Day 8 of #16days

Surely one of the most disturbing stories in the bible is that of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11:29-40. I'll leave you to read it but essentially Jephthah makes a vow to sacrifice the first to greet him when he returns home from victory in war. Tragically the first to greet him is his daughter and even more Tragically, he goes through with the sacrifice in a point of honour.

This story should also remind us of so-called honour based killings and abuse which still happen today and crimes committed to 'protect or defend' the honour of a family or community. Forced marriage, FGM, breast flattening, murder, beatings, rape, threat to kill... There is never any justification for it and most justice systems have made it clear that there is no place for cultural relativism when it comes to these crimes. All are human rights violations and have been roundly condemned by the World Health Organization. 

God cares deeply about the vulnerable and oppressed as we've already talked about in this series of blogs. We don't have all the answers to some of the things we read in the bible but they are always there to teach us something. The reader will likely have multiple questions about this text, I know I do. The most pressing of which for me was where was God in all of this? If Issac was snatched from the 'jaws' of sacrifice, why was this daughter not spared? The fact is, God never asked Jephthah for this vow nor sacrifice and this story actually comes at a time when God has already rigorously condemned child sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2-5). This misplaced honour placed Jephthah out of step with God's will and tells us something about the time they were living in. Indeed the book of Judges is largely a slippery slope of what happens when the people lived according to their own ways, culminating, as we know, with the horrors of the unnamed concubine.

Judges was a terrible time for women but in learning about them, we honour them. These women were oppressed, violated, and often unseen but in now standing on their shoulders, their stories teach us and their voices are heard forever. 

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