Chukat 5773: Bat Yiftach haGileadi (Jephthah's Daughter)

This week’s Haftorah is from Shoftim/Judges 11:1-33. Its correlation to the Torah portion is the battle against Sichon which is recalled in the Haftorah before the judge Yiftach haGileadi (Jepthah) engages in battle against the Ammonites. Yiftach then vows to G-d: “If You deliver the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the L-rd’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” The Haftorah ends with Yiftach’s victory. The disturbing story that follows (Shoftim/Judges 11:34-40) involves his daughter, who is unnamed. To celebrate her father’s success, Yiftach’s daughter comes out of their home, dancing with a timbrel. Yiftach rents his clothing, distressed that he now must fulfill his vow and sacrifice his only child. Yiftach’s daughter is level-headed. She says: “My father, you opened your mouth unto the L-rd; do unto me according to that which came out of your mouth…let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months that I may depart and go down to the mountains and bewail my virginity and my companions.” The Midrash (Tanchuma Bechukotai) sheds light on the daughter’s response. Using her knowledge of Torah, she challenges her father. “Did G-d write in His Torah that Israel should sacrifice human lives before G-d? Does it not say in Vayikra (Leviticus) 1:2 ‘when a man among you brings an offering to Hashem from an animal’ – and not from humans?  Yaakov Avinu (Jacob, our patriarch) in Bereishit (Genesis) 28:22 vowed ‘whatever you will give me, I will tithe you’ and G-d gave him twelve sons. Did he sacrifice one of them?” Despite his daughter’s challenge, Yiftach, a man unschooled in Torah, does not believe he can annul his vow. However, he does allow his daughter to go down to the mountains. Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Greenbaum explains the strange wording. “What she was really saying was, ‘let me go down to the elders of the Sanhedrin (who are called mountains) in case they can find some release clause from your vow.’” Because Yiftach’s daughter asks thought-provoking, challenging questions of her father and the Sanhedrin, the Midrash sometimes refers to her as Sheilah, from the Hebrew root sha’ol, to ask or to demand. The Midrash Tanchuma says, “If a person does not have a Torah in his hand, he has nothing. So you find regarding Yiftach haGileadi: because he was not a ben Torah (Torah scholar and practitioner) he lost his daughter.” Had Yiftach known something about the teachings of the Torah, he would have known that Torah explicitly forbids human sacrifice.  And Yiftach would also have known how to annul his oath. In fact, Midrash notes that out of false pride, Yiftach misses the opportunity to consult with Pinchas, the learned high priest who has the power to absolve vows. The Sanhedrin unfortunately does not find a way to release Yiftach from his vow. “After two months’ time, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed.”  The daughter’s fate is ambiguous and the subject of much commentary since the text does not explicitly state that Yiftach kills his daughter. Rabbi Moshe Reiss writes that the word in the vow, olah, from the Hebrew root “to go up” can mean burnt offering or some other form of consecration. Many commentators suggest that perhaps Yiftach merely offers his daughter into the lifetime service of G-d, thus forfeiting marriage and motherhood and terminating Yiftach’s lineage. The text is clear that Yiftach’s daughter remains a virgin. “She had never known a man. So it became a custom in Israel for the maidens of Israel to go every year, for four days in the year, and chant dirges lamenting the daughter of Yiftach haGileadi.” And what becomes of Yiftach? “He was buried in the cities of Gilead.” According to the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 60:3, Vayikra Rabbah 37:4), G-d punishes Yiftach: his limbs fall off one by one and each is buried in the city in which it fell. http://www.azamra.org/Bible/Judges%2011-12.htm http://www.moshereiss.org/articles/21_jephthah.htm http://www.kby.org/english/torat-yavneh/view.asp?id=3812