[1] Several years ago-1999, to be exact-Hollywood came out with
a movie called The General's Daughter. Starring John
Travolta and Madeleine Stowe, and set on a major military base in
Georgia, it told of an investigation into the suspicious death of a
woman officer at the base, who also happens to be the daughter of
the base's commanding general. To all initial appearances,
she had died in a quite grisly manner: her nude body was found
staked out on a training ground at the base, her panties were
wrapped around her neck, and bruise markings were found on her face
and upper torso. As is usual with a murder-mystery, a number
of twists and turns in the plot occur as the story unfolds.
Eventually, though, we find out that her death is linked to events
that had happened years previously while she was a cadet at West
Point. It was at a time when women were just beginning to be
admitted as students into the various military academies.
And, as has often been the case when women have entered areas that
were previously the exclusive province of men, there was
resistance. But for this daughter the resistance took an
especially extreme and violent turn. While on night-time
training maneuvers, she was accosted by several of her male fellow
cadets. They stripped her, tied her up, and repeatedly raped
her. At dawn, barely alive, she was found by other cadets and
air-lifted to a hospital. Her physical recovery took
weeks. When her father, who at this time was a career
military officer making his way up through the ranks, visited her
later, he not so subtly suggested that what had happened to her was
of little import and asked that she forget about it, put it out of
her mind. In fact, his exact words were: "it never
happened." It's clear that his suggestion is motivated by
concerns for his own upwardly-mobile career. Indeed, his own
superior officers had advised him to hush up the incident. It
would not do him any good professionally to have a family member,
also in the military, who broke ranks and spoke up about felonies
perpetrated by West Point cadets, a group of men destined to be the
next generation's best and brightest leaders of the military.
So the general sacrifices his daughter's well-being for his career;
eventually, as the investigators finally discover, this sacrifice
leads to her death.1
[2] Now this movie could just as well have been titled
"Jephthah's Daughter"-in reference to a story found in the biblical
book of Judges. For the themes, players, and plot moves in
both stories are remarkably alike. But that means that this
little known story in the Bible has more to say to us today than we
have been wont to recognize.
[3] In brief, the biblical story is as follows. Jephthah,
the central character of the narrative, has for a father the
renowned Gilead; but his mother is a prostitute. This stain
on his legitimacy causes his half-brothers-sons of Gilead's wife-to
drive him away from the family household. Striking out on his
own, he gathers other outcasts around him and becomes the head of
an outlaw band, a sort of army-for-hire. Soon Jephthah wins
renown for his exploits, so much so that when the Gileadites find
themselves hard-pressed by their enemies (the Ammonites), they ask
Jephthah for his help. Jephthah agrees, though not without
winning from the Gileadites the concession that if he is
victorious, he will rule over them. They accede to his
terms. Then, before the big battle with the Ammonites,
Jephthah pronounces a vow to the Lord: "If you will give the
Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my
house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites,
shall be the LORD's, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering"
(Judges 11:30). Well, sure enough, Jephthah is
victorious. And the first person out of his house to greet
him on his return is his daughter. Although she asks her
father for a two month stay on the execution, during which she
wanders the mountains with her companions and grieves, at the end
of that time period she does return to her father, and, according
to the text, her father, "did with her according to the vow he had
made" (Judges 11:39).
[4] A daughter killed by her father to fulfill a vow, a vow
motivated by the father's desire for social standing and respect-no
wonder most readers of the Bible have never encountered this
text. It's not in the lectionary. It is not a part of
any Sunday school curriculum that I've ever heard about. Even
professional biblical scholars, who more often than not pride
themselves on treating the entirety of the Bible, tend to talk
"around" or past this text. Sometimes they do so by focusing
on the text's wider literary context. In this way, they
stress how the book of Judges precedes and prepares the way for the
following book of Samuel and its record of the rise of Israel's
monarchy, first in the person of Saul and then in David. The
editorial tags found scattered throughout the book of Judges are
especially indicative, in that they comment on how such-and-such
happened at a time when "there was no king in Israel; all the
people did what was right in their own eyes" (Judges 21:25; cf.
also Judges 19:1; 18:1). Thus, Judges 11 becomes a sort of
proof-text, evidence for how bad and lawless the people can be
without a king to rule over them-the obvious conclusion being that
Israel needs to establish a kingship. Another way
scholars treat this text also depends on it functioning as an
anti-type of what is good and right to do. In this case the
focus is on the father's sacrifice of his daughter and the rarity
of such episodes in the Hebrew Bible. Judges 11 then becomes
the exception that proves the rule that the people of the Bible
normally do not sacrifice their children; the moral superiority of
the ancient Israelites is thereby proved, especially
vis-à-vis other so-called primitive peoples, who supposedly
did practice child sacrifice. Oftentimes in this
interpretation reference is also made to Genesis 22 and Abraham's
"almost" sacrifice of his son, Isaac, which further proves the
Israelite rejection of child sacrifice. Of course, since the
nameless daughter of Judges 11 really is killed, while Isaac, the
son of Abraham, is, in Genesis 22, allowed to live, another message
is also conveyed: the higher expendability of daughters as compared
to sons in the Bible.
