Judges 11:31

Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me,.... If this phrase, "to meet me", is meant intentionally, then no other than an human creature can be meant; a

Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

Judges 11:31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’ S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. Ver. 31. Shall surely be the Lord’ s, and I will offer it up.] Or, Or I will offer it up; for Fau is sometimes a conjunction disjunctive, as Genesis 26:11 Exodus 21:10; Exodus 21:15; as if he should say, I will sacrifice it, if lawfully I may; or consecrate it unto God howsoever, if it be not fit for sacrifice.

(31) Whatsoever cometh forth.—The true rendering undoubtedly is, Whosoever cometh forth (LXX., ὁἐκπορευόμενος; Vulg., quicunque). Nothing can be clearer than that the view held of this passage, from early Jewish days down to the Middle Ages, and still held by nearly all unbiased commentators, is the true one, and alone adequately explains the text: viz., that Jephthah, ignorant as he was—being a man of semi-heathen parentage, and long familiarised with heathen surroundings—contemplated a human sacrifice. To say that he imagined that an animal would “come forth of the doors of his house to meet him” on his triumphant return is a notion which even St. Augustine ridicules. The offer to sacrifice a single animal—even if we could suppose an animal “coming forth to meet” Jephthah—would be strangely inadequate. It would be assumed as a matter of course that not one, but many holocausts of animals would express the gratitude of Israel. Pfeiffer sensibly observes (Dub. vexata, p. 356): “What kind of vow would it be if some great prince or general should say, ‘O God, if Thou wilt give me this victory, the first calf that meets me shall be Thine?’” Jephthah left God, as it were, to choose His own victim, and probably anticipated that it would be some slave. The notion of human sacrifice was all but universal among ancient nations, and it was specially prevalent among the Syrians, among whom Jephthah had lived for so many years, and among the Ph�nicians, whose gods had been recently adopted by the Israelites (Judges 10:6). Further than this, it was the peculiar worship of the Moabites and Ammonites, against whom Jephthah was marching to battle; and one who had been a rude freebooter, in a heathen country and a lawless epoch, when constant and grave violations of the Law were daily tolerated, might well suppose in his ignorance that Jehovah would need to be propitiated by some offering as costly as those which bled on the altars of Chemosh and Moloch. Human sacrifice had been “the first thought of Balak in the extremity of his terror” (Micah 6:7), and “the last expedient of Balak’s successor” (2 Kings 3:27)—Stanley, i. 358. If it be urged that after the great lesson which had been taught to Abraham at Jehovah-jireh the very notion of human sacrifice ought to have become abhorrent to any Israelite, especially as it had been expressly forbidden in the Law (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 12:31, &c), one more than sufficient answer is that even in the wilderness Israel had been guilty of Moloch-worship (Ezekiel 20:26; Jeremiah 49:1; Melcom, Amos 5:26; Acts 7:43). The Law was one thing; the knowledge of it and the observance of it was quite another. During this period we find the Law violated again and again, even by judges like Gideon and Samson; and the tendency to violate it by human sacrifices lasted down to the far more enlightened and civilised days of Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Chronicles 28:3; 2 Chronicles 33:6).

Verse 31. Shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering.] The text is והיה ליהוה והעליתיהו עולה vehayah layhovah, vehaalithihu olah; the translation of which, according to the most accurate Hebrew scholars, is this: I will consecrate it to the Lord, or I will offer it for a burnt-offering; that is, "If it be a thing fit for a burnt-offering, it shall be made one; if fit for the service of God, it shall be consecrated to him." That conditions of this kind must have been implied in the vow, is evident enough; to have been made without them, it must have been the vow of a heathen, or a madman. If a dog had met him, this could not have been made a burnt-offering; and if his neighbour or friend's wife, son, or daughter, c., had been returning from a visit to his family, his vow gave him no right over them. Besides, human sacrifices were ever an abomination to the Lord and this was one of the grand reasons why God drove out the Canaanites, c., because they offered their sons and daughters to Molech in the fire, i.e., made burnt-offerings of them, as is generally supposed. That Jephthah was a deeply pious man, appears in the whole of his conduct and that he was well acquainted with the law of Moses, which prohibited all such sacrifices, and stated what was to be offered in sacrifice, is evident enough from his expostulation with the king and people of Ammon, Judges 11:14-27. Therefore it must be granted that he never made that rash vow which several suppose he did; nor was he capable, if he had, of executing it in that most shocking manner which some Christian writers ("tell it not in Gath") have contended for. He could not commit a crime which himself had just now been an executor of God's justice to punish in others. It has been supposed that "the text itself might have been read differently in former times; if instead of the words והעליתיהו עולה, I will offer IT a burnt-offering, we read והעליתי הוא עולה, I will offer HIM (i.e., the Lord) a burnt-offering: this will make a widely different sense, more consistent with everything that is sacred; and it is formed by the addition of only a single letter, (א aleph,) and the separation of the pronoun from the verb. Now the letter א aleph is so like the letter ע ain, which immediately follows it in the word עולה olah, that the one might easily have been lost in the other, and thus the pronoun be joined to the verb as at present, where it expresses the thing to be sacrificed instead of the person to whom the sacrifice was to be made.

31. whatsoever … it shall be … I will offer it up] whosoever … he shall be … I will offer him up, so LXX, Vulgate, Peshitto Jephthah had in his mind a human victim1[44] [44] Early Arabian religion before Mohammed furnishes a parallel: “Al-Mundhir [king of al-Ḥ ?îrah] had made a vow that on a certain day in each year he would sacrifice the first person he saw; ‘Abîd came in sight on the unlucky day, and was accordingly killed, and the altar smeared with his blood.” Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. xxviii, cf. p. xxvii.. It is unnecessary to mention the various expedients which have been adopted in order to escape the plain meaning of the words. Nothing is said about Jephthah’s rashness; nor are we told that there was anything displeasing to Jehovah in the nature of the vow; the narrative emphasizes in the issue the grief of Jephthah and the pitiful fate of his daughter. At a crisis or under the influence of despair, when ordinary sacrifices seemed unavailing and at all costs the divine help must be secured, Semitic religion had recourse to human sacrifices. Among the Hebrews in the rude, early days such a sacrifice was possible (as here), but in time it was felt to be contrary to the spirit of the religion of Jehovah (Genesis 22); the hideous practice revived, however, in the period of Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 21:6 etc., Micah 6:7), and was denounced by the prophets (Jeremiah 7:31; Jeremiah 19:5 etc., Ezekiel 16:20 f., Ezekiel 23:39) and forbidden by the law (Deuteronomy 12:31; Deuteronomy 18:10, Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2). Among the neighbouring peoples, e.g. the Moabites (2 Kings 3:27), the Canaanites or Phoenicians (Philo Bybl., Fragm. Hist. Gr. iii. 570; Porphyry, de Abstin. ii. 56 etc.), the Babylonians in Samaria (2 Kings 17:31), the practice continued. In 1 Samuel 15:33, 2 Samuel 21:1-9 the reference is not to human sacrifice, but to a religious execution or ḥ ?erem. Recent excavations in Palestine (e.g. at Gezer) have revealed many remains of human sacrifices; see Stanley A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine, pp. 38 ff.

The words of this verse prove conclusively that Jephthah intended his vow to apply to human beings, not animals: for only one of his household could be expected to come forth from the door of his house to meet him.

31. Whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me — Rather, whosoever comes forth. It is hardly possible to avoid the conviction that Jephthah had a human being in his mind.