Jiftach

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The judges of Israel
Book of Judges

1. Book of Samuel

Jiftach ( Hebrew יִפְתָּח"He will open", also Jephtah , Jephtah or Jephta ) was a judge in Israel for six years according to the Old Testament book of judges ( Judges 10.6–12.7  EU ) . He is best known for a vow to sacrifice his daughter, which he made to YHWH , the God of Israel.

Biblical report

Return of Jephthah , Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

Jiftach, the natural son of Gilead and a prostitute , is driven from his paternal inheritance by his tribesmen and leads a private life in the land of Tob . In the threat posed by the Ammonites , however, he is elected leader by the Gileadites ( Judges 11.1–12.7  EU ). Endowed with divine spirit, Jiftach first tries to negotiate with the king of the Ammonites. He accuses Israel of having occupied their land when they left Egypt . Jiftach alleges that YHWH himself gave the land to the Israelites. Since the Ammonite King does not get involved, war breaks out. Jiftach previously vows in the YHWH sanctuary of Mizpah that after a victory he will sacrifice what comes first when he returns from his house. The Ammonites are beaten. On his return, Jiftach meets his daughter, his only child, dancing. He keeps his vow and sacrifices his daughter. But the Ephraimites are jealous that Jiftach achieved victory without them and attack him, resulting in a massacre of the Ephraimites on the banks of the Jordan . Then Jiftach rules Israel as a judge for six years (12.7).

Jiftach's daughter

Jiftach offers his daughter ( Speculum Humanae Salvationis , Westphalia or Cologne, around 1360)

As a military leader against the Ammonites, Jiftach vowed to YHWH in the event of victory to sacrifice what he would meet first on his return on his doorstep: “What goes out to my door when I come back in peace from the children of Ammon, that should be of the Lord, and I will offer it for a burnt offering ”(11:31). This was ("with timpani and dance") his own daughter, his only child. Your name is not mentioned. The encounter scene (11: 35–37) describes Jiftach's heartbreaking declaration to the daughter (“I can't revoke it”) and her consent (“do as it went out of your mouth”). However, she asks for a two-month period "that I go down from there to the mountains and weep my virginity with my playmates" (11:37). Upon her return, “he did her as he had promised” (11:39). The passage ends with the announcement that every year all the women of Israel mourn the daughter of Jiftach during a four-day mourning period (11.40).

The irritation that emanates from this obvious human sacrifice has shaped the history of interpretation for centuries. Many attempts have been made to mitigate the objectionable nature of the story through text denial or interpretation. Mostly one invokes the fact that the sacrifice itself is not explicitly described. This, however, expresses the concerns that were already in effect in the biblical process of tradition. It does not change the fact as such. Luther's statement is final: "Some are of the firm belief that she was not sacrificed, but the text is too clear to admit this interpretation."

The resistance to Jiftach's vow, which is already recognizable in the text itself, is biblically anchored in the principle of the Mosaic Law , according to which YHWH branded the religious sacrifice of people as a despicable act (cf. Lev 18,21  LUT ; 20,2–5 LUT ; Dtn 12, 31  LUT ). After all, it was precisely the numerous human sacrifices of the peoples inhabiting Canaan that caused YHWH to tell the Israelites, his chosen people, to destroy these nations when they came to land after they left Egypt. The special mention of Jiftach in the letter to the Hebrews (11.32 LUT ) also contradicts such an assumed action.

The story in 2 Kings 3, 26-27  EU has a biblical equivalent , where the king of Moab, as a last attempt during a siege, sacrifices his eldest son, the heir to the throne, to his god Kemosh and thus brings about the change. In contrast to the story of Isaac's sacrifice by Abraham ( Gen 22.1–14  EU ), YHWH does not intervene with Jiftach and does not remit the sacrifice.

