believes that burnt offerings of firstborn were allowed by at least some people in Israel at some times.

I think the book of Judges is literally true about little to nothing. Judges 19 is a darker retelling of the story about Lot (Lot offered his daughters to a mob of rapists but did not actually give them; in Judges 19, the priest actually does give his concubine to a mob of rapists who raped her to death). The story of Jephthah is a darker retelling of the story about Abraham and Isaac: while Abraham, of course, did not end up killing his own son, Jephthah actually did kill his own daughter.

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I dunno, I think it's a weak comparison. I mean, it's not as if men in history haven't offered women/daughters as some sort of payment/tribute/treaty or that such a thing could only be found in analogy to a story about Lot. And neither is offering children as some sort of human sacrifice to please gods a foreign concept found only in analogy to Abe and Isaac.

The reader was supposed to interpret this and connect the dots for himself: without a king, the nation of Israel heads into darkness.

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I think it's just as likely that some of this sort of behavior was happening and that it was used as royal propaganda. It seems just as likely that these stories are some sort of metonymy for things that were actually happening and has no necessary connection to stories about Lot or Isaac.

/nvm