Jephthah’s Vow
Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
Jephthah’s Daughter
Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; 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.” She said to him, “My father, if 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 given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” “Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.
The selflessness of a woman
who has not yet lived
who has not yet been given in marriage
(as her patriarchal culture norms demanded)
(as her patriarchal culture norms demanded)
who has not yet borne a child
and watched her offspring grow
The selflessness of a woman
who considers her father’s promise to God
more important than her own life
The selflessness of a woman
who asks only for time with her friends
before she lays down her life
Time to wander the mountains
and mourn the future
she will never know
We do not know her name
Only her fate
and her selflessness
And the perversity of a culture
who praised her father
who kept his vow
at the cost of his daughter’s life
We do not know her name
but her friends
who wandered the mountains with her
and who gathered in memory
year after year
They knew her name
and they kept her memory alive
remembering her sacrifice
as they gathered in lament
And, though they were powerless
to prevent the death
of the daughter of Jephthah
surely part of their gathering to lament
also involved finding agency
to ensure that the lives of women
would be worth more
than a man’s promise to God?
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