A broken tulip

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Your brothers chased you out and away for being illegitimate.
The elders ask you to come back;
“If you bring me back I will be chief over you,”

your condition. They agree. Yes. Sure. Just please
get rid of the Ammonites.

It mattered to you, didn’t it?
To be allowed to return.

You made an oath that if you truly came back from battle
you would offer the first thing out of your home
as a burnt offering.

No one since, not Jewish, not Christian,
has understood why you spoke such foolishness.

So you battle and you win.
Man of many words to the Ammonite king,
little ink is spilled describing your victory

only that God gave it to you
and no one can say why God would give it
knowing your foolish oath.

You came back. Safe. Victorious.
Jepthath, you came back. She rose
to greet you with dancing, timbrels

like Miriam of old. Your daughter.
Your only daughter. Besides her you have
no child, no home. After today, to whom will you

return? “My child,” you say.
“I have opened my mouth to God
and it can not be turned back.” Your words will never

return. She understands, accepts that her life
will be offered for your victory. Jepthah
of many words, you are mute when she begs leave

to mourn for two months, to weep
the end of her life, a life without knowing a man.
She fast approaches a fate from which there is no return.

She knows the story about only-child Isaac, bound to wood.
She knows about the ram caught in the bush
yet she never asks, “my father, where is

the lamb?”

Who named you, Jepthah?
Your mother—your father?
Why did they choose to call you,

“set free”?

Did your mother the prostitute hope
you would deliver a people?
Or did your family know you would always wander?

When it mattered most,
where was the divine voice,
why did you not set your child free?
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We are so familiar with the story of Isaac being offered by an obedient Abraham, but the offering of Jepthah’s daughter in Judges 11 is a horrifying mirror story. God is acknowledged as giving Jepthah a victory which is conditioned with this young woman’s death—and offering no ram, no voice, no thunder to save her.
Robert Alter’s translation highlights the repetitive use of “return” in Jepthah’s story. It becomes a narrative device, tying everything together.
Judges chapter 11 closes with the remark that this is the young women of Israel still go out for four days to mourn Jepthah’s daughter. This doesn’t offer us an answer but it is a cue for us as well to take time to remember and mourn the young women who have died needlessly in the name of God. Jepthah’s daughter’s life was cut short. Perhaps we remember too the ways the church has cut short the life of young women in other ways—curtailing potential and silencing them in the name of God.
I am not pointing fingers here, just asking that we slow down and acknowledge… This story is not the last time that men who are mightily moved by the Spirit of God to liberate an entire people make faulty judgments and God remains silent. Real women live out real consequences of those judgment calls.
I posted “Where are the angels?” two days ago. That was a lament of violence towards women and perhaps it was easier for some of us to keep it at arms length. Perhaps we may think that we, the people of God, are not guilty of such acts. This story, however, demands a closer look and a deeper repentance.

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Featured image by Annie Spratt.