by Richard A. O'Keefe
Hebrews 11 is the New Testament's great roll call of faith — Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson. And then, quietly, Jephthah. The problem is that Jephthah, in the Book of Judges, vows to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house when he returns from battle — and what comes out is his only daughter. He keeps the vow. How does a man who performed human sacrifice end up on that list?
Richard A. O'Keefe, a computer scientist at RMIT Australia and a careful Biblical reader, posted this question to soc.religion.christian in April 1991. He had been reading Martin Gardner's The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener and Gardner raised the same problem. O'Keefe offered three possible explanations, drawing on his knowledge of textual criticism, ancient Near Eastern religion, and the Aramaic targums. His post provoked a substantive response from the group moderator, who added the perspectives of F.F. Bruce, the NRSV Oxford Annotated Bible, and Handel's oratorio Jephthah.*
Together the exchange models what soc.religion.christian at its best could be: a layperson wrestling seriously with a difficult text, and a moderator who knows the scholarly literature pushing the question further rather than resolving it too quickly.
There's an extremely interesting book by Martin Gardner, who used to write the "Mathematical Games" section of Scientific American, and who has been active in CSICOP. I recently read his book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.
Having been a reader of Gardner's for some time, and never quite having been able to make out what his religious beliefs were (what is one to make of someone who likes both G.K. Chesterton and the tedious H.G. Wells?), I was interested to find out that Gardner was raised a Christian, but now calls himself a "philosophical theist."
There was one point he raised which really bothers me.
Hebrews 11 is the famous chapter on the heroes of faith: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah... HANG ON A MINUTE THERE! What's Jephthah doing in that list?
Here's the actual passage, taken from the NIV:
Heb 11:32: And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, :33: who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, :34: quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.
Now, the story of Jephthah is found in the "Book of Monsters," in Judges chs 11 and 12.
I call it the "Book of Monsters" because a commentary I once read pointed out that the author of Judges seems to have gone out of his way to paint the champions in the blackest possible colours. A modern reader is appalled by most of these people. The commentator suggested that maybe the author intended us to be appalled. Take Deborah, for example. The gloating in Judges 5:28–30 over Sisera's mother is disgusting. Is that accidental? Surely not, because Deborah's account of Sisera's death in 5:25–27 is untruthful (Jael didn't crush Sisera's head with the mallet, she drove a tent-peg through it, and he didn't fall at her feet, he was already lying on the ground). And Jael's action was about the blackest possible sin imaginable in the Near East: a breach of hospitality between allies. Yet Deborah-the-monster glories in this wickedness. The author could have made Deborah seem attractive, but he has done everything possible to make her repulsive. In episode after episode, the same thing happens: the author provides repellent details he could easily have concealed. It's too systematic to be accidental. It's as if the author were saying "So, you think kings are bad? Well, the Good Old Days were worse!"
Jephthah is presented in quite an unflattering light. He is introduced as the son of a prostitute. He is made to talk (in 11:24) as if another God (Chemosh) were real. And after winning a battle against the Ammonites, the next thing he does is fight in a battle that kills 42,000 people of the tribe of Ephraim, most of them while they are running away. This is a hero of faith?
But the worst thing about Jephthah is his rash vow and consequent sacrifice of his daughter. Never mind the author of Judges — how could the author of Hebrews possibly have thought well of someone who had committed human sacrifice?
I can think of only three explanations, and I'm posting this in order to ask for more.
1. The author of Hebrews didn't mean to write "Jephthah." Either he made a slip of the pen or it has crept in during subsequent copying.
I have put my trust in God's Word, but I do not believe that copyists are infallible. (Ever heard of the "wicked Bible"?)
2. The author of Hebrews had a different Jephthah in mind.
That's not impossible. There are many cases of famous people with similar names living around the same time. However, one would expect to find evidence for this other Jephthah.
3. The author of Hebrews knew a different story about Jephthah.
This strikes me as a real possibility. Is there a real scholar around who knows what the Aramaic paraphrase of Judges says about Jephthah? I have seen it in a commentary on Judges that some ancient writers claimed that Jephthah didn't kill his daughter, that what was commemorated was his condemning her never to marry rather than an actual killing. The story as we have it says "He did to her as he had vowed," but maybe there was another version of the story.
Or am I reading too much into Hebrews 11? Is the author claiming no more than "once in his life, Jephthah trusted God in a battle against Israel's oppressors"?
Abraham's readiness to sacrifice Isaac is a problem too, but (a) ready or not, he didn't actually do it, and (b) Kierkegaard has dealt with that at length.
[Response from the moderator:]
F.F. Bruce's commentary on Hebrews (New International Commentary on the NT) notes that the list in Heb may be related to the list of heroes in I Sam 12:11. (Apparently Jerubbaal is Gideon, and the LXX and Peshitta suggest that Bedan is Barak.) Maybe there are certain heroes that tended to come to mind for the period of the judges.
As to Jephthah, I'm not sure I think he's as much a monster as you paint him. It's clear that the author of Judges does to some extent see this as a period of anarchy, when there was no king. But I am reluctant to judge people by later standards. I find some of the things that repel you indications that later editors have not touched up the stories, and thus evidence for the historical accuracy of the account. For example, it's a fairly common claim by scholars that in early Israelite history the Lord is not necessarily seen as the only God. Rather he is the God with whom Israel has their covenant, and the only one they worship. This is henotheism — a commitment to a single God even though others exist. Clearly by the time the story was finally written down, Judaism was monotheistic, but Judges preserves some relics of earlier religion. Note that Jephthah clearly sees the Lord as supreme, since in 11:27 he calls on the Lord to judge between the Israelites and Ammonites. It's also possible that the use of Chemosh was simply an expedient of diplomacy (F.F. Bruce suggests this as a possibility). When you're trying to prevent a war, you don't start by denying the existence of your adversary's god.
The NRSV Oxford Annotated suggests that Jephthah could reasonably have expected that the first thing he would encounter on coming home would be an animal, and he probably had not intended human sacrifice. They claim that the Hebrew does not suggest that a person was necessarily intended. Of course in a later period human sacrifice would have been so far out of the question that he would have presumably worded the vow differently or found some other way to carry it out. It's sort of interesting that in Handel's Jephtha, an angel intervenes and the sacrifice is turned into a vow of virginity. But I've seen no suggestion that this is based on any historical tradition.
At any rate, most Israelite heroes also sinned in serious ways. Consider Samson and David. Jephthah did also rely on God in his war with the Ammonites, and delivered Israel thereby. I doubt that the author of Hebrews was trying to suggest that people had to be perfect.
Colophon
Written by Richard A. O'Keefe, computer scientist, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. Posted to soc.religion.christian, April 1991. A scholarly response was appended by the group moderator. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
The question of Jephthah's place in Hebrews 11 remains open in Biblical scholarship. The three interpretive possibilities O'Keefe raises — scribal error, mistaken identity, and divergent tradition — are all attested in later commentary. The Aramaic targum he mentions does in fact interpret Jephthah's vow as a vow of permanent seclusion rather than death.
Preserved from the UTZOO Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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