Thus encouraged we look again. The word translated "it" is huah, and while it can

stand for the third person in either the masculine, feminine or neuter gender it is usually

masculine in significance. The passage can therefore read: "And I will offer Him a burnt

offering." We look once more. The A.V. reads: "shall surely be the Lord's", and we

find that the name Jehovah is prefixed with lamed (l') and so reads "to the Lord". The

meaning is quite clear in a similar passage in I Sam. 1: 11 where l'Jehovah is translated

"unto the Lord".

Putting together these findings we can now see that Jephthah's vow may be translated

as follows:--

It is, we trust, now clear that the problem we have been considering existed only in the

translation of the passage and not in the Scripture itself.

Jephthah's distress on seeing his daughter and realizing his rashness is fully explained

by the words: "beside her he had neither son nor daughter." Yet in spite of his grief he

recognized the sacredness of the vow and said: "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord,

and I cannot go back." In this attitude his daughter nobly supported him, saying: "Do to

me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth." She then asked as a

favour, permission to bewail her virginity for a period of two months, and at the end of

the time returned to her father who did according to his vow, that is, he devoted her to the

Lord, "and she knew no man" (Judges 11: 39).

Let us note the confirmatory character of this conclusion. What sense would there be

in saying of a young maid who was offered up as a burnt sacrifice, "and she knew no

man"? If on the other hand the devotion of Jephthah's daughter to the Lord involved the

renunciation of all hope of being a mother in Israel, the words are poignant with

significance. Moreover, while at this time there may have been laxity in the observance

of the law, the book of Ruth proves that there were some who knew it and sought to put it

into force. In view of the publicity of Jephthah's vow, even if he had rashly vowed to

offer his own daughter as a burnt offering (which we have made plain is not our belief),

can we believe that there was no priest or Levite, who, neither for love nor for lucre,

would inform Jephthah, that for thirty shekels (Lev. 27: 1-4), he could redeem his

daughter from the consequences of his impetuosity?

In Judges 11: 39 we read: "And it was a custom in Israel": the margin says "or

ordinance". Actually the passage reads, "And it became a statute in Israel". What

became a statute? "That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of

Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year." Here the word "lament" perpetuates the

original error. In the Hebrew it is tanah, the meaning of which the margin gives as "to

talk with" and refers to Judges 5: 11, where the future tense is translated "shall they

rehearse". These yearly visits seem to have been the only relief allowed to the daughter