Judges 11:40

That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite,.... Either the death of her, as some, or her virginity, as others; though the word (p) used may signify to

That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

Went yearly, to a place appointed for their meeting to this end, possibly to the place where she was sacrificed. To lament the daughter of Jephthah; to express their sorrow for her loss, according to thee manner. Or, to discourse of (so the Hebrew lamed is sometimes used) the daughter of Jephthah, to celebrate her praises, who had so willingly yielded up herself for a sacrifice.

Judges 11:40 [That] the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.Ver. 40. To lament.] Or, To talk with her, as Judges 5:11.

(40) To lament.—Rabbi Tanchum makes it mean “to praise,” or “celebrate.” The feelings of the Israelites towards Jephthah’s daughter would be much the same as that of the Romans towards Claelia, and of other nations towards heroines whose self-sacrifice has helped them to victory.

Verse 40. To lament the daughter of Jephthah] I am satisfied that this is not a correct translation of the original לתנות לבת יפתח lethannoth lebath yiphtach. Houbigant translates the whole verse thus: Sed iste mos apud Israel invaluit, ut virgines Israel, temporibus diversis, irent ad filiam Jepthe-ut eam quotannis dies quatuor consolarentur; "But this custom prevailed in Israel that the virgins of Israel went at different times, four days in the year, to the daughter of Jephthah, that they might comfort her." This verse also gives evidence that the daughter of Jephthah was not sacrificed: nor does it appear that the custom or statute referred to here lasted after the death of Jephthah's daughter. THE following is Dr. Hales' exposition of Jephthah's vow: - "When Jephthah went forth to battle against the Ammonites, he vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, 'If thou wilt surely give the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall either be the Lord's, or I will offer it up (for) a burnt-offering,' Judges 11:30-31. According to this rendering of the two conjunctions, vau in the last clause 'either,' 'or,' (which is justified by the Hebrew idiom thus, 'He that curseth his father and his mother,' Exodus 21:17, is necessarily rendered disjunctively, 'His father or his mother,' by the Septuagint, Vulgate, Chaldee, and English, confirmed by Matthew 15:4, the paucity of connecting particles in that language making it necessary that this conjunction should often be understood disjunctively,) the vow consisted of two parts: 1. That what person soever met him should be the Lord's or be dedicated to his service; and, 2. That what beast soever met him, if clean, should be offered up for a burnt-offering unto the Lord. "This rendering and this interpretation is warranted by the Levitical law about vows. "The נדר neder, or vow, in general, included either persons, beasts, or things dedicated to the Lord for pious uses; which, if it was a simple vow, was redeemable at certain prices, if the person repented of his vow, and wished to commute it for money, according to the age or sex of the person, Leviticus 27:1-8: this was a wise regulation to remedy rash vows. But if the vow was accompanied with חרם cherem, devotement, it was irredeemable, as in the following case, Leviticus 27:28. "Notwithstanding, no devotement which a man shall devote unto the Lord, (either) of man, or beast, or of land of his own property, shall be sold or redeemed. Every thing devoted is most holy to the Lord.

40. And it was] And it became, altering the verb from fern, to masc. The verse is wrongly divided. For went render used to go (frequentative). to celebrate] So translated to agree with Judges 5:11 (rehearse), the only other place where the word occurs: the Versions give to lament. In both places the rendering is merely inferred from the context. There is no sufficient reason to doubt that Jephthah’s sacrifice was an actual incident in history; but the yearly festival which commemorated his daughter’s fate may have had a remoter origin. It is not unlikely that the incident was associated in the course of time with a primitive myth; for there are traces elsewhere of human sacrifices being connected with an annual mourning for the death of a god. In the parallel story of Iphigenia the heroine is really a form of an early goddess identified with Artemis. The present narrative suggests to some scholars reminiscences of Tammuz-Ishtar worship, which celebrated the annual death and revival of the divinity. In later times the daughter of Jephthah was worshipped by the Samaritans in Sichem as Korç, the heavenly virgin; Epiphanius, adv. Haeres. iii. 2, 1055. A. Jeremias, Das A. T. im Lichte d. Alten Orients2, p. 478.

There is no allusion extant elsewhere to this annual lamentation of the untimely fate of Jephthah’s daughter.

40. Went yearly — Went, probably, into the solitudes of the mountains. Those that lived near Mizpeh would naturally go to the same mountains where Jephthah’s daughter had bewailed her virginity.