Burnt offerings

[Jayne]

On 7/22/2022 at 7:02 PM, R. Hartono said:

A vow by man can easily be cancelled if it is understood to be wrong instead of causing such misery and God Will forgive

During Jephthath's day, that was not true.  Numbers 30:2 proves that.

And I can only tell you what the Bible says.  I know it's not pleasant to think of him killing his daughter as a burnt offering, but the Bible makes that plain.

• He made a rash, unbiblical, and stupid vow:  "And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: 'If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.'"
• He KEPT the vow:  " After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin."

The Bible says he vowed to burn to death whatever came from his house first.  The Bible says he kept his vow.

Let's don't rewrite portions of the Bible because it insults our sensitivites.

 

 

 

[The_Patriot21]

I'm actually not aware of anywhere in the Bible God let someone out of a vow they made to Him. When a covenant was broken there were always severe consequences, usually involving enslavement and/or death. 

 

[R. Hartono]

On 7/23/2022 at 9:49 PM, The_Patriot21 said:

Where can you find that in the Bible?

Its true God demanded fulfillment of vow but its also true that God is not pleased with vow at all so .....

Matt 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all....

@Jayne

@Deborah_

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by R. Hartono

[The_Patriot21]

11 hours ago, R. Hartono said:

Its true God demanded fulfillment of vow but its also true that God is not pleased with vow at all so .....

Matt 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all....

@Jayne

@Deborah_

 

Indeed...He said it was better to not make it in the first place...doesn't say He forgives the vow. Kinda proves my point and disproves yours, does it not?

[Dennis1209]

It is not explicitly stated or known for sure her fate. It is troubling and heart-wrenching and I do not know. With tough questions like these, and problems in my own life I have no answers to, these verses pop into my head.

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

I would like to think there was an alternate way for the vow to be fulfilled. Of all the commentaries I have read on this, I like Matthew Henry’s the best.

Yet there are some difficult questions that do arise upon this story which have very much employed the pens of learned men. I will say but little respecting them, because Mr. Poole has discussed them very fully in his English annotations.

(1.) It is hard to say what Jephthah did to his daughter in performance of his vow. [1.] Some think he only shut her up for a nun, and that it being unlawful, according to one part of his vow (for they make it disjunctive), to offer her up for a burnt-offering, he thus, according to the other part, engaged her to be the Lord’s, that is, totally to sequester herself from all the affairs of this life, and consequently from marriage, and to employ herself wholly in the acts of devotion all her days. That which countenances this opinion is that she is said to bewail her virginity (v. 37, 38) and that she knew no man, v. 39. But, if he sacrificed her, it was proper enough for her to bewail, not her death, because that was intended to be for the honour of God, and she would undergo it cheerfully, but that unhappy circumstance of it which made it more grievous to her than any other, because she was her father’s only child, in whom he hoped his name and family would be built up, that she was unmarried, and so left no issue to inherit her father’s honour and estate; therefore it is particularly taken notice of (v. 34) that besides her he had neither son nor daughter. But that which makes me think Jephthah did not go about thus to satisfy his vow, or evade it rather,

Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume. Hendrickson, 1994, p. 354.