Jephthah's daughter

James Tissot, Jephthah's Daughter, c. 1896–1902.

Jephthah's daughter, sometimes later referred to as Seila or Iphis, is a figure in the Hebrew Bible, whose story is recounted in Judges 11. The Israelite judge Jephthah had just won a battle over the Ammonites, and vowed he would give the first thing that came out of his house as a burnt offering to God. However, his only child, an unnamed daughter, came out to meet him dancing and playing a tambourine (Judges 11:34). She encourages Jephthah to fulfill his vow (Judges 11:36) but asks for two months to weep for her virginity (Judges 11:38). After this period of time, Jephthah fulfilled his vow and offered up his daughter.

Disputed human sacrifice

Historically amongst Bible commentators it was held that after she mourned for her virginity in light of the Biblical commandment to "be fruitful and multiply", which she would now no longer be able to fulfill, Jephthah killed his daughter in an act of human sacrifice.[1][2] This view of a literal burnt sacrifice was held by early interpreters and commentators such as Josephus,[3] Pseudo-Philo,[4][5] John Chrysostom,[6] Augustine,[7] Ambrose,[8] Jerome,[9] and Rabbinic literature in the Talmud and Midrash.[10][11]

Later as well by Aquinas and Cornelius a Lapide,[12] while commentators disagreeing with this view included David Kimhi and Levi ben Gershon who argued she remained celibate and isolated living in dedication to God.[13]

In more contemporary scholarship, George F. Moore,[14] Walter C. Kaiser Jr,[15] Daniel I. Block,[16] Barry G. Webb,[17] and John J. Collins believe that in the context the sacrificial view of a human offering is evident, especially with regard to the initial vow.[18] However, there is an opposing opinion that Jephthah's daughter was "offered to the LORD" in the same way Samuel was offered after birth, and spent the rest of her life in seclusion. This is based on considerations arising from the narrative, such as that weeping for her virginity would make no sense if she were about to die. Scholars who support this interpretation include Adam Clarke, E. W. Bullinger, Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch,[19] Gleason Archer, David Marcus[20] and James B. Jordan.[21]

Later influence

Jephthah's daughter was not given a central role in many pre-medieval texts: the major exception was the first-century Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum of "Pseudo-Philo", which devoted an entire chapter to her (and gave her the name of "Seila").[22][23] The French scholar Peter Abelard (d. 1142) praised Seila in his lament Planctus virginum Israel super filia Jephte.[22] In a letter to his lover Héloïse d'Argenteuil, Abelard also portrayed Seila as a model for monastic women who devote their whole lives to God.[22] In other medieval Christian texts, Jephthah's daughter was portrayed as a type of Virgin Mary and her death was likened to the Purification of the Virgin.[22]

In the medieval period, some Jewish communities refrained from drinking water from wells and rivers for a few hours at four key times of the year, a custom called the tekufah. In the twelfth century Rabbi Judah the Pious wrote that the tekufah that fell during the month of Tishre was observed because of Jephthah's daughter.[22]

Jephthah's daughter is called "Adah" by the Order of the Eastern Star and is one of its five heroines, representing obedience to duty.[24]

In the field of Jewish exegesis, the work titled Dirshuni: Contemporary Women's Midrash names Jephthah's daughter as "Tannot" (or "Tanot") and appears in various chapters. The name is derived from the verse in Judges 11:40 "for the maidens of Israel to go every year, for four days in the year, and chant dirges ("tannot") for the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite."[25][26][27][28]

The story of Jephthah and his daughter was the inspiration for one of the canons of the classical saxophone repertoire: “Jephthah: Invocation & Dance for Soprano and Alto Saxophones and Piano, which was composed by Carl Anton Wirth for the father / daughter Raschèr Duo. Sigurd and Carina Raschèr premiered the work at New York City's Town Hall on November 9, 1958. See: Rascher Duo Project.

