For those unfamiliar with it, Judges 11 may be one of the most tragic texts of the Bible. In fact, most people are totally unfamiliar with it. It isn't the type of story you tell in Sunday School, and most people are so turned off by it they generally avoid it altogether. Not too mention Judges simply is not the most read book of the Bible, especially for churches that utilize the Revised Common Lectionary. Ironically, the story is more well known among atheistic groups against religion. The reason being that this story is so appalling many atheists are sure that if Christians read it they would stop caring about what the Bible says.
Well I challenge that assumption. If you haven't read it I encourage you to go to the link and read it. By means of spoiler alert, the Judge (ruler) Jephthah makes a vow to God that leads to the sacrifice of his daughter.
Before I go further, I should state I am well aware that there are some modern scholars who wonder if maybe Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, but instead offered her as a lifelong servant of the LORD. They mainly point to the fact that the text withholds from ultimately saying he killed her, and then read in texts like Genesis 22 where a ram was a suitable sacrifice in place of Abraham's son Isaac, and simply the fact that over and over the Old Testament (especially the Deuteronomic history from which Judges is a part) detested child sacrifice and associated it with idol worship (especially with the Canaanite god Molech). I think however all that aside, the text pretty clearly indicates that she was indeed sacrificed. The last two verses of the chapter show this, first by stating that Jephthah "did with her according to the vow he had made" (which was very specific that the vow would be a sacrifice in the form of a burnt offering, see v.31) and the tradition of four days of lamenting his daughter that arose in Israel. I don't see why they would lament over a daughter not killed.
You can begin to see why this is such a troubling text. A daughter sacrificed to God? What a scandal towards our faith! This is by and large covered up so people do not get troubled by it, as they should be. The commentaries I read up on regarding this text look for a way to glean a message from it, and there probably is good reason for that, after all these texts were preserved for the people, and they likely sought to see a lesson in the story much like we do with children's fables. Of the ones I heard particularly a caution towards the seriousness of vows and not making them rashly might be the most appropriate to the earliest audiences, since the text's insistence on keeping the vow is essential to the story and his rashness or apparent surprise in what he ended up vowing is his downfall. I can totally see this story standing as a lesson in regards to our vows towards God.
But the more I wrestled and struggled and sought meaning from it, the more another story emerged. That was the story of Christ himself. In Genesis 22, the near-sacrifice of Isaac is often lifted up in regards to a Christological foreshadowing (or or is lifted up as just as troubling as the Gospel narrative and atonement theories for those who reject the sacrificial aspect of the cross as divine child-abuse, part the famous critique by feminists Brown and Parker), but perhaps the story of Judges 11 stands as a better example.
For one, and as Gerhard Forde notes this is important when considering the relationship of the Father-Son in the Gospel, the child is not being forced or tricked in this story. Genesis 22, Abraham does not inform Isaac of what he has been told to do, Isaac begins to catch on (or at least realize something is amiss, Gen 22.7) but never appears willing. In fact his father binds him and places him on the altar. This is a significant difference from the narrative of Christ in the Gospels (especially John) where it is not just the Father's will to sacrifice the Son but the Son's willingness to die. "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10.18) he says, and even in his struggle to face death he prays in the garden "Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." (Mark 14.36). Though this cup, his death, is given by his Father (John 18.11), Jesus is not ignorant to this nor is he resisting it. Jephthah's daughter likewise shares this aspect. Much as Jesus who speaks of the Father's mission for him, or how this was to fulfill scripture, all the while sharing in this intent, so the daughter too, while her death is ultimately tied to her Father's words, ascents and tells him he must fulfill his vow.
This is the next important piece, the role of promise. The sacrifice of Isaac was out of a command, and more than that, the readers are already clued in that it was a "test", hinting towards the ending where he does not need to go through with it. But neither Jephthah's daughter nor Jesus died out of anyone's command, they died out of loyalty to a promise. Jephthah promised to make a sacrifice in return for victory, God promised to restore his people, a promise that included a suffering servant. God promised Jesus. And in both stories parent and child are loyal to that promise to the most grievous point, to the point where we would all say "no, you don't have to do that." What is so tragic about these stories is the place the promise/vow has...for everyone involved! The parent and the child in both stories are committed to the end, no matter the cost.