[5] One of the problems, though, with these scholarly readings
of the Judges 11 story is that they distance it from our
present-day reality. Its values, concerns, and meanings come
to have no claim on us and our lives. It even allows for a
feeling of moral superiority. After all, we live neither in a
time of outlaws nor in a time of kings; our political system is a
democracy, presumably the most perfect political system on
earth. Further, in our own quite civilized time, we no longer
sacrifice our children.
[6] Or do we? Did you know that "out of every ten children
murdered in the world, nine lived in the United
States"?2
In the United States today, a child under five is killed every
fourteen hours; every five hours, a youth between fifteen and
nineteen is killed.3 The killing
happens everywhere-it is no respecter of differentiations based on
race, class, ethnicity, or geography. It also happens in an
almost unimaginable variety of ways: children have been
whipped, beaten, burned, starved, drowned, poisoned, bitten,
knifed, shot, and buried alive.4 And besides
killing them, we also hurt children horribly: physical and
sexual abuse is all too common,5 and poverty subjects 16%
of our country's children to an existence deprived of many of the
basics of food, shelter, clothing, health care, and
education.6
[7] Our sacrificing of children can also be more subtle, though
still very damaging. It can happen every time a parent tries
to live his or her life through a child. One example, and one
which I see far too often as a college professor, is that of
parents who dictate to their children what their school, major,
and/or career should be. How often have I listened over the
years to students agonizing over the conflict between what their
parents demand and what they themselves want for their lives.
Often a mixture of love and financial obligation makes it
difficult, if not impossible, for these students to break free of
their parents' expectations. And yet if they are not ever
able to do so, they are at risk of great unhappiness, for they face
the very real possibility of living a life not of their own
choosing or making.
[8] So much sacrificing of children, so much pain and hurt…in the midst of it all, where is God?
When we turn to the biblical story of Jephthah sacrificing his
daughter and ask that question, we discover that God is not easy to
find. That's because although God is referred to fairly
frequently, God Himself never actually speaks or interacts with any
of the human actors. In other words, God is present, but it's
a silent presence. It's as if God is hovering over and around
the actors, watching and listening to all that goes on, but without
ever actively interposing Himself into the events themselves.
Of particular note is that God does not solicit the vow from
Jephthah. Nor, after the pronouncement of the vow, does God
say anything, whether good or ill, about it. Now as someone
who earnestly wants to believe in God's goodness, I deeply regret
this silence on the part of God. Why didn't God speak up and
say to Jephthah, "What are you thinking of? Do you realize
how careless and reckless your words are? You better be
careful what you wish/vow for…" But God doesn't interrupt
Jephthah's words, just as God so often does not actively interfere
with our world and prevent misdeeds from happening-even though so
often we dearly wish God would do so. But that's one of the
challenging truths about our world-God has given us our freedom to
do with as we will, even if what we will is terribly misguided and
leads to horrifying ends. God is no deus ex
machina.
[9] But perhaps God's silence in this story can also be
understood another way. Perhaps God is simply struck dumb
both that Jephthah vowed and what he
vowed. After all, even before Jephthah makes the vow, the
text says that God's Spirit came upon him (v. 29). If God had
already divinely empowered Jephthah, what need is there for a
vow? Is Jephthah here trying to manipulate God, forcing God
into a guarantee that the outcome will be good-instead of simply
trusting to the divine spirit that now resides within him? Is
Jephthah so lacking in faith? Indeed, I think he is.
And this lack of faith leads to a further tragedy: a certain
recklessness in the wording of his vow. In the Hebrew of what
he says the relative pronoun referring to that which will come out
of his house (asher) can mean either "whoever" or
"whatever." It could thus as easily refer to an animal as a
person (v. 31). Given that animals were normally stabled in
the room just inside the entrance of an Israelite house, does
Jephthah imagine or hope that a sheep or goat will be the first
thing he will encounter on his return? And yet, Jephthah
would also know that it was a regular custom in his time for young
women to come out and greet returning, victorious warriors with
song and dance. Does he not consider that latter
possibility? If not, how foolish; if yes, how chilling, for
it would mean Jephthah deliberately willed the death of his
daughter.
[10] And so God is silent-a silence borne of the shock that
Jephthah is so lacking in faith, and so arrogant, that he makes a
vow attempting to manipulate God. And then, as the vow itself
unfolds, and its callous and careless wording becomes apparent,
God's silence amplifies, reverberating and echoing in the vast
emptiness that has become God's outrage and horror. Far,
then, from being disappointed by God's silence, we can honor it, be
thankful for it, and share it. For are we not also shocked by
Jephthah's vow and all that it leads to? And are we not
outraged by the fact that so many of our children are
sacrificed? And are we not horror-stricken by the myriad ways
in which that sacrificing is accomplished? God's silence is
our silence; and our silence is God's silence. God stands
with us, and together we recoil at the ways-whether careless or
deliberate-in which words are pronounced and deeds are done that
lead to the pain and death of so many sacrificed
children.