In Feminist literature and discourse, Phyllis Trible viewed the account of the unnamed daughter as one of the prime examples of patriarchal violence. She highlights too that in ancient Israelite society, a woman’s identity was centred on marriage and childbearing. The lament in the mountains is a grief ritual of an unfulfilled life, dying before attaining womanhood.[29][30][31][32] J. Cheryl Exum argued that the tragedy was that the daughter actively submits to paternal authority and loses her life.[33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stone, Lawson (2016). Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Tyndale House. p. 358. ISBN 9781414398792. Retrieved 29 July 2018. But did Jephthah actually offer his daughter as a burnt offering? The majority view for centuries has been that he did.
  2. ↑ Jr, Walter C. Kaiser; Davids, Peter H.; Bruce, F. F.; Brauch, Manfred (2010-05-11). Hard Sayings of the Bible. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-1540-1. Almost all early writers portrayed Jephthah as actually offering up his own daughter. It was not until the Middle Ages that commentators began to look for ways to soften Jephthah's act.
  3. ↑ "The Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2026-07-23. she only desired her father to give her leave, for two months, to bewail her youth with her fellow citizens; and then she agreed, that at the aforementioned time he might do with her according to his vow. Accordingly, when that time was over, he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt-offering, offering such an oblation as was neither conformable to the law nor acceptable to God,
  4. ↑ "Compare Judges 11:36 and Pseudo Philo Biblical Antiquities 40:2 | intertextual.bible". Retrieved 2026-07-23.
  5. ↑ Baumgarten, Elisheva (2007). ""Remember That Glorious Girl": Jephthah's Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 97 (2): 180–209. ISSN 0021-6682.
  6. ↑ Homilies on the Statues, Homily 14, Section 7 https://documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0345-0407,_Iohannes_Chrysostomus,_Homilies_on_Statues,_EN.pdf
  7. ↑ "Quaestionum in Heptateuchum/VII - Wikisource". la.wikisource.org (in Latin). Retrieved 2026-07-23.
  8. ↑ Ambrose: Selected Works and Letters, p. 97 https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0339-0397,_Ambrosius,_De_Officiis_Ministrorum_Libri_Tres_[Schaff],_EN.pdf
  9. ↑ "CHURCH FATHERS: Against Jovinianus, Book I (Jerome)". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2026-07-23.
  10. ↑ "Taanit 4a:8 | Sefaria Library". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2026-07-23.
  11. ↑ Adelman, Rav Rachel (2026-05-05). "Dangerous Vows, Sacred Lives". Hebrew College. Retrieved 2026-07-23.
  12. ↑ Lapide, Cornelius Cornelii a (1843). Commentarii in Sacram Scripturam (in Latin). Apud Tonna, Banchii & Soc. p. 860.
  13. ↑ Hirsch, Emil. "Jephthah (יפתח)". Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  14. ↑ Moore, George Foot (1895). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges. Scribner. pp. 301–305.
  15. ↑ Hard Sayings Of The Bible Walter C. Kaiser Jr. & Peter H. Davids & F. F. Bruce & Manfred Brauch (PDF). That Jephthah actually sacrificed his daughter, tragic as that would be, seems the most natural reading of the text. If Jephthah's "sacrifice" of his daughter meant relegating her to a life of perpetual virginity and service at the temple, not one word in the text says so.
  16. ↑ Block, Daniel I. (1999). Judges, Ruth. Broadman & Holman Publishers. pp. 368–377. ISBN 978-0-8054-0106-6. For these people vows to sacrifice children were not rash or impulsive but deadly serious expressions of devotion. Jephthah was so determined to achieve victory over the Ammonites that he was willing to sacrifice his own child to gain a divine guarantee. The clause "whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me" envisages the exuberant welcome by children of a father who has been away on a military campaign. For the moment the reader does not know that Jephthah has only one child, that in putting her at risk he also jeopardizes himself, and that, ironically, in securing his own victory he sentences his lineage to death.
  17. ↑ Webb, Barry G. (2012-12-20). "The Jephthah Story". The Book of Judges. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 60–68. ISBN 978-1-4674-3639-7.
