JEPHTHAH'S VOW. JUDGES XI. THIS part of Jephthah's history is involved in an obscurity which seems to require elucidation. "Jephthah," says the historian, "vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burntoffering." In the event, he was met by his own daughter, leading forth a choir of maidens, with timbrels and dances, celebrating his late victory. As she was his only child, besides whom he had neither son nor daughter," the sight of her, and the knowledge that she had now become the object of his vow, threw him into such an agony of distress, that he instantly rent his clothes in token of his deep affliction. His daughter, however, upon learning the cause of his trouble, at once consented that the vow should be performed, and declared her willingness to be thus sacrificed, since She it was the price of so much glory to her father, and of so great a deliverance to her country. only requested that she might be allowed with her young companions to wander up and down for two months upon the mountains of Israel, to lament her virginity. This being granted, she returned at the end of the time appointed, and "her father did with her according to his vow;" that is, according to Josephus, and many other interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, sacrificed her a flaming victim upon the altar. In favour of this opinion, they urge it to be the most natural and obvious construction that can be put upon the words of the historian. They pretend not to justify the deed, but suppose that Jephthah's mind, during the late declensions in Israel, or while he had dwelt in the land of Tob, had become tainted with pagan ideas, and that under such impressions he had made his vow, having in his thoughts at the very time a human sacrifice, as no other creature could be supposed to "come out of the doors of his house to meet him." Dr. Jennings, in his Jewish Antiquities, thinks it probable that Homer, on some tradition of this sacrifice, grounded his fable of Agamemnon's sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia. "Indeed," he adds, "the name Iphigenia seems to be a corruption of Jephthigenia, the daughter of Jephthah." |