Being the curmudgeon I am, I’ve previously tried to argue that Jephthah may not have literally burned his daughter to death, but that the sacrifice was deferred and in a sense became the loss of progeny.¹ There’s no particular theological consequence to this, rather I simply find it to cohere well with the account as a whole. Here I’d like to bring to bear an example adduced by Jon Levenson as he articulates his thesis of familial immortality. Writing that losing, or not having, children is a form of the death of one’s self, he writes:

The book of Job is an instructive case in point. Job’s miseries begin not with lack of children, like Abraham’s, but with the loss of his children, which provokes suicidal thoughts and an existential and theological crisis that has continued to reverberate through the millennia (Job 1:13-19; Job 3). Here, bereavement of progeny is the functional equivalent of death, and here, too, the patriarch’s restoration inevitably entails his recovery of his seven sons and his three daughters (Job 42:13; cf. 1:2). [...] The tragedy of the mortality of individuals cannot but attract the attention of the modern reader. The interest of the ancient narrator lies, rather, in the restoration of Job through the return of his family.²

Levenson then pivots on the point that “childlessness is the equivalent of death.” Though I acknowledge that this also goes well with the standard understanding, it seems to me an excellent explanation for the reaction of Jephthah, his daughter, and the “daughters of Israel.” It seems likely that they annually recounted not the death of a single maiden, which was of no great consequence, but the giving up of the name of the house of Jephthah in obedience to a vow.

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[1] Jephthah’s Holocaust
[2] Jon Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (Yale University, 2006), 115.

[The following, previously published elsewhere, is given as background for the following post.]

“People will have it that he did not offer her, but there it stands plainly in the text.”—Martin Luther

It was the consensus among the church fathers as well as Jewish commentators that Jephthah did indeed kill his daughter in sacrifice; and the great majority of modern biblical scholars would agree, so Luther is not alone in his grim reading of of Judges 11. The view that Jephthah only sacrificed her in the sense that he committed her to a life of celibacy and service to God is relatively new. [1]

Semantics
It must be admitted that the text itself is ambiguous at several places. It is unclear from the Hebrew whether what Jephthah envisioned sacrificing was the first thing or the first person out of his house—the pronoun can refer to a person, animal, or something inanimate. It is possible that Jephthah imagined an animal coming out of his house given that the ground floor of an Israelite home was used for cooking, working, and stabling animals, though this would include animals unfit for sacrifice. [2] If, in fact, he did envision an animal coming out, his agony over his hasty vow is explained. If he had a member of his household in mind it is far less likely, though still possible, that he meant a literal burnt offering. But the narrator does not tell us, and it is tempting to think, from a literary perspective, that it’s on purpose.

The phrase “he carried out his vow that he had made toward her” in verse 39 is also vague. It would have settled the matter if the account had stated outright whether she died or began her service at the sanctuary, but this is the critical lacuna. Then we are told as a matter of fact that she was a virgin, but the grammar around the verb (”did not know a man”) does not specify if she was a virgin at the time the vow was fulfilled—which would lean towards that being her death—or if she was ever-after a virgin.

And what exactly did the daughters of Israel do every year according to 11.40? Did they lament (ESV, JPS, LXX), commemorate (NIV, HCSB), or celebrate (ASV) Jephthah’s daughter? The Hebrew word occurs only twice, here and at Judges 5.11, where it clearly means to “recount” or “tell of”. If we follow this gloss or the Septuagint, there is little reason to think that it must involve a living person and quite a bit of reason to think that it must not, though it would still allow for it (lamenting or mourning her fate of virginity, say).

Context
It is debatable if the overall timbre of this portion of the narrative points in any particular direction, namely, whether the reactions of Jephthah and his daughter are commensurate with death or dedication. Clearly they fit if she were to be put to death, but it is also possible that these are the responses of a man who is going to lose his daughter to the service of God and lose his opportunity to have an heir—the account emphasizes strongly, redundantly so, that he had no other child—and a young woman who is to remain barren. This was for both of them a social stigma, an indication of God’s disfavor, a financial loss, and a personal tragedy.

The narrator then ends the account without commentary. There is no moral judgment passed on the action Jephthah took, whether it was an action of faith or immorality. It seems likely, though, that if the story were being told as a warning example of one who followed sacrilegious practices the narrator would make that explicit, given that Jephthah is otherwise portrayed as a victorious judge who had the spirit of YHVH. It seems strange to have a story of a moral failing in between Jephthah’s victories against Ammon and Ephraim, which indicate Yahweh’s approval and blessing. [3] Beyond that, he’s marked as faithful at both 1 Samuel 12.11 (possibly the same author as Judges) and Hebrews 11.2. And it is absurd to think that the narrator reported the sacrifice of his daughter approvingly, as the second of three meritorious acts, when the meta-narrative rails against false gods, the worship of which involved child sacrifice. Chemosh is named specifically. [4]

I think the evidence is inconclusive, despite the consensus around the macabre interpretation. Though I don’t think the character of God is impugned, at least when compared to all the other scandalous things that happen in this book, I don’t know what to make of Jephthah personally or what the narrator intended us to make of him. On balance, perhaps giving more weight to the internal cohesion of the narrative than is warranted, I’m inclined to vindicate him. But that may just be my need to clean up this distasteful story. Most literal versions, to their credit, don’t impose a definitive answer in the translation.

