Dr Paul Allen

“Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” ( Judges 11:31 ) The story of Jephthah has been a stumbling block to many who interpret it as teaching that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to God as a burnt offering.  As he prepared to face the Ammonite armies, he made the vow recorded in our text, if God would only give him the victory. His only child, a beloved daughter, was the first to meet him at his return, and so it was she who had to be offered. Should he have made such a vow? Does God require these types of vows? Did he pray or just give a vow? Was he being foolhardy? It should be remembered, however, that Jephthah was a man of faith ( Hebrews 11:32-33 ), and he would never have vowed to disobey God’s prohibition against human sacrifice. His personal life and history was a total mess yet somehow God u...

Answer me one question about an obscure story in Judges chapter 11, and I’ll tell you what your view of the whole Old Testament is. First a summary of the story leading up to Judges 11: entering the Promised Land didn’t solve all of Israel’s problems. They brought those problems across the Jordan with them; escape from slavery in Egypt didn’t end their subjection to sin. After the death of Joshua, the successor to Moses, God’s people descended into a cycle of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance that lasted for several hundred years. God delivered his people through a series of leaders called “judges.” Eighty years after the famous judge, Gideon, delivers Israel from the Midianites the Israelites are back into the bad part of the cycle: they do “what [is] evil in the eyes of the Lord” (Judg 10:6). So God sends the Ammonites and the Philistines against them. As often happens in the cyclical book of Judges, the people repent and cry out to the Lord for help. God’s reply is i...