Let The Judges Speak, Part Three: "Jephthah's Vow"
How good people can do bad things
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Text: Judges 11:29-40
A favourite Old Testament professor of mine once made a remarkable statement that applies to our study of the Book of Judges today. He said, “If ever there was a case for the coming of Jesus Christ, it is the story of Jephthah's daughter.” It is one of the most troubling, one of the most frightening, and clearly, one of the darkest passages in the whole of the Scriptures: A man who felt he had to sacrifice his daughter. I often think when I read this passage that the writer had lost his mind, and if he hadn't lost his mind, he had clearly lost his soul, for what could be darker, what could be nastier, what could be more painful than the death of a child at the hand of a parent?
As I looked at this text, I must admit that I wanted to dismiss it. In fact, when I was going through the Book of Judges and I came upon it again after many years, I thought, “Oh, Lord! Please give me another text that I can preach on this morning - something bright and cheerful on a cold February day!” After all, you don't want to come to church when it is minus 12 degrees and hear about a child sacrifice.
You might feel like the great Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible, who in her outstanding work written in 1984, titled Texts of Terror, suggested that the story of the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter is yet another example of how women made sacrifices in the Bible and were treated like chattels. Trible draws many lessons from this text, and while they may not be the same lessons that I draw, she is right: We need to look at these texts, to wrestle with them, and to find out what they mean.
I have done everything in my power in reading this text to find a happy ending. I have looked for the silver lining, the word of inspiration, the good news that every one of you can take with you today, but no matter how I tried to re-translate the text, the text would not let me. I could not, as often is done in Greek myth and legend, turn the story around in order that it might have a happy ending. I could not do as the Greek tragedies did with Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon. Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis, and so he made a vow to her that the most beautiful thing born into his household within the year would be sacrificed in order that he could be forgiven his errors.
Agamemnon was shocked to realize that the most beautiful thing born in his household in that year was his daughter. She was gorgeous. All year long, as she grew up, he realized that he would have to sacrifice her in order to appease Artemis. But the story takes a twist at the end. Iphigenia is taken up in a cloud of smoke into the heavens and saved, and in her place on the altar is a hind that is to be sacrificed in her place. In other words, a happy ending: An animal is sacrificed and not a human; the daughter is saved; the gods and their passions are satiated. There is no need any more for the gods to be mad at Agamemnon. All is well. It is a happy ending. Everything is nice and neat.
The story of Jephthah's daughter does not lend itself to such a way out, or to such a happy ending. Some have argued that by not being able to marry and bear a child, Jephthah's daughter would suffer as if she had died. The line of Jephthah, because he had only one child, would not continue because his daughter would not give birth. She would die without ever having had an opportunity to be with a man, and so therefore the line would end, and maybe the disgrace is the equivalent of death. Not really! The text simply says that she was never able to know a man, but she is remembered historically, as one who in the end was sacrificed and died. So what can we get out of this passage? What can you and I on this cold and chilly day take with us from such a dark and bleak and dismal story? It seems to me that there are a couple of very profound lessons herein.
The first lesson is that a good person, even in this case a religious person, can do bad things. A good person can do bad things. Be under no illusion, my friends, Jephthah was a good man. By all accounts, he had grown up as the child of a prostitute, but he had made good. He had risen through the ranks militarily and socially and politically. He was recognized as a leader of Israel, as a champion of the cause, and as a great warrior. He was, and this was an outstanding quality particularly for a Jew, patriotic: a lover of his nation and a lover of his people right to the end. He was a man, we are told, filled with the spirit; he was a man of valour; a man of wisdom; a diplomat when faced with difficult circumstances and challenges.
Above all, Jephthah was a man of his word. He made a vow to God, and the vow was simply this: If he could win the battle against the Ammonites, and if God would come to his aid, he would sacrifice the first thing that came to him when the battle ended. So he won the battle, and the first person who came to Jephthah was his daughter. She came with a friend. She was ecstatic. There was music, there was triumph, there was joy in the air, but Jephthah realized he had made a vow to sacrifice the first person that came to him, and the first person was his daughter. His heart was broken. His soul was destroyed. The Hebrew word and the English translation cannot capture completely the extent of his sorrow. And yet, despite all of this, he was man of his word. He said, “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, therefore I will not turn back.” What a man! But what a terrible, terrible mistake this good man had made! He was honourable, yes; patriotic, yes; wise, yes; brave, yes; he was someone who had risen above his birth. By all worldly standards, you and I would say of Jephthah that here was a man who was true to his word. Good for Jephthah! But that is not so.
