Judges 11:39

39. Did with her according to his vow Literally, Did to her his vow which he had vowed. This plain and positive statement throws us back for the meaning of Jephthah’s act to Judges 11:31, where the language of his vow is carefully recorded. Whatever act his vow contemplated, that certainly he did. Nothing more, nothing less. He devoutly kept his word. He had opened his mouth unto the Lord, and, notwithstanding all his anguish, he went not back from his solemn oath. So, according to the previous exposition of his language, we can understand nothing else than that he offered her for a burnt offering unto the Lord.

And she knew no man This fact the sacred writer adds as that alone which, in the estimation of that age, was the sting of death to the heroic maiden. It is very natural that those expositors who seek to show that Jephthah’s daughter was not put to death at all, should regard these words as indicating the manner in which he fulfilled his vow. Why else, they ask, is this fact of her virginity again mentioned? If she was sacrificed, they affirm, the record would have been: “He did to her his vow which he had vowed, and offered her for a burnt offering.” Such an addition, we reply, was not necessary, and, after the full and careful statement of his vow in Judges 11:31, would have been superfluous. But if, as we have shown above, and as most modern scholars are constrained to admit, he contemplated a human sacrifice, and if, instead of offering her as a burnt offering, he devoted her to a life of celibacy, then plainly he did NOT according to his vow which he had vowed, but contrary to it; and the mere addition, she knew no man, would be a most inexplicably strange way of informing us that Jephthah failed to keep his word. The sacred historian uses no needless word, nor does he attempt to picture the sad spectacle of the sacrifice; but he records, not as the manner in which Jephthah fulfilled his vow, but as the most fearful knell that, in the ears of her father and companions, sounded over that daughter’s funeral pile, and sent its lingering echo into the after-times she knew no man.

It was a custom in Israel What was a custom in Israel? For fathers to sacrifice daughters, after the example of Jephthah? This no one will pretend. To offer human sacrifices to Jehovah? No; for such a custom never prevailed to any considerable extent in Israel, and least of all was it occasioned by Jephthah’s example. To consecrate young maidens to perpetual virginity? There is not a particle of evidence that such a custom prevailed after this time more than before, and no certain evidence that it was ever a custom in Israel. On the contrary, the whole tendency of Hebrew laws and civilization was against a forced celibacy on the part of either sex. What custom, then, sprang up in Israel on this occasion? Clearly, the custom described in the next verse, of the yearly celebration of Jephthah’s daughter. The Hebrew is, She became a custom in Israel; that is, her heroism and sublime submission to be sacrificed made such an impression on the daughters of Israel that they instituted a yearly celebration of her memory.