Lecture XVI: Jephthah and Samson (part 1)

by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  As Gideon is the highest pitch of greatness to     
which this period reaches, Jephthah and Samson are       
the lowest points to which it descends.  In them, in       
different forms, the violence of the age breaks out       
most visibly.         
   I.  Jephthah is the wild, lawless freebooter.  His ir-       
regular birth, in the half-civilized tribes be-      
yond the Jordan, is the key-note to his life.  The        
whole scene is in those pastoral uplands.  Not Bethel,         
or Shiloh, but Mizpeh, the ancient watch-tower which         
witnessed the parting of Jacob and Laban, is the place       
of meeting.  Ammon, the ancient ally of Israel against         
Og, is the assailant.  The war springs out of the dis-          
putes of that first settlement.  The battle sweeps over       
the whole tract of forest from Gilead to the borders       
of Moab.  The quarrel which arises after the     
battle between the Transjordanic tribe and the        
proud western Ephraimites, is embittered by        
the recollection of taunts and quarrels, then, no doubt,        
full of gall and wormwood, now hardly intelligible.       
"Fugitives of Ephraim are ye: Gilead is among the      
Ephraimites and among the Manassites."  Was it, as       
Ewald conjectures, some allusion to the lost history        
of the days when the half tribe of Manasseh separated       
from its Western brethren?  If it was, the Gileadites         
had now their turn, – "the fugitives of the Ephraim-       
ites," as they are called in evident allusion to the for-       
mer taunt, are caught in their fight at the fords of the         
Jordan, the scene of their victory over the Midianites,        
and ruthlessly slain.  The test put to them was a word        
of which the very meaning is now doubtful, but which,       
familiar then from its allusion to the "harvests" or        
"floods" of Palestine, has revived in the warfare of          
Christian controversy, Shibboleth.  Many a party       
watchword, many a theological test has had        
no better origin than this difference of pronunciation       
between the two rough tribes, which has thus appro-          
priately become the type and likeness of all of them.             
   In the savage taunt of Jephthah to the Ephraimites,          
compared with the mild reply of Gideon to the same        
insolent tribe, we have a measure of the inferiority of      
Eastern to Western Palestine, — of the degree to which         
Jephthah sank below his age, and Gideon rose above           
it.  But in his own country, as well as in the Church        
at large, it is the other part of Jephthah's story which            
has been most keenly remembered.  The fatal        
vow at the battle of Aroer belongs naturally to the
spasmodic efforts of the age; like the vows of Samson         
or Saul in the Jewish Church of this period, or of         
Clovis or Bruno in the Middle Ages.  But its literal        
execution could hardly have taken place had it been       
undertaken by any one more under the moral re-        
straints, even of that lawless age, than the freebooter     
Jephthah, nor in any other part of the Holy Land         
than that separated by the Jordan valley from the      
more regular institutions of the country.  Moab and       
Ammon, the neighboring tribes of Jephthah's native       
country, were the parts of Palestine where human          
sacrifice lingered longest.  It was the first thought of          
Balak in the extremity of his terror.  It was the last           
expedient of Balak's successor in the war with Jehosh-      
aphat.  Moloch, to whom even before they entered       
Palestine the Israelites had offered human sacrifices,     
and who is always spoken of as the deity who was thus          
honored, was especially the God of Ammon.  It s but        
natural that a desperate soldier like Jephthah, breath-       
ing the same atmosphere, physical and social, should         
make the same vow, and having made it, adhere to      
it.  There was no High Priest or Prophet at        
hand to rebuke it.  They were far away in        
the hostile tribe of Ephraim.  He did what was right            
in his own eyes, and as such the transaction is de-      
scribed.  Mostly it is but an inadequate account to        
give of these doubtful acts to say that they are men-        
tioned in the Sacred narrative without commendation.       
Often where no commendation is expressly given, it         
is distinctly implied.  But here the story itself trem-      
bles with the mixed feeling of the action.  The de-         
scription of Jephthah's character prepares us for       
some dark catastrophe.  The admiration for his hero-      
ism and that of his daughter struggles for mastery         
in the historian with indignation at the dreadful deed.       
He is overwhelmed by the natural grief of a father.       
"Oh!  Oh! my daughter, thou hast crushed me, thou     
hast crushed me!"  She rises at once to the gran-        
deur of her situation as the instrument whereby the       
victory has been won.  If the fatal word had escaped        
his lips she was content to die, "forasmuch as the         
"Lord hath taken vengeance of thee upon thine ene-       
mies, even the children of Ammon."  It is one of         
the points in Sacred History where, as before said       
the likeness of classical times mingles with the He-       
brew devotion.  It recalls to us the story of Idome-         
neus and his son, of Agamemnon and Iphigenia.  And         
still more closely do we draw near, as our attention        
is fixed on the Jewish maiden, to a yet more pathetic       
scene.  Her grief is the exact anticipation of the       
lament of Antigone, sharpened by the peculiar horror       
of the Hebrew women at a childless death, — descend-      
ing with no bridal festivity, with no nuptial torches        
to the dark chambers of the grave —        

   [...]       

