For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time? (Judges 11:26 NIV)

This is what Jephthah, the leader of the Israeli army asks the Ammonites who were trying to take back their land. So if a land is occupied for three hundred years without the earlier residents trying to take it back, then the victors can keep it, right? So what about Jerusalem in 1947? The Israelites had been driven out thousands of years earlier. What was their justification for taking it back?

The main character in these chapters doesn’t even have a name: she is “Jephthah’s daughter”, and he sacrifices her to the Lord. This is one of then most disturbing passages I’ve read so far.

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 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.” When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. (Judges 11:30, 31, 34 NIV)

Is this Isaac and Jacob again? Nope, the Lord doesn’t argue, and He doesn’t stop it. We never even learn her name.

I’ve searched around the Web for apologists’ explanations of this story, and the consensus seems to be that Jephthah couldn’t have really burnt her, because the Lord wouldn’t have let him. All the excuses are circular reasoning, and people desperately trying to explain away r clear text.

Next: Judges 13-15