Jephthah did something terrible. The great writer Blaise Pascal wrote: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” To think those words were written in the 17th century! This is where the humanist misunderstands Pascal, a man of deep Christian faith, who, as a Christian, understood that sometimes evil is done by people out of religious conviction, and out of what they perceive to be the right and the good.
Lord knows, we are seeing the effects of that in our world and in our society right now, are we not? Is not the Muslim community, for example, rent asunder by the problems that it is facing at the moment? I think it is, and I think our Muslim brothers and sisters need our prayers. I really do. On the one hand, their god, their beliefs, their Prophet have been made a mockery of in print. Yet, the vast majority of Muslims is not reacting to this situation with violence. The vast majority is not picking up the sword against others or causing damage or rioting. Only a few are, and they are doing it from deep religious principles which you have to admire, but their behaviour is wrong. It is wrong. Whatever you may think about the rightness or the wrongness of belittling a religious figure, it seems it is done all the time, and sometimes more subtly than we realize. I think it is done to most religions at some point. The fact is for people to do evil and wrong as a result of this is not right. It is not right. Blaise Pascal is correct: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
And so, as we look at this, we can see how easy it is for people who are essentially good to be duped into doing evil and dangerous things. It is such a fine line, and at any point any one of us could cross it. This is one of the reasons why I believe so fervently in the need for people of faith to understand the totality of the biblical text that they study. You can't make the story stand all on its own or take lessons from it without placing it in the context of the whole Bible.
If only Jephthah had known that in the Book of Deuteronomy in Chapter 12, verse 31, it says there should be no human sacrifice. If only he could have heard what the prophets who came later had said about God not wanting these burnt offerings, but wanting our hearts. If only he had known that! We know that. As a principle of faith, we must always allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. We can't just look at one text in isolation from all the others. So much evil is done as a result of that. You have to look at the whole; you have to look at the Bible as a trajectory; you have to see the totality of God's expression in God's word. It is essential for anyone of faith to do that, or we can so easily get off course and do things in the name of God that are wrong.
This brings me to this great question: Why, then, if Jephthah is so good, patriotic, holy and wise, did he make this stupid and terrible vow? The great Henry Ward Beecher once observed that there was a clock in his church at the very end of the aisle that never ran on time. It was always half-an-hour early or half-an-hour late. It was never on time. When Beecher got fed up, he asked to have this clock repaired, and when it didn't improve, he put a sign on it that read, “Don't blame my hands. There is a deeper problem.”
In Jephthah's case, there was a deeper problem. It was that he did what he did essentially out of self-interest. He made this vow with God in order that he might be victorious, in order that he might win the battle. Oh, sure, he covered it up to some extent with the valour that he would show as the reason for his nation to be victorious, but deep down in his heart, Jephthah made the vow with God in order that he might be victorious. How easy it is for us to justify our actions, and forget the truth, because we get caught up in simply doing what we think is expedient.
I read a fascinating survey by the Gallup people. Back in 1997, they asked American home builders what was right and what was wrong about their work. They found out the following: Most of the builders felt pressure to cut corners on quality control, to cover up incidents where things had gone wrong, to abuse or to lie about the number of sick days that they took, and to deceive customers by letting them think that there was more behind the walls than there actually was. Often, they put inappropriate pressure on suppliers to get things on time, even if they weren't bribed. What was really interesting was that the American Society of Chartered Underwriters studied these ethics and concluded that the vast majority of the people interviewed believed that all of this was okay, as long as the house got finished on time.
In other words, self-interest can cover up all manner of expediency: You can do things as long as you don't get caught or as long as it seems the greater good is accomplished, no matter the truth, no matter the rightness or wrongness of your actions. Jephthah made his vow with God because he wanted to win, but he also did something else wrong: He gambled with God.