It also speaks something about the sadness of such a commitment. The suffering of God in the death of Christ is rarely gazed upon, especially by those critical of God having any will that requires the death of his Son, but here we can see that the commitment to the promise does not negate the utter tragedy and sorrow that comes when it requires the death of a beloved and only child. God would it seem much rather have had it to where Jesus was not killed by the people (see Matthew 21.33-42) but that they finally believed his word (John 6.40). But the rejection of Jesus would not stop God from fulfilling his promise in Jesus.
Now before going further there does need to be a little caution in that God did not "kill" Jesus. But his promise did cost Jesus his life, and as we see in the prayer in the garden, God's will cannot itself be removed from the passion event. God's intent to be reconciled to his people at all costs met the people's desire to be free of God at all costs on the cross. That led to the people meeting Christ in violence, and Christ not retreating. So there is a difference, in that the text when saying Jephthah "did with her accord to the vow" likely meant he was the one to kill her. In the cross, we are speaking of God's vow being how he will overcome sin, death, and slavery in Jesus. The vow does not itself require Christ's life, we mustn't forget our part. As I learned from reading Forde, attempts to let us off the hook for the death of Christ in atonement theories are just as misled as ones that want God totally uninvolved in his death. Instead we look at what actually happened: God was forgiving people in Jesus, people didn't want it but instead reject Jesus (as they rejected prophets before him, again see Matthew 21). God didn't need Jesus to die for his vow, we did. If there is one major divergence then it is that the nature of God's promise in Jesus was at work before and without his death, but that our rejection placed the promises of God into the tragedy of Christ's death because, as I said, God would not let the cross stop him from fulfilling his promise in Jesus.
The circumstance of the story then is also notable. Jephthah was rejected by his people, and then the elders come back to him for aid. And so Jephthah sought to end the dispute between Gilead and the Ammonites through recounting the work of God. Only when that fails does he make this vow and go into battle against them. Now this is a bit more of a stretch, but isn't this in many ways the story of Christ? Jesus suffers death in the midst of God's work to save people who have rejected him. Jesus' death is the inevitable end of people not believing God's word that Christ is sharing with them (and living in regards to the history of God for them). It's a bit of a stretch, but not essential to the comparison. More of a "if we're going to use a Christological typology, lets take it to the max" kind of observation.
The heart of this is the similarity of the stories of a parent losing a child (tied to a promise), and what I think is good about it is that Judges 11 can actually teach us something about Jesus. It teaches the utter tragedy of the gospel. You read this story and it saddens or angers you. It cries of injustice and unfair. Those are feelings sometimes talked about but less felt it seems around the cross. But the cross is a scandalous and offensive affair. It really doesn't read as right. It bothers some as to how God could do that (but we must there as well as in Judges 11 remember not just the word of the father but the will of the child), and it stands as a tragedy that God's love would be best shown by its presence in loss and death. It gives different weight to the word "sacrifice" when talking about the gospel.
Perhaps what is most profound here, is we have a Good Friday without an Easter, a death without a resurrection. And because of that we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that she did not die. Last Sunday the bishop was at my church and in preaching he said "let's not kid ourselves, we all know how the story ends". Knowing the resurrection sometimes undoes even a belief or realization that Jesus actually died. But when faced with the story in Judges 11, the father's sadness, the child's death with no hope, we join in the lament. It's death more as we feel it and experience it. It's scandalous. It's real. It's unfair.
So was the cross. That day no one expected Christ to rise again. It was real, scandalous, and unfair. It grieved the Father as well. The Son was sacrificed. God's promise would not rest and neither would our rejection. And so he died. Judges 11 can teach us how to grieve that event, or at least how to see the cross the way we see other deaths. Because that is what it looked like. It is a story where we should be wanting some other way, as though to tell God and Jesus "No, you don't have to do that." While Christ, seeing what we do with the "other ways" looks to his Father and says "You must fulfill this vow. Not what I will, but your will be done."
One other nice tidbit is that this story apparently explained a tradition in ancient Israel, to lament for Jephthah's daughter for four days. We Christians have taken on a similar tradition, to spend four days each year in the cycle of Christ's passion and resurrection. From Thursday to Sunday experiencing death and life anew. May this reading help you experience all the more the depths of that story, and that death, and therefore the great difference there is in saying at last "He is Risen." Because without it, we'd bury the gospel in the Bible the same way we bury Judges 11.
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