  18. ↑ Collins, John Joseph (2014). Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-4514-6923-3. There is no doubt in the context that human sacrifice is meant [...] The text is unambiguous that [Jephthah] 'did with her according to the vow that he had made.' [...] Jephthah is often criticized for making a rash vow, but this criticism is not made in the text, where he appears to act under the influence of the spirit of the Lord. Neither is he condemned in the tradition; in the New Testament he is celebrated as a hero of faith.
  19. ↑ Keil and Delitzsch. "Judges 11". Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  20. ↑ Marcus, David (1986). Jephthah and his vow.
  21. ↑ Jordan, James (June 1996). "Jephthah's Daughter". Biblical Horizons. 86. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 Baumgarten, Elisheva. (2007). ""Remember that glorious girl": Jephthah's Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture". Jewish Quarterly Review. 97 (2): 180–209. doi:10.1353/jqr.2007.0010. ISSN 1553-0604. S2CID 161293832.
  23. ↑ Sheinfeld, Shayna. "Seila, Jephthah's Daughter: A Sacrifice Like Isaac". www.thetorah.com. Retrieved 2026-08-13.
  24. ↑ "Eastern Star". Symbol Dictionary: A Visual Glossary. 26 Jan 2018. Archived from the original on 27 January 2018. Archived 27 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  25. ↑ רבקה לוביץ, 'מדרשי בת יפתח', בתוך נחמה וינגרטן־מינץ ותמר ביאלה (עורכות), דרשוני: מדרשי נשים, א, תל אביב 2009,עמ' 100
  26. ↑ Biala, Tamar (2022). Dirshuni: Contemporary Women's Midrash. Brandeis University Press. ISBN 978-1-68458-096-5.
  27. ↑ ADELMAN, R. (2022). CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOME: JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER FROM THE HEBREW BIBLE TO MODERN MIDRASH. Feminist Interpretations of Biblical Literature, 1.
  28. ↑ Roded, Ruth (2015). "Jewish and Islamic Religious Feminist Exegesis of the Sacred Books: Adam, Woman and Gender". Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues (29): 56–80. doi:10.2979/nashim.29.56. ISSN 0793-8934.
  29. ↑ Trible, Phyllis (2002). "The Daughter of Jepthah An Inhuman Sacrifice". Texts of Terror: Literary-feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. SCM. pp. 93–106. ISBN 978-0-334-02900-7. Yet this particular death defies all the categories of the natural and the expected. First, it is premature; life ends before its potential has unfolded. [...] Second, her death is to be violent. Death by fire is bitter death, and more bitter still when its author is her very own father. Third, her death will leave no heirs because she is a virgin. What alone designated fulfilment for every Hebrew woman, the bearing of children, will never be hers to know. Truly, with no child to succeed her, she may be numbered among the unremembered, [...] Premature, violent, without an heir: all the marks of unnatural death befall this young woman, and she is not even spared the knowledge of them. Hers is premeditated death, a sentence of murder passed upon an innocent victim because of the faithless vow uttered by her foolish father.
  30. ↑ Bal, Mieke (1988). "Virginity and Entanglement". Death & dissymmetry : the politics of coherence in the Book of Judges. Internet Archive. Chicago; London : The University of Chicago Press. pp. 52–60. ISBN 978-0-226-03554-3.
  31. ↑ Bal, Mieke (1988). "Violence and the Sacred: Contribution to the Ethnography of Fatherhood". Death & dissymmetry : the politics of coherence in the Book of Judges. Internet Archive. Chicago; London : The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-03554-3.
  32. ↑ Younger, K. Lawson (2002). Judges and Ruth. Zondervan. pp. 330–338. ISBN 978-0-310-20636-1. Despite the sympathy created by the reluctance of both daughter and father to carry out the vow, both eventually submit to it. Because it was a great tragedy for a Hebrew woman to die childless, Jephthah's daughter asks for time to bewail her virginity. The verses that describe her mourning of her virginity only serve to heighten what transpires by emphasizing her innocence.
  33. ↑ Exum, J. Cheryl (1996-05-16). Tragedy and Biblical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty. Cambridge University Press. pp. 45–50. ISBN 978-0-521-56506-6.
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