qes 1.....................?

Question

in Judges 11, God seemed pretty happy with Jephthah sacrificing his daughter in exchange for letting him win a battle.
She was a nice sweet girl, an only child, who's only request when she heard she was to be sacrificed to God was to go out with friends and mourn her virginity for a while before coming home to be killed.

Surely this is not Yahweh in action..or is it?

Answer 1

If you are obiedient to God, God will honour that and bless you. In the case of Jephthah he was obiedient to God and God gave him victory over Israels enemys. His daughter is in Heaven now with God. absent from the body is present with the Lord. I would rather be absent from the body and present with God then live here in this sinfull world.

Answer 2

"God seemed pretty happy with Jephthah sacrificing his daughter "

Really? Where do you find that in the text? I don't see a comment about what God thought either way. However I do see Jesus telling people this while preaching the sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:33 "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil.

Answer 3

Sounds like man in action. Pity.

Answer 4

the scary part is people still worship a god like that.

Answer 5

I have heard that the context was that she had to remain unmarried for her whole life.

Answer 6

certainly sounds a lot like something he would do. god is crazy man!

Answer 7

lol, sounds about right.

Answer 8

She wasn't killed. No where in the scripture does it say this man killed his daughter or would have killed anyone who had come out from his house. Human sacrifice was an abomination to the Isrealites...as was life long virginity to a maid who would rather marry and have children. Something this young girl would never know.

His daughter said, "that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows." Notice that she bewailed not her death, which would have been the chief cause of lamentation if that had been vowed, but her virginity. She was to live and die without being married and having children, which Jewish women very much regreted. It is plain, from the language of the sacred writer, that she was devoted to God in such a way as required her to remain unmarried and childless. The word "fellows" in this verse, in the Hebrew, refers strictly to "female companions" (maidens) only. This verse also gives evidence that the daughter of Jephthah was not sacrificed: nor does it appear that the custom or statute referred to here lasted after the death of Jephthah's daughter.

39And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,
40That the daughters of Israel went (to the tabernacle) yearly to lament (comfort) the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD. The text is "vehayah layhovah, vehaalithihu olah"; the translation of which, according to the most accurate Hebrew scholars, is this: "I will consecrate it to the Lord, or I will offer it for a burnt-offering;" that is, “If it be a thing fit for a burnt-offering, it shall be made one; if fit for the service of God, it shall be consecrated to him.” That conditions of this kind must have been implied in the vow, is evident enough; to have been made without them, it must have been the vow of a heathen, or a madman. If a dog had met him, this could not have been made a burnt-offering; and if his neighbor or friend's wife, son, or daughter, etc., had been returning from a visit to his family, his vow gave him no right over them. Besides, human sacrifices were ever an abomination to the Lord; and this was one of the grand reasons why God drove out the Canaanites, etc., because they offered their sons and daughters to Molech in the fire, i.e., made burnt-offerings of them, as is generally supposed. Whatever came out that door of his house would have been dealt with accordingly...it just so happened to be the person most precious to him and both of them were faithful to keep the vow. The term "it a burnt offering" was used in his vow because he had no idea that a person would emerge so I can see how one could get confused by this passage so it helps to know the whole law and understand some Hebrew culture of the time. There are many reasons why this man could not have sacrificed his daughter.1)The sacrifice of children to Molech was an abomination to the Lord, of which in numberless passages he expresses his detestation, and it was prohibited by an express law, under pain of death, as a defilement of God's sanctuary, and a profanation of his holy name (Leviticus 20:2, 3). Such a sacrifice, therefore, unto the Lord himself, must be a still higher abomination, and there is no precedent of any such under the law in the Old Testament.

No father, merely by his own authority, could put an offending, much less an innocent, child to death upon any account, without the sentence of the magistrate (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) and the consent of the people.

The Mischna, or traditional law of the Jews, is pointedly against it; ver. 212, 'If a Jew should devote his son or daughter, his man or maid servant, who are Hebrews, the devotement would be void, because no man can devote what is not his own, or whose life he has not the absolute disposal of."

So if she had refused her fathers vow, he could not have carried it out but he knew she would...and had agreed to it immediately with no hesitancy. There is no account every of any person making any human sacrifice to God and indeed in the one instance where Abraham was asked to do so, as a test, God stayed hand and provided an acceptable article in the boys place.


Leviticus 18:21
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

Deuteronomy 18:10
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

2 Kings 16:3
But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

2 Kings 17:17
And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

2 Kings 21:6
And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

2 Kings 23:10
And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

2 Chronicles 33:6
And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

Isaiah 43:2
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

Jeremiah 32:35
And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

Ezekiel 16:21
That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

Ezekiel 20:26
And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD.


Ezekiel 20:31
For when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day: and shall I be enquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will not be enquired of by you.

Ezekiel 23:37
That they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and with their idols have they committed adultery, and have also caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them.