Jephthah's Daughter

And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter. And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow.” And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the LORD; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the LORD has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.” So she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.” So he said, “Go.” Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains.From Judges 11, ESV

“Up and down the mountain! Let me weep,” she cried! A cry of surrender and trust in the Lord, yet a cry of grief. Both.

Before I go on, what was this a surrender to? We read “burnt offering” and often hear a death sacrifice. Yet, as noted scholar Jay Sklar and other commentators argue, it is not necessarily to be read in that way (although some will say that is the straightforward reading of the text). Jephthah’s vow could have meant that his daughter’s dedication to life-long service in the tabernacle, a life of celibacy in complete devotion to the Lord. As Sklar argues:

• The Lord answered Jephthah’s prayer—would God have done that if it entailed child sacrifice, which he hated?
• The response of the narrator focuses on loss of virginity rather than loss of life.
• There are parallels with Hannah and Samuel’s story.
• We know women served in the tabernacle (Ex. 38; 1 Sam. 2:22).
• Burnt offering means complete giving to the Lord, which could be life (cf. Rom. 12:1; Phil. 1:20-21).
• Jephthah’s grief could have rose from knowing his line was going to end and separation from his daughter.
• In the narrative of Judges the story then shows an important point: every time Israel’s prayer for deliverance is answered, they go back to unfaithfulness; in contrast, Jephthah and his daughter both maintain faithfulness to the Lord after his answer to prayer despite the cost.

"Lament of Jephthah's Daughter," George Elgar Hicks

“But let me weep! Let me for two months go and weep!” Perhaps this is a picture of the Lord’s compassion: Two months for grief over the good as God is patiently with us as he grows us.

I sit on my bed, hands empty. Head down. And the Lord reminds me of Jephthah’s daughter. Some of us recently have been confronted by loss of one type or the other; all of us have at one time. We mourn. A difficult “no.” Disappointment. A dream that won’t happen. A change we know will work out, but still a loss. A future that we had once envisioned, now looks different--not necessarily bad, but different. A friend moves. Loss.

And the daughter? After her father's words had stilled the echoes of  her tambourines in greeting, shouldn't her heart have risen in beat? If the daughter was going to serve the Lord in the tabernacle, if she was a good Israelite/Christian, shouldn’t the Bible have painted her as joyfully embracing that?

If I trusted better, shouldn’t I be less grieved? If we were stronger, shouldn't we be less grieved? 

Are our losses and changes unimportant?

We can’t extrapolate for sure from the Bible whether God approved or disapproved of this time of grieving. Yet, he includes it. He mentions the commemoration of it by other Israelite girls. So perhaps he was saying, “Go. This time is yours. I’m with you.” God--outside of time--does not rush us. He is working for eternity.

Up and down the mountains—I think God was with her in the heights and in the valleys as she worked through this change in mindset, change in life. As she closed one door to open another. A rite to say, “That life I had was good; that life is good. It is good to get married. It is good to live with family. These are blessings—and they won’t be mine. I trust—do to me according to what the Lord says—but I recognize these are gifts I’m giving back to the Lord, unopened. Dreams I need to fold nicely and put away. I will have other goodness, but not these.” She put her wedding chest, so to speak, away—and put her hand in her heavenly Father’s, giving herself away to him instead. Perhaps by the end of those two months, she was ready. Trusting. Maybe some of the psalmist’s words, hundreds of years later, began to beat in her own breast:

“One thing have I asked of the LORD,    that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the LORD    all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD    and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).

Up and down the mountains of grief, change—God is with us, patiently. We recognize the goodness of the things we can’t have, the goodness of the people or circumstances we say goodbye to. We give them back to our Father, and trust. We put our hands in his. Godly grief is a recognizing goodness. He is with us as we adjust, shift gears, close. Mourning knows there is hope and a new chapter ahead, and it is a way of preparation. 

God knows the end—and we don’t. But just because he sees the end, the good, doesn’t mean he is impatient with us as he walks with us in a season (appropriate in size to the loss) to mourn, change, adapt. The prophet Isaiah is full of light, pictures of light, promises of light and radiance. Yet, although God through the prophet encourages the then-exiled Israelites with this promise, he acknowledges where they feel, what they see: “Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.” (Isa. 50:10). He knew what they felt, where they were at, and encouraged them in that moment. He didn’t shame them. But called for trust, then. Moment by moment.

God is growing us, and as we grow he is with us. In each change, stage, in our toddling steps toward the next season. It’s as if we have to grow into the next stage, just like physical therapy hurts but it stretches us as we regrow the strength we lost. There is a beautiful moment in C. S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian where Lucy, older than when she first met Aslan, meets him again. “Aslan, you’re bigger,” Lucy says. The golden Lion responds, “Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” Our infinite God has a character that will bear eternity in mind for us. He is an infinite God into whom we grow. He is growing us, and has patience with us as we grow, stretch. He is not in a rush for he has eternity in mind, and he does all things well.

So let us run up and down the mountains with God—up and down the changes. And perhaps Jephthah’s daughter, just as she was the first to eagerly greet her earthly father, was then eagerly awaking each morning to greet her heavenly Father, having grieved those gifts-not-hers and given them to him. Let us too, knowing that whatever this change brings, he is with us in the moment, patient with us, growing us, and has a good in end in his time.