Jephthah's Vengeance

The vow that Jephthah made to the Lord in Judges 11 led to the sacrifice of his only daughter. In the book Death and Dissymmetry by Mieke Bal, he describes the vow as “guaranteeing primal violence.” Bal says that since Jephthah’s vow contained the word “whatever” it is used as a military tactic, which means he is trying to find a scapegoat if he is not able to defeat the Ammonites himself. By not having the sacrifice before him when he made the vow Jephthah can be viewed as being dishonest because no one has seen the one that will be sacrificed and no one knows if he is going to go through with it once he does meet whatever comes out of his doorway. The vow can be seen as a bribe to strengthen the covenant between the Lord and Jephthah, since there has to be a lot of trust between the two of them in order for the covenant to be cut. Bal also discusses how the daughter’s virginity plays a role in the vow the …show more content…
Yee she writes about the feminist interpretation of the vow. Jephthah doubted himself too much and had to make a vow to the Lord in order for him to go into battle against the Ammonites. He chose to victimize someone and then once he was faced with her he blamed her for feeling so badly. Jephthah said, “Alas, my daughter, you have surely brought me low and you are the cause of my trouble, I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot return what I have said.” He doesn’t mourn for the upcoming sacrifice of his daughter he mourns for himself. Then his daughter replies to him by saying that he should not break his vow, and he should to do to her what he has promised. She is giving herself up to someone who is about to sacrifice her. Yee writes that the encoded message is to submit to paternal authority, you may lose everything, but your sacrifice will be remembered. For years after her sacrifice, Israelite women would retell her story so that her memory would stay alive and so her death wouldn’t have been for