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Whose Terror is it Anyway? IV
“Jephthah’s Daughter”
Judges 11:29-40
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
LENT IV
Today’s “Text of Terror”, the
fourth in a series, comes from Judges 11:29-40.
In this story, Jephthah makes a deal with God
that if he can win a war with the Ammonites, then he will offer whatever comes
out of the doors of his house as a burnt offering a sacrifice to God. You know what happens. Jephthah wins the
battle and his virgin daughter comes out of the house to welcome him home. So,
he kills her to fulfill the vow he made to God. And then he is praised as a great
warrior.
So what do we make of this
story? Why do we have to tell it? Why bum us out so much even if it is Lent?
We look at this story and other
texts of terror to illustrate what happens when we are in a situation of
terror. We lose our rational
thought. Otherwise good people do awful
things. We demonize entire races of
people. Terror makes us act foolishly. It makes us do insane things. It makes us make foolish vows.
Terror creates chaos and more
terror. It’s appropriate to react
extravagantly when faced with terror. It
makes us feel like we are doing something, even when it addresses the basest
instead of the most enlightened patterns of thought. When terror and fear are
the drivers of our lives, our little tiny amygdala
kicks in its survival mechanism and clouds out all higher functioning of our
brains. We vote against our
self-interest because of fear. We
demonize people because of fear. We act
or fail to act because of fear. And then
we wonder why we’re so fearful.
We project this fear onto God,
too. We believe that God is so base and
so impatient that God demands human sacrifice in order to refrain from
punishing us like we really deserve.
It’s a violent conception of God and a painful set of memories that we
need to come to grips with and maybe even unlearn a bit. As we hear the stories of the underside of
terror, maybe we can ask anew, which side God is on, and which side we should
be on. Whose terror is it anyway? This
is the question we ask in the midst of terror.
I was
speaking about this text with Rabbi Sharon Steiffel
from Hillel this past week. I was trying to get from her what I should
tell you about this text. Her statement
was, “watch what you vow.” She then told
me that on Yom Kippur, they say a prayer that says something like “deliver us
from our hasty vows.” I imagine things
like wedding vows are not included in this, but the point was that we sometimes
make promises with all of the best intentions—vows that we can’t and even
shouldn’t keep. The story of Jephthah’s daughter could well be a case in point.
The Spirit of YHWH came upon Jephthah, it says in verse 29. That should have been enough to deliver him
from Ammonites. But for some reason, he
decided he needed a vow to seal the deal, to prove his righteousness. After all, Jephthah
was the son of a prostitute. He had no
male heirs. He was disowned by his half-brothers
and disinherited from the family property.
He needed to prove his commitment.
He thought that a simple ritual of a burnt offering would suffice. Remember that folks in those days had animals
coming in and out of the houses all the time.
Given the odds, he assumed that the first being to come out of his house
would be a critter of some kind, not his beloved virgin daughter.
The vow that Jephthah
made was a one-way vow. God didn’t
respond. God didn’t tell him that he had
to make or fulfill this vow. Phyllis Trible writes, “The making of a vow is an act of
unfaithfulness. Jephthah
desires to bind God rather than embrace the gift of the spirit. What comes to him freely, he seeks to earn
and manipulate. The meaning of his words
is doubt, not faith; it is control, not courage. To such a vow the deity makes no reply.” (Trible, 1984:97)
But there was his daughter, so
happy at her father’s return. I’m
reminded at how I get greeted from time to time by my own kids. It makes my heart leap, even though it happens a bit less as we have all gotten older. I’ll be lucky if it ever happens when they
become teenagers.
In her dancing and making music, Jephthah’s daughter was following in a long tradition. When the Egyptians were drowned in the
The question remains, then. Why did Jephthah go
through with the murder of his daughter?
Was it to appease God or was it a twisted example of religion gone
wrong? Does God want sacrifice,
martyrdom, killing to satisfy God’s divine wrath?
