Lecture 32: Jephthah's Vow, and the Book That Should Have Been Named David

The lecture, section by section

1. The vow: two positions

   Judges 11 has drawn more ink than any other passage in the book. Position A, the majority view from the rabbis and church fathers onward, holds that Jephthah fulfilled his vow by dedicating his daughter to perpetual virginity at the sanctuary; its advocates point to 1 Samuel 14, where the people refuse to let Saul carry out his rash oath. But between Jephthah and Saul stands the ministry of Samuel and a changed Israel. Position B, now the majority among contemporary commentators and Essex's own, reads the narrative at face value: he offered her as a burnt offering, remembering always that narrative describes what happened, never what should have happened.

2. The Spirit's enablement

   Position A leans on 11:29, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, arguing the Spirit would not permit such an act. Essex answers from the pattern of Judges and Samuel: the Spirit's coming upon these men is not a salvific or sanctifying ministry but a theocratic enablement, power to accomplish the task assigned, here, victory over Ammon. It guarantees the deliverance, not the deliverer's judgment.

3. One conjunction

   The exegetical hinge is the vav of 11:31: whatever comes out of the doors of my house shall be the Lord's, and, or or, I will offer it up as a burnt offering. The disjunctive reading, either dedicated or offered, is grammatically possible but rare; in narrative the vav is ordinarily consecutive, and the older translation choice has itself been reversed in the updated NASB. Read normally, the dedication and the offering are one thing: it shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.

4. The narrative's own weight

   The details lean the same way. The one who comes out with tambourines and dancing is his daughter, his only child; Jephthah tears his clothes and, tellingly, blames her, you have brought me very low, though she had done nothing but rejoice in the victory. She submits, asks two months to weep for her virginity in the mountains, and returns to a father who did to her according to the vow which he had made, and she knew no man. And the yearly custom of Israel's daughters is best read, with the stronger textual tradition, as four days of lamentation, not mere commemoration. One does not lament a consecration.

5. What the vow reveals

   The conclusion fits the book's argument: as Israel spiraled down, the judges sank with their generation, men of faith, per Hebrews 11, and yet men who could weigh a rash vow above the Torah's horror of human sacrifice. They were the best of the lot Yahweh had to raise up, and the lot was worsening. Preachers should decide the question before entering the pulpit, and those who take position B should expect pushback, since what little teaching congregations have heard on the passage has usually been A.

6. Preaching severity

   Judges is a book of God's discipline, and a church culture eager for reminders of God's love has a hard time with his severity, to use Paul's pairing from Romans 11. Both are here: the kindness of deliverers raised up and rest granted shines against the backdrop of judgment on covenant disloyalty. Block is right that the book belongs in today's pulpits, for the era's motto, everyone doing what is right in his own eyes, describes a consumer religiosity that has invaded the church. And a sober word falls out of the story: God often gives his people the leaders they deserve. The record of the judges does not close until 1 Samuel 7, where wayward Eli gives way to Samuel, the last judge, who returns to the standard Othniel set at the beginning.

7. Samuel: one book, divided late

   First and Second Samuel are one book artificially divided, sometime between the canon's close around 400 BC and the Septuagint, when long scrolls were split for the synagogues of the dispersion. The Hebrew title is simply Samuel; the Septuagint called the halves First and Second Kingdoms, the Vulgate First and Second Kings, numbering our Kings as Third and Fourth. And unlike the Torah, the Former Prophets are not one literary unit but four distinct books gathered into one canonical division, with Samuel at their center.

8. Slow down: 140 years in the longest book

   The proportions preach. Joshua and Judges together run about forty-five chapters for roughly 350 years; Kings will spend forty-seven chapters on its own 350. Samuel, in between, is longer than Joshua and Judges combined and a little longer than Kings, yet covers only about 140 years, from Samuel's birth around 1110 BC to David's last words around 970, overlapping the end of the judges era. More material for less time is the Spirit's way of saying: slow down here. And within the book the pace slows further still, settling on the last fifty-five years of one man's life.

9. The book that is really about David

   That man is David, the most extensively used name in the Old Testament, given more narrative than Abraham's thirteen chapters, Jacob's twenty-five, or even Moses from Exodus 2 to Deuteronomy 34. Named first at 1 Samuel 16, he is prepared for from Hannah's song in chapter 2 onward; Chronicles will retell his house, and Matthew will open the New Testament with him: Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. From the fourth century to the Reformation the book was read almost purely as David prefiguring the greater David; Calvin restored the history without denying the typology, preaching Samuel as instruction in godliness that points forward to Christ, which, Essex adds, is the way we should preach it.

10. Sources under one Spirit

    The book's to-this-day notices again point back to eye and ear witnesses, and Essex has no quarrel with the prophet-author using written sources, the book of Jashar exists, and the Chronicler will openly name his. Enlightenment criticism spent two centuries dissecting the supposed documents, surveyed in Merrill's chapter, but the last generation has returned to reading the book whole: whatever lay on the author's desk, one Spirit directed one prophet to draw the theological lessons of the era from beginning to end. Fittingly, Samuel has led the modern renewal of Old Testament narrative preaching, the book graduates reach for even before Genesis, and Essex's unscientific explanation is simple: we worship the Son of David, and that makes us want to know David.

1. Narrative describes what happened, not what should have happened, and Essex reads the vow accordingly. Why is that principle so important for reading Old Testament stories, and where have you seen it ignored?

2. God often gives his people the leaders they deserve. How should that sober sentence shape the way a congregation prays for and evaluates its leaders, and itself?

3. Essex traces the renewed hunger for Samuel to a simple instinct: we worship the Son of David, so we want to know David. What do you actually know of David's story, and what would it take to read Samuel this season with that instinct?