[11] But silence should not be all that there is. For the
story does not end in silence. There needs also to be
understanding, even, perhaps, understanding for Jephthah, the
primary perpetrator of the violence. Why does he do what he
does? Arguably it's prompted at least in part out of his own
sense of inferiority and thus his consequent desire and drive for
recognition and affirmation. Recall that his childhood was
less than ideal: Jephthah was an illegitimate child, with a
nameless, forgotten prostitute as his mother and a father who
failed to defend him or watch out for him. Driven out of
home, village, and country, he was a rootless, isolated man who
likely always felt inadequate, even worthless. Deprived of
love, respect, and self-acceptance-things that all of us crave-is
it not easier to understand the extreme, even if misguided, lengths
to which Jephthah goes to try to achieve them? Moreover, it's
not just a matter of Jephthah being selfishly concerned about his
own needs. He can argue that there is also a more high-minded
motive: to save a whole people, his people, the Gileadites, from
their enemy, the Ammonites. He could readily rationalize-and
it is not so difficult to accede to such rationalizations-that it
is worth it to give one life up, even if it his own daughter's, if
so many others can be saved. Thus, his own needs get mixed in
with the needs of a whole people.
[12] But understanding cannot, and must not, excuse
violence. The sacrificing of anyone-but especially
children-is always wrong. And so understanding must not be
all that there is, for understanding on its own does not effect
change-and so the sacrificing of children will inevitably
continue. What then? Turn to the story one final time
and discover what is missing: the community. No
one-whether family members, servants, kin relations, or
villagers-steps in to stop Jephthah's vow, prevent the later
killing of the daughter. Their silence and their lack of
action makes them also responsible in the death of the
daughter. It's only the young women-relatively powerless
members in that society-who stand with the daughter. And
their actions are limited to sharing her grief. Although
mourning is a powerful way of acknowledging the importance of the
young woman's life, and so state all that will be lost with her
death, it's not enough. What was needed were more
persons in positions of power and influence to question Jephthah,
to stop the sacrifice, to negotiate a different ending. There
needed to be an active communal response preventing Jephthah's
sacrifice of his daughter, just as today the whole community is
needed-led by those with money, votes, influence, education-to
enact the changes, both globally and locally, that will end the
sacrificing of our children. Maybe, then, God will be moved
beyond the silence to help us enact a new world in which never
again do our children suffer and die. Otherwise, the
sacrificing will continue; and God's continued silence-by the very
fact of its silence-will be an accusation holding us all
accountable for the ongoing suffering and dying of our
children.
© May 2004
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 4, Issue 5
1 Although only a fictional movie, the story resonates
quite well with the realities still experienced by women in the
military academies. The very week I wrote this piece, Time magazine
came out with a number of statistics pertaining to the experiences
of female cadets of the class of 2003 at the U. S. Air Force
Academy: 1) 11.7% had been victims of rape or attempted rape during
their time at the academy; 2) 22.3% were pressured "for sexual
favors"; and 3) 68.7% had been victims of sexual harassment. See
TIME, Sept. 8, 2003, pg. 14. Under "Numbers"
2 United Nations Children's Fund Report, quoted in Carol
Delaney, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pg. 235.
3 Ibid.
4 I derived this list from Delaney's book. The complete
listing is even more horrifying. "Children have been whipped,
beaten, starved, drowned, smashed against walls and floors, held in
ice water baths, exposed to extremes of outdoor temperatures,
burned with hot irons and steam pipes. Children have been tied and
kept in upright positions for long periods. They have been
systematically exposed to electric shock; forced to swallow pepper,
soil, feces, urine, vinegar, alcohol, and other odious materials;
buried alive; had scalding water poured over their genitals; had
their limbs held in open fire; placed in roadways where automobiles
would run over them; placed on roofs and fire escapes in such a
manner as to fall off; bitten, knifed, and shot; had their eyes
gouged out" David Bakan, Slaughter of the Innocents: A Study of the
Battered Child Phenomenon (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pg. 4
[quoted in Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial, pgs. 235-36].
5 According to one set of statistics, one in five to one
in three girls, and one in sixteen to one in eleven boys are
physically sexually abused by the age of eighteen. See Pamela
Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the
Church's Response (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pg. 152.
6 Poverty is here defined according to the levels set by
the federal government, which, in 2003, was anything at or below
$18,400 for a family of four. Note that sixteen percent is
equivalent to 12 million children. Further, of this percentage, 7%
(or 5 million children) live in extreme poverty, which means their
parents made half the federal poverty level. And since research
shows that, in most areas of the United States, it actually takes
roughly double the federal poverty level to provide a family with
the basic necessities of life, the number of children living in
such situations (i.e., where their parents made 200% of the federal
poverty line or below) is a staggering 27 million - or 38% of all
American children. National Center for
Children in Poverty. Accessed September 15, 2003.