The Neighborhood Podcast

"Jephthah's Daughter" (July 20, 2025 Sermon)

• Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

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Preacher: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing 

Text: Judges 11

Scripture's darkest stories demand our attention, not our avoidance. The horrific tale of Jephthah and his daughter from Judges 11 forces us to confront how religion can be weaponized to justify violence against the vulnerable.

The sermon traces Jephthah's journey from outcast to military leader, examining his desperate quest for validation and power. After making an unprompted vow to sacrifice whoever first greets him upon returning from battle, his only daughter becomes the victim of his ambition. Rather than taking responsibility, Jephthah blames her: "You have become the cause of great trouble to me." This victim-blaming mirrors patterns we see in domestic violence today.

Following womanist scholar Wilda Gafney's lead, the sermon names this nameless biblical victim "Niqtelah," meaning "she was killed" in Hebrew. This act of naming restores dignity to someone erased by patriarchal violence. The sermon challenges us to consider our complicity when we remain silent witnesses to abuse. During Niqtelah's two-month mourning period before her death, an entire community knew what was coming yet failed to intervene.

Just because a story appears in Scripture doesn't mean God endorses the actions depicted. We must discern between what is merely recorded and what is divinely approved. God never requested Jephthah's violent vow. Today, we continue to see religion manipulated through Christian nationalism, fundamentalism, and misuse of biblical texts to maintain harmful power dynamics.

The sermon concludes with a powerful alternative vow: to never use religion as a tool for harm. By wrestling honestly with these difficult texts, we honor victims of violence and commit ourselves to creating communities where such abuses cannot flourish.

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Speaker 1:

The scripture reading today is from Judges 11, 29 through 40. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and then from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said if you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return victorious from the Ammonites, that shall be the Lord's to be offered up by me as a burnt offering. So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them, from Aurora to the neighborhood of Minneth, twenty towns and as far as Alba Karaman. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

Speaker 1:

Then Jephthah came to his home in Mizpah and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child. He had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You have become the cause of great trouble to me, for I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot take back my vow. She said to him my father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.

Speaker 1:

And she said to her father, let this thing be done for me. Grant me two months so that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity. My companions and I Go, he said. Then he sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. At the end of two months she returned to her father who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

Speaker 2:

Friends, let us pray, o Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, o Lord. So, friends, there is no avoiding it this is one of the most disturbing and perhaps irredeemable stories in all of Scripture. It's one of those stories that maybe leaves us feeling a little bit sick to our stomach when we mutter holy wisdom, holy word, thanks be to God. After it ends. What wisdom, what word, what gratitude could possibly be offered for this text, and what God would approve of such senseless violence? Well, it may be tempting to focus solely on the scriptures, on the stories of scripture that uplift and comfort us. We have a moral duty to confront the entirety of Scripture, including its most horrific parts, and trust that God continues to speak through it. I also believe that it's important to acknowledge that we don't always have to say yes to scripture. Sometimes, a faithful response to a difficult text like today is to simply say no, this was wrong. No, god does not endorse this. No, we will not excuse the violence within it and the violence that we see like it out in the world. And so, trusting in God's spirit to guide us through the horror of this text. Let us begin the horror of this text. Let us begin.

Speaker 2:

A man named Jephthah was desperate for a win. Jephthah was the bastard child of his father's affair with another woman, likely a prostitute, and his half-brothers never let him forget it. In fact, they kicked him out of the family, disowned, disinherited and despised. Jephthah fled his family's wrath and settled off in a distant land where he became involved in a band of outlaws. This is in the part of the scripture that preceded the part that Debbie read for us today. So he goes out, he gets involved with a group of miscreants. However, some time passes and the very family that kicked him out started whistling a different tune. When their circumstances changed, you see, the Ammonites decided to wage war against their tribe and Jephthah's family needed all hands on deck to defend their land. So they called Jephthah back and said Jephthah, we need your help, we need you to come, lead us to victory.

Speaker 2:

Jephthah decided to use this as leverage to make a comeback. Jephthah agreed to return and to lead the Israelites to victory, but he made a deal beforehand. He said he would do so only if, upon his successful return, that he would be restored to the family and, more importantly, he leverages it so that when he wins he will be granted political power and privilege. Once he returns home, his family accepts those terms and then he heads to the battlefront and on the way he inexplicably makes a rash, impulsive decision. He vowed to God that if God would grant him victory, that he would sacrifice the first thing that greeted him when he returned home. Y'all. It must be noted here that God did not ask Jephthah to make this vow. Jephthah, and Jephthah alone, was the impetus for this horrible, horrible decision. And and here things get a little bit more complicated some some biblical scholars suggest that the translation is a little ambiguous as to whether he said that he would sacrifice whoever came to greet him or whatever came to greet him. Supporters of the whatever argument say that maybe he expected an animal to be the first thing that he saw, like a sheep or a goat, the. The original NRSV translated it as whoever comes out of the doors, so the updated NRSV changes it to whatever comes out of the doors. Either way, you have to ask yourself would you make that vow?

Speaker 2:

Advocates have tried to exonerate Jephthah over the years, and their attempts to get him off the hook are almost just as horrifying as his actions, and those that try to get him off the hook often overlook the fact that it was common back then for women and girls to greet their husbands and fathers with singing and with dancing when they returned home from battle. It happened all the time. Surely, they argued, jephthah must have known that it was a strong possibility that the first thing that he saw upon returning from battle would be his daughter. So the text, at least to me, seems rather clear. Jephthah's political ambitions trumped his concern for his family's safety and welfare. He decided somewhere along the way that the ritualistic sacrifice of his only child, his daughter, was a price he was willing to pay to succeed in battle and gain power over those who he believed had done him wrong. And what makes this barbaric vow even more grotesque is that he made it after. The text explicitly states that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. We must not mistake this for God's endorsement of Jephthah's actions. But that the Spirit was already upon him before he made this vow raises the question why didn't Jephthah trust God to grant him victory without making such a horrific, unprompted promise?

Speaker 2:

Jephthah's vow was nothing more than theological manipulation to justify violence against women. Well, jephthah wins the battle and