Holy Hormones Bible Study: Teaching — not Entertainment
WOULD YOU SKIN YOUR DAUGHTER FOR GOD? #1 of 3
Remember — you made a pinkey-promise
Story of Jephthah and his daughter
Spoiler alert
For the Time Poor, Jephthah’s daughter cannot be offered as a literal Burnt Offering to the Lord on the altar because a Human is not a Levitically clean animal on the list Yehovah prescribed in Leviticus. She is safe from the knife and, more than likely, will die naturally.
If that’s all you wanted to know, you can move on to more important things.
This is one of those quaint OT stories that don’t mean much to the Torah-fied.
It does not have a crisp ending. More than one Pastor has left the Pews dangling, waiting for the other shoe to drop, unsure if the daughter will live or die. The trigger for this presentation is a recent sermon I sat through (given by a graduate of two Bible Colleges). It dangled. And the conclusions presented by a number of high-octane websites in a follow-up investigation to resolve the matter resembled a weather forecast — perhaps she’ll die; perhaps she won’t.
If you haven’t read it, you should. It is contained in the Book of Judges Chapter 11 (1200 words to help the Skimmers decide). When you have finished the story, you are invited to make a judgement before proceeding with this article.
The Depths of the Riches of the Knowledge and Wisdom of God
The number of deep thinkers on this platform who consider they can out-think God, and catch Him out, never ceases to amaze me. After thousands of years they can see things that no one in History has seen before. Well, even the most obstinate person reading the Bible seeking error should be able to see that God can walk and chew gum at the same time. If not, (s)he hasn’t been paying attention. In this story both Jephthah and his daughter carry their own message so there will be several posts to cover the entire plot. I don’t know how many because of the Divine Onion concept where each layer peeled away actually makes the onion bigger. There will be quite a bit of Scripture presented in full for two reasons.
1. If you are like I once was, you won’t check them out.
2. God promised that His Words would not return void — not mine.
We will start at the beginning and see something about Jephthah’s social status then see how the story develops. Experience with God’s Word has shown me not to make rigid plans.
What was Jephthah’s social status?
We are told much about him by his introduction, Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, but he was the son of a harlot; and Gilead begot Jephthah. (v1)
He was the Israelite version of Hebrew trash, a first cousin of white trash. (Before you get a nose-bleed in the rush to cancel me for being a nasty person, let me introduce myself.)
But it gets worse in v2, And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons. And when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not have an inheritance in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.”
Can it get any worse than this?
Indeed it can.
It is written in Deuteronomy 23:2 || A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. [The King James says it so well.]
JEPHTHAH IS A SOCIAL OUTCAST.
So he goes feral and leads a band of worthless fellows of questionable conversation. (Who can resist Elizabethan English?) He was Action Man whom the Genteel Folk had to call upon later to rescue them. (Sounds like a Hollywood Western. Oh, no. You mean the Hollywood plot is not original? God is thousands of years ahead? Who’d’ve thunk that?)
An important aspect is that he did not have the advantage of the Education of his half-brothers. He was not allowed to mingle with his betters and be trained in the Law (remember Israel is now in the Promised Land. The Tabernacle is located at Shilo, and there is systematic teaching of Torah.) But the words of the narrative imply that he knew a bit about Yehovah and wanted to do right. It will be shown later that his understanding was not mature. He did not have good teaching.
But what about Social Outcasts in the Kingdom of Heaven?
Can God use only good people in His Redemption Plan?
A quick glance at the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11 shows that every one of those names stuffed it up, somehow. There is a wide spectrum of social standing in that list. [I’m open to correction but the only two names in the Bible about whom God had nothing bad to say were Joseph, in Genesis, and the Prophet Daniel.]
In Jephthah’s case it was God Who chose him, as He did with ALL the Judges. And God declared him Righteous in Judges 11:29 || Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead . . . . Before the Resurrection, the Spirit of the Lord coming on someone was as good as it got.
Other Trash worth mentioning
Jesus’s Mother, Mary. Now there was a Gutsy Girl! She knew Torah about the Law of Fornication and Adultery, yet she chose to cast her lot with the Lord. She was the Woman of the Seed which was the fulfilment of the Seed of the Woman Prophecy back in Genesis 3. The sad thing was that she was from the Line of David, through Nathan, Solomon’s younger brother. Her family was in Bethlehem, she was pregnant, yet no one in her, or Joseph’s, family took her in. Juicy gossip travels fast.
Read Psalm 69 to see what she and Jesus went through. The key phrase is “I have become a stranger to my brothers, And an alien to my mother’s children.” Drunkards sang dirty ditties about her and Jesus.
Mary was a woman to be admired — not worshipped.
A noble Bunch of Bastards
One of the outrageous narratives in Scripture is the tacky incident of Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, told in Genesis 38. More detail on this episode is posted in
The post highlights that the ten trash generations after Judah were Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, finishing with David and his brothers.
Of these, Salmon was a valiant warrior who spied out Jericho, and Boaz was a pillar of society (even though both were Social outcasts). But, because they were outcasts, they could marry women from “forbidden” tribes. Salmon wed Rahab, a Lady of Negotiable Virtue, and Boaz wed Ruth from a forbidden tribe. Upstanding Israelites were barred from doing that.
The Holy Spirit holds the Intellectual Rights for the Bible and He chooses His words well and places them in just the right place.
There is a website which gives the meaning of the names in Luke’s Genealogy from Adam to Jesus. The narrative contained within the names during the time of the Bastard’s banishment from the assembly is astounding to me — perhaps not to you.
Bringing it all together, “One who praises Yehovah — breaks open a way — (into) an area surrounded by a wall — of great height. O’ my people of the Prince, — a prophet — clothed — with strength, — who serves (the Lord), — is here — Out of love!”
What about the women?
Of the four women mentioned in the Genealogy of the Christ, Tamar and Rahab were of “dubious” character, Ruth was close to being a refugee, and Bathsheba wasn’t mentioned by name — long story there perhaps for another time. So, through Mary, Jesus was of good peasant stock; not one of the Elite in His human form. Because of this our Adversary, the Accuser of the Brethren, a Legalist, cannot tell anyone that they are not good enough for the Kingdom of Heaven. You can point to His Genealogy.
But the biggest outcast is Jesus. He was publicly called illegitimate.
John Chapter 8 is a chapter full of savage conflict between the Religious Elite and Jesus. It finishes with them trying to stone Him. During that fight they publicly declare Him to be illegitimate in John 8:41.
The Gospel in the Tanakh
Probing the illegitimate link it is possible to decipher the Church Age (between 1st and 2nd comings of Christ) in those outcast generations by holding the OT and NT in parallel for comparison.
One would hope that you can see the message. When Jesus says, “The volume of the Book is written of me,” He speaks Truth.
End of Episode 1
This is starting to get too long. The next episode will delve into the actual vow and the workings of a Burnt Offerings.
The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime.
All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
(We all have a plank in our eye. It’s bigger than we think.)
