reply to post by SmikeS
Is this story in the Torah?
No, it's in Judges which isn't part of the Torah. But the Jephthah story is too long to go into. The end of the story isn't there. It doesn't
explicitly say what Jephthah ended up doing. He had other options. Like consecrating her to the Lord and she would have just been a nun basically.
This is the view many commentators take because of her obsession with never getting married in the story. I mean if my dad was going to kill me I
wouldn't be running around lamenting because I was never going to get married. I'd have more important things on my mind. Like ya know, my father
setting me on fire?
But in the story she's all like, Oh I'll never get married! Boo Hoo! And the story ends with "and she knew no man." Seems pretty obvious if he
sacrificed her. So, why mention it? So this leads lots of people to assume that instead of sacrificing her, he consecrated to the Lord as a nun
basically. But marriage was so important to them at the time it's hard to say what she was upset about.
However, human sacrifice is forbidden in the OT, so to keep his vow he would have still had to sin, so he really couldn't win. He would have broken
his promise to the Lord, or broken the commandments and therefore broken his promise to the Lord?
So if it's lose lose, why kill your daughter? In fact the only option he had where he could have done right by the Lord is not to kill her and
consecrate her instead. So many believe that's what he did.
But early commentators imagine he did kill her but they're still arguing about it today. But again the context of the story is what NOT TO DO. It's
not like God told him to do it. It's pretty clear from the context of the story that the moral message, if you will, is to NOT make rash vows to the
Lord like Jephthah did or bad things like this can happen.
For all I know it's an allegorical story to illustrate a point, like an after school special with a drug addict to show you what drug addiction is
like. It's not like the people that wrote the story approve of drug addiction. In fact it's the opposite. They DON'T approve of it, that's why they
told the story lol.
That's why the story is in there. To show you Jephthah's foolish mistake and to show you what not to do.
Judges feels more like heroic folklore, rather than actual word of God.
Maybe I dunno.
edit on 1-9-2012 by tinfoilman because: (no reason given)
edit on 1-9-2012 by tinfoilman because: (no reason given)
