Judges 11 brought a stab of pain to my heart as I read... I remember feeling this same pain as I child when I first heard this story... the story of Jephthah's daughter.
God again raises up another deliverer for Israel...a man named Jephthah, born of a harlot, and shunned by his brethren. But he served God and made a vow to God that if God would give him victory over the Ammonites, that he would offer as a sacrifice whatever came out first of his door to meet him when he returned home. Well, as we see in Judges 11, God did give him victory. But when he returned home, who should come from his home to meet him, but his daughter and only child. He tore his clothes in distress! What could he do? He'd made a vow to God?
His daughter was obviously a women who loved and feared the Lord, and she did not rebel against the vow he had made, any more than Isaac rebelled against Abraham offering him as a sacrifice. She only asked for 2 months to go to the mountains and mourn. What a two months that must have been, knowing that her life was over.
Did he really offer her as a sacrifice, or was she just destined to be a single woman the rest of her life, not knowing any man? (That would be a death sentence right there for women in that day!)
I've always wondered... However, it seems from Judges 10:39 that when she returned, he did to her according to his vow, and his vow was to make a sacrifice. And in verse 40 we find that every year after that, the daughters of Israel spent 4 days out of every year mourning for Jephthah's daughter... so I'm assuming by these verses that she went to the altar. (Some things I probably will not understand completely until I get to heaven. This story is one of them. That's why we have to trust God despite not understanding everything.)
But again... what spoke to me most in this reading is her obvious spirit of humility and surrender to the will of God. This story reminds me of an illustration Ellen White speaks of--it's the emblem I think for the Southern Baptist missionaries from the 1800's.
"There is a picture representing a bullock standing between a plow and an altar, with the inscription “Ready for either”—ready to toil in the furrow, or to be offered on the altar of sacrifice. This is the position of the true child of God—willing to go where duty calls, to deny self, to sacrifice for the Redeemer’s cause." Gospel Workers, p. 294Are we ready for either?
Jephthah's daughter was obviously ready for either, and I'm pretty sure that someday God will reward her faithfulness!
Tomorrow's Reading: Judges 13-14 and Mark 4
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