Into the mountains of Gilead she retires for two       
months, — plunging deeper and deeper into the gorges        
of the mountains, to bewail her lot, with the maidens        
who had come out with her to greet the returning       
conqueror.  Then comes the awful end, from which          
the sacred writer, as it were, averts his eyes.  "He         
did with her according to his vow."  In her the        
house of Jephthah became extinct.  "She knew no       
man."  But for years afterwards, even to the verge        
of the monarchy, the dark deed was commemorated.        
Four days in every year the maidens of Israel went        
up into the mountains of Gilead, — and here the He-      
brew language lends itself to the ambiguous feeling            
of the narrative itself, — "to praise" or "to lament"        
"the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite."             
   The record which thus transparently represents the      
wavering thought of the Sacred Historian has re-        
ceived also the reflections of the successive stages of       
feeling with which the Church has subsequently re-       
garded the act.  As far back as we can trace the             
sentiment of those who read the passage, in Jonathan       
the Targumist, and Josephus, and through the whole          
of the first eleven centuries of Christendom, the story        
was taken in its literal sense as describing the death       
of the maiden, although the attention of the Church          
was, as usual, diverted to distant allegorical       
meanings.  Then, it is said, from a polemical       
bias of Kimchi, arose the interpretation that she was        
not killed, but immured in celibacy.  From the Jewish       
theology this spread to the Christian.  By this time        
the notion had sprung up that every act recorded in       
the Old Testament was to be defended according to       
the standard of Christian morality; and, accordingly,       
the process began of violently wresting the words of    
Scripture to meet the preconceived fancies of later       
ages.  In this way entered the hypothesis of Jeph-      
thah's daughter having been devoted as a nun; con-       
trary to the plain meaning of the text, contrary to       
the highest authorities of the Church, contrary to all        
usages of the old Dispensation.  In modern times,         
a more careful study of the Bible has brought us      
back to the original sense.  And when it returns the        
deep pathos of the original story, and the lesson which       
it reads of the heroism of the father and the daugh-        
ter, to be admired and loved, in the midst of the        
fierce superstition across which it plays like a sun-       
beam on a stormy sea.          
   So regarded, it may still be remembered with a sym-        
pathy at least as great as is given to the heathen             
immolations, just cited, which awaken a sentiment of       
compassion wherever they are known;  The sacrifice       
of Jephthah's daughter, taking it at its worst, was not        
a human sacrifice in the gross sense of the word —         
not a slaughter of an unwilling victim, as when the          
Gaul and Greek were buried alive in the Roman Fo-       
rum; but the willing offering of a devoted heart, to         
free, as she supposed, her father and her country from          
a terrible obligation.  It was, indeed, as Josephus says,         
an act in itself hateful to God.  But, nevertheless, it        
contained just that one redeeming feature of pure obe-        
dience and love, which is the distinguishing mark of         
all true Sacrifice, and which communicates to the whole     
story those elements of tenderness and nobleness well         
drawn out of it by two modern poets, to each of whom,       
in their different ways, may be applied what was said          
by Goethe of he first, — that at least one function         
committed to him was that of giving life and form to        
the incidents and characters of the Old Testament.          

             "Though the virgins of Salem lament,          
              be the judge and the hero unbent;        
              I have won the great battle for thee,        
              And my father and country are free.         

             "When this blood of thy giving has gush'd,       
              when the voice that thou lovest is hushed,           
              Let my memory still be thy pride,         
              And forget not I smiled as I died."         

Or, in the still more exact language of the more re-       
cent poet —         

             "The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,       
                  A maiden pure; as when she went along        
              From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with radiance light       
                       With timbrel and with song.          

                  .       .       .       .       .     

             " 'My God, my land , my father — these did move          
                  'Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave,         
               'Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of love,        
                      'Down to a silent grave.           

             " 'And I went mourning,'  'No fair Hebrew boy         
                  'Shall smile away my maiden blame among         
               'The Hebrew mothers;' emptied of all joy,       
                      'Leaving the dance and song,            

             " 'Leaving the olive-gardens far below,         
                  'Leaving the promise of my bridal bower,       
               'The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow         
                      'Beneath the battled tower. 

                  .       .       .       .       .              

             " 'When the next moon was roll'd into the sky,         
                  'Strength came to me, that equall'd my desire —       
               'How Beautiful a thing it was to die        
                      'For God and for my sire!                     

             " 'It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,         
                  'That I subdued me to my father's will;          
               'Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,           
                      'Sweetens the spirit still.
        
                  .       .       .       .       .     

             " 'Moreover, it is written that my race       
                  'Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer           
                    'On Arnon unto Minnith.' " . . .                     

from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture XVI: Jephthah and Samson.
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 393-399