Judges 11:30-40

Jephthah vows that whatever comes out of his house to meet him on his return from defeating the Ammonites will belong to the Lord as a burnt offering, and when he comes home his only child runs out to greet him with timbrels and dancing ^1 2. After she learns of the vow, she asks for two months to roam the mountains and bewail her virginity with her companions, and Jephthah grants it ^1 2.

Keil takes the vow as meaning Jephthah had a human being in mind from the start, not an animal, arguing that "going out of the doors of his house to meet him" is a phrase used elsewhere only of persons ³. A victorious general would hardly have needed a vow to offer up livestock he would have sacrificed anyway ³. Keil quotes Augustine's argument that Jephthah's words, "whoever comes out, I will offer him," rule out an animal victim ³. Keil adds that whether Jephthah actually thought of his daughter at the moment of vowing "cannot be determined either in the affirmative or negative" ³.

Wesley reads the outcome differently ⁴. He holds that "Jephthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but only devoted to perpetual virginity," and he grounds this on the detail that she bewails "her virginity" rather than her approaching death ⁴. He takes this as evidence that death was not what was vowed ⁴.

Lias, writing in 1882, agrees with Keil that the vow's language "could hardly have signified an animal," and concludes Jephthah "no doubt had in his mind some one of his household, whom he probably expected would be ready to meet him on his return" ⁵. He adds that "he was terribly punished for his rash and cruel vow" ⁵.

Moore, writing in 1895, insists just as firmly that a human victim is meant, calling the idea of an animal victim "trivial to absurdity" ⁶. He goes further than Keil by arguing this was not a rash vow punished by chance but "a deliberate one," made knowingly before Yahweh at Mizpah ⁶. On the sequel in verse 40, Moore notes that the annual rite kept by Israelite women is best understood as a rite "to lament" Jephthah's daughter ⁷. He says this fits the construction better than the "commemorate, celebrate" reading favored by most commentators of his own day ⁷.

Burney, writing in 1918, treats the vow and its surrounding narrative as showing signs of two combined sources rather than settling the question of what was vowed ^8 9. He focuses instead on textual difficulties, including the phrase about going up "on the mountains" to bewail her virginity, which he says has proved "obviously impossible" to render smoothly and has drawn different solutions from the ancient versions ^8 9.