Jephthah

One of the more confusing stories in the Bible is the story of Jephthah recorded in Judges 11. In it, Jephthah claims that if God will give him victory over the Ammonites then he will offer up whatever comes out of the door of his house to meet him as a burnt offering. Unfortunately, what came out of his house to meet him was his daughter.

In my opinion, this is a dramatic story about submission (or lack thereof) to the revealed will of YHWH. Why? Because Jephthah could have redeemed his daughter for 10 shekels of silver if only he'd known torah (Lev 27:5).

Jephthah was commended in Hebrews 11 not for his upright lifestyle or his knowledge of torah but for his faith displayed in his defeat of the Ammonites. It's important to make this distinction because I have observed a tendency to assume that everything Jephthah did is commended in Hebrews, and this is simply not the case. He is nowhere commended in Scripture for the sacrifice of his daughter. Instead, the sacrifice of his daughter was a violation of torah given as a striking example of what can happen when everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes (Jdg 21:25).

In the narrative itself we are warned that something is going to go wrong, but the warning is subtle. In Jephthah's speech, Jephthah makes several mistakes that clue the reader in to the fact that Jephthah doesn't have all his ducks in a row. He calls the Ammonite God Chemosh (it was actually Molek); he calls the Moabite God Molek (it was actually Chemosh); he introduces contradictions to the narrative given by
Joshua (Josh 24), and he demonstrates bad theology when he says the Ammonites should take what their God has given them (ascribing YHWH's works to another).

These mistakes in Jephthah's speech are meant to serve as clues, foreshadowing the fact that at some point he is going to do something really stupid. When we come to the bit about his daughter, the alert
listener/reader is clamoring, "Redeem her, you fool! Redeem her!" However, Jephthah doesn't know his torah, and the innocent die, and a warning is subtly issued to know torah.