There’s a whole strain of theology
that says that God needs human sacrifice in order to offer protection. It’s as
ancient as Abraham and Isaac, Jephthah and his
daughter and even the interpreters of the death of Jesus on the cross—who saw
it as an atonement for all sin rather than the result of a violent culture
which tried to silence the opposition. . Theologian John Dominic Crossan said, “I can understand fearing a God like this
that demands human sacrifice, but why praise such a god?” Is our conception of
God one who demands atoning sacrifice to appease God’s anger and wrath? Can one
person’s life be the scapegoat for the world’s sins? What about the person who
willingly or unwillingly is the victim of such violence? Where is their voice?
As Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer once said, “the most common
religion in the world is not Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism. It’s
violence.” So how do we consider a nonviolent deity and how do we protect the victims
of the violent god-followers? That’s the work we have to do.
If you
compare this to the story of the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, there are
some striking contrasts. First of all,
Isaac has a name as does his mother.
Second, Abraham offers to die in Isaac’s place. Third, Abraham assures Isaac that God will
provide a lamb in the bushes. But Jephthah shows none of this. He kills his daughter to remain faithful to
an unfaithful vow. (Trible, 1984: 102) Oh yeah, and God is silent through it all.
Jephthah mourns. But he mourns for himself, not his
daughter. He accuses his daughter of
bringing him pain, where she has acted out of her pure joy and had no clue of
her father’s clueless vow. “Hers is
premeditated death, a sentence of murder passed upon an innocent victim because
of the faithless vow uttered by her foolish father.” (Trible,
1984:104)
She takes
control of a portion of the story and asks her father permission to accompany
her female companions into the wilderness to bewail her virginity. I don’t know what that really means.
Is this some kind of sowing wild
oats before death?
Is it mourning her
own death? If so, why isn’t she
mourning her life or mourning her father’s stupidity, or mourning this image of
God which demands sacrifice in order to be appeased?
Why isn’t the bemoaning the
bemoaning of her powerless place in the sad patriarchy of the world?
Maybe the mourning is the end of the line for Jephthah’s family.
Maybe it’s all of that.
Maybe it’s the kind of mourning that happens when women get together and talk about the terror of misogyny and patriarchy.
Maybe it’s called mourning by the male writers of the Bible, but it’s actually solidarity amongst the women.
Maybe it’s a community organizing event.
Maybe it’s connecting with this God who is silent to Jephthah but is conversant with her daughters.
Maybe I can’t imagine what it is
because of my own male biases. What I do
know is that it was sacred time that they had with each other.
The Bible
does not speak harshly about Jephthah’s vow nor his fulfilling of the vow by killing his daughter. Indeed, he is lauded as a great judge. Jephthah’s daughter
and her sisters mourn in the wilderness out of sight and out of mind and beyond
the earshot of patriarchy. Even the book
of Hebrews lists Jephthah in the roll call of the
faithful for his conquering of kingdoms and his “exercise of justice”. (Hebrews
11:32-34). His daughter and Jephthah’s sinful murder of her is forgotten.
But what
does this ancient story have to do with us?
People aren’t sacrificing their children these days, are they?
Unless you call
saddling children with debt sacrifice.
Unless, you call
living in fear of terrorism sacrifice.
Unless you call
using up all of the natural resources of the world sacrifice.
Unless you call
depending upon the economy as our god and ultimate authority sacrifice.
Unless you call perpetual, long-term, soul and world polluting war sacrifice.
Unless you call the children gunned
down in our city streets sacrifice.
Unless you call the racism and misogyny that is creeping up on us in this election season sacrifice.
We don’t
sacrifice children anymore.
This is the
beginning of Women’s History month. As
such it is a time to remember the women who have gone before and the women who
are a part of our very stories. The
Hebrew people began a tradition where for four days each year, the women of
I invite you to consider the
stories of women. Consider the stories
of Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed concubine from
Think of the women who have become
victims of terror in the streets of
And may we commit ourselves anew to
living as people of faith who not only never forget
the victims, but vow by our work and our deeds to set people free. We seek the day when we remember terror as a
distant memory instead of a constant companion.
May that day come soon.