The Talmud teaches that Jiftach only had to pay the proceeds in money for the daughter, but generally condemns such an illegal vow, while newer interpreters want to understand “sacrifice” as the consecration of the daughter to a virgin life and others see a myth in the story . The fact that she wept for her virginity is understood by some interpreters of the Bible to mean that because of her obligation to serve in the temple in the tabernacle, she was never allowed to marry and therefore could not have children of her own. This was a real sacrifice for both her and her father because she was Jiftach's only child and Jiftach had no family ties of her own even as an illegitimate child.

Battle against the Ephraimites

Ephraim opens the fight against Gilead and his general Jiftach, since he had gone alone against the Ammonites ( Judg 12,1  EU ). Ephraim is subject to the Gileadites and Gilead then occupies the fords of the Jordan to Ephraim so that the fleeing Ephraimites could not return home.

In the tradition of the war against the Ephraimites the meaning of the slogan is made clear. It was " Shibboleth ". The fugitive Ephraimites gave themselves away by pronouncing this Hebrew word as Sibboleth . The number of those killed was put at 42,000 ( Ri 12.5–6  EU ).

Origin of the story

There is no agreement about the origin of the Jiftach cycle. The introduction (10.6–16) is mostly viewed as deuteronomistic , but the rest of the narrative is assessed differently. In particular, the account of Jiftach's vows and the sacrifice of the daughter is often viewed in isolation. The fact that almost the same legends can be found in the Greek sagas of Iphigenia and Idomeneus may indicate a mutual influence between the Jewish and Greek legends , which is why the story sometimes dates to the Hellenistic epoch and is therefore viewed as a later addition to the book of judges . Timo Veijola, for example, considers the story of Jiftach's daughter and that of Isaac's sacrifice to be post-deuteronomistic. The etiology of the festival is consequently considered by Thomas Römer to be even later and is related to Iphigenia in Aulis des Euripides .

Other researchers point to the archaic element and see the memorial for Jiftach's daughter as a Canaanite tradition. Such a festival is not mentioned anywhere else in the Old Testament . If it were a rite of passage ( "rite of passage"). The fact that the daughter “with her playmates” does not go to a (YHWH) sanctuary but to the mountains is an indication of a female initiation rite , analogous to the Iphigeny tradition with the Artemis cult in Brauron , where adolescent girls were subjected to initiation rites . The sacrifice of Jiftach's daughter is a holdover from the earlier matriarchy , when preferred daughters were sacrificed. In prehistoric times, the abuse of the initiates developed into an exemplary ritual murder before it was replaced by animal sacrifice . The cruel ritual murder of Jiftach's daughter was only preserved in the biblical text because it laid down the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy (the father sacrifices the daughter to the father deity).

reception

The material formed the basis for musical, literary and works of visual art:

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Jephthah  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Luther translation, revision from 1912.
  2. ↑ Further voices from the history of interpretation: [1] .
  3. ↑ David Marcus, Jephthah and his vow , Texas 1986, p. 50f (there also a list of further arguments for and against the execution of the victim).
  4. ↑ So Heinz-Dieter Neef : Jephta and his daughter (Jdc XI 29-40) , in: Vetus Testamentum 49, 1999, pp. 206-217
  5. ↑ Timo Veijola: The Sacrifice of Abraham - Paradigm of Faith from the Post-Exilic Age , in: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 85 (1988), pp. 129-164.
  6. ↑ Thomas Römer: Why would the Deuteronomist tell us? , in: Journal of Biblical Literature 77 (1998), pp. 27-38; Pp. 28-30
  7. ↑ See Andreas Scherer:  Jeftah. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
  8. ↑ a b Michaela Bauks : Traditional historical considerations on the namelessness of Jiftach's daughter (Ri 11: 29-40)
  9. ↑ a b Fritz Erik Hoevels : Jephta murder case: The trail leads to Brauron . In: System ubw, magazine for classical psychoanalysis . Volume 31 / issue 1. Ahriman-Verlag, October 2013, ISSN  0724-7923 , p. 44-66 .
  10. ↑ Hyam Maccoby : The Holy Executioner. The human sacrifice and the legacy of guilt . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7995-0096-0 , p. 125 f .
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