He made a deal, a vow: “I will kill whatever comes to me first as long as you allow me to win in battle.” I am going to do a deal with you, God! As simple as that! Many years ago, just before Christmas, when I was 12-and-a-half, my parents decided to send me on a Christmas holiday to be with my grandparents. At the time, we were living in Bermuda, so they put me on a plane and flew me back to Britain for two weeks to spend time with my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I had never seen my parents look happier than the day I was put on that plane! I was upgraded immediately to first class, because the flight attendants wanted to keep a close eye on me. They put me in one of the big chairs! Sitting next to me was an American gentleman from Miami. He and I sat together for seven hours on the flight to Heathrow. I asked this man what he did, and he said, “Actually, I am a professional gambler.” I thought this was exciting, and asked, “Can you show me how to gamble?”
He said, “Sure, I will.” For seven hours, he taught me the secrets of blackjack. He taught me poker. He taught me five-card stud. He taught me aces-are-wild. He taught me all sorts of things: how to shuffle a deck; how to manage to get a card out. Don't play poker with me, folks, ever! I learned young! I got off the plane, and my uncle greeted me and said, “Have you had a good time? Has it been a great day?”
I replied, “I bet you my day has been better than your day.”
And he said, “Really?”
And I said, “How much do you want to bet?”
He phoned my father, who was a minister, that night and said, “What kind of a son are you bringing up over there?” Oh, I learned a lot from this gambler!
I am not advocating gambling, because this man said something else to me. He said, “Always remember this truth: The house rarely loses in the end.” Oh, just ask Jephthah! He made a vow with God, and look what it cost him! What a foolish, foolish man! He was doing well until he made his vow. I think in some ways Jephthah can be excused, but at the same time, the warning is clear. Jephthah was acting as the pagans acted, as if God needed to be appeased, as if sacrifices needed to be made, as if God expected us to lay down something for him.
The problem with Jephthah was that he had bought into the god of the culture rather than the God of his faith. He made a deal, and he thought it was okay. How easy it is for Christians, how easy it is for people of faith to get so caught up in the expediency, the lies of our culture that say a thing is right when in fact it is wrong, that say a behaviour is appropriate when the word of God says it is not, that say it is okay to make vows or to gamble even when the Word says it is not. How easy for good people to do bad things! This is why the story of Jephthah is such an inspiration. We have been told, we have been warned, we have been shown that there are consequences to our actions, and we should therefore be careful.
There is one, last, part of the story, which seems terrible but turns out to be beautiful and that good people sometimes suffer a terrible fate. The good person in this story, the one who should be memorialized, isn't Jephthah the judge. I cannot make anything better out of him than what we find in the text. But his daughter, oh, yes! His daughter is marvellous. She sees that her father has made a vow to God on behalf of the nation. She had come out with cymbals and drums to celebrate the victory, but now she realizes that her father's life is on the line and she says, “You have got to do what you agreed to do. I am willing to be sacrificed. I am willing to lay down my life for you.”
You see, the fundamental difference between paganism and true faith is that paganism needs to have the gods satisfied by something that we do, but God makes a sacrifice for us. If we are pagans, we would say, “Oh, here we are, we are making a sacrifice to the gods in order that we might benefit.” But Jephthah's daughter gave herself in order that her father might be saved.
This brings me back to the quote from my Old Testament professor: “If ever there was a case for Jesus Christ, it is the story of Jepthah's daughter.” In many ways, Jephthah's daughter is a Christ figure. In many ways, she is a symbol of what was to come later: Someone who makes a sacrifice to save someone else. This is the story of Christ. Jephthah's daughter is memorialized by the daughters of Israel even to this day, as someone who gave herself for the sake of others. A true sacrifice, a meaningful sacrifice. Lasting sacrifice is not borne out of self-interest, power or victory, but out of love. That is why this story is important. That is why this story matters. That is why a simple, happy ending can never do justice to the price that this young woman paid. History might remember Jephthah as the judge who won the battle, but the Kingdom remembers his daughter as the one who gave her life to save his. Oh, my! What a lesson! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.