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[1] The thinking is that Jephthah vowed to give someone metaphorically as a burnt offering. Leviticus 27.1-8 specifies a policy for this kind of a gift or dedication to God.

[2] Perhaps “living in the land of Tob” could indicate a foreign and/or less urban setting, making it more likely that his animals would have been kept in a pin separate from the house, but this is assuming that he wasn’t living in a city in that land, or that local architecture was different, and is in any case highly speculative.

[3] It could be argued that Jephthah behaved commendably rather than reprehensibly since he kept a very difficult vow. However, the sacrifice of a child would eclipse the keeping of the vow, both intuitively and under the Law, by any reasonable interpretation.

[4] See 2 Kings 3.26,27. The attribution of Chemosh as the deity of the Ammonites in Judges is seen by some as erroneous, but Chemosh and Molech may be one and the same, the local names given by a related yet distinct peoples.

In God and Christ I have argued that “Lord” as found in Philippians 2:11 references Jesus’ position as Lord and is not a substitute for the divine name Jehovah.  I suggested that “Lord,” not Jesus, is “the name which is above every name” (Phi. 2:9 NASB), a notion well included within the semantic range of name (Gr. onoma).  I will briefly consider the theological implications of kurios as a substitute for the divine name in this passage, for this is a view for which not a few scholars and apologists argue.

The name Jesus is certainly not the name “above every name,” for the text identifies this as one newly conferred upon him.

Philippians 2:9  For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,

We are told that “the name which is above every name” is “bestowed on Him,” not that his name is exalted so to be the name above every name.  Admittedly, all will bow “at the name of Jesus,” but this does not conflict with the name being one other than his birth name.  I would suggest this points in favor of the newly granted name pertaining to the office of Lord.  From this point we will take for granted that this refers to the divine name Jehovah.

Within the Trinitarian doctrine of the incarnation Jesus would not have divested himself of his divine identity.  As documented in God and Christ, some even consider Jesus’ use of “I am” to be a euphemism for the divine name.  Nevertheless, that the divine name would have been “bestowed” upon Jesus in his exaltation “for this reason”–what he accomplished as defined in Philippians 2:6-8–this text directly contradicts the idea that he was and is ontologically and eternally Jehovah.  To avoid this one would be forced to argue that he gave up being God and so lost or set aside his name for a time, but few, if any, would be willing to make such a leap.

Perhaps seeing the weight of this Bowman and Komoszewski have offered a response:

This objection misunderstands both the nature of God’s “giving” and the point of Paul’s statement.  Although “Lord” in verse 11 represents the divine name YHWH, Paul’s point in verses 9-10 is that in exalting Jesus, God “gave” him the honor of his name being exalted above all other names.  Thus, when Paul says, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,” he is saying that the name Jesus now stands as the highest, most honored name in all creation. – Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2007), 167.

Comparing the text to this response reveals the presented errors.  Nowhere does Paul express that it was the honor of the name given and not the same itself.  He speaks to the contrary by identifying the name as that which was given.  Paul further explains that at the name of Jesus all would bow, but not that the name Jesus was itself the name “most honored.”

The notion of Jesus possessing the divine name is not difficult and would have been easily accepted by an early Jew and therefore the earliest Christians.  As the angel Yahoel in The Apocalypse of Abraham had been given God’s name, Jesus could well have been given the same.  Indeed, that both were ‘given’ the divine name demonstrates how the earliest view of Jesus would have fit within the Jewish concept of exalted divine agents, however much more exalted Jesus may have been than those otherwise so viewed.  At the same time, this stands fundamentally at odds with the Chalcedonian view of Jesus as ontologically identifiable with the Father.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus—the reanimated, physical man—is an important part of New Testament theology, one beclouded by dogmatic accretion and in great need of disambiguation. The ascension seems to play right into this: Jesus, fully embodied, is lifted to the clouds. Yet I don’t think that bodiliness plays much of a role in early Christian theology of the ascension, and especially not in either texts in Luke and Acts.

What, then, does the ascension do in Luke’s work? I find three functions. First, it signals the end of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Theophany on the road to Damascus notwithstanding, the disciples no longer expected to see their Rabbi: they knew he was now at the right hand of God. His rising into the heavens provided the closure a simple vanishing would not have. Second, it is the consummation of Jesus’ exaltation. He was victorious over death, had presented himself as proof, and though already glorified and ‘transfigured,’ the ultimate glory would be reached in the heavens. Just so ends the Gospel of Luke.

I find the third function, the flip side of the first, the most interesting of all: the beginning of the inspired, apostolic, evangelizing congregation. The ascension ends the Gospel and begins the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus had told them that he would leave, but he would send pneuma hagion, and it would give them everything they would need. Indeed, he would have to leave for it to come, and it was to be the critical element in their witnessing.

Jesus’ personal earthly work was concluded. His ascension fixed the change in his disciples from students looking for their teacher to evangelists preaching and teaching the kingdom. The ascension inaugurated the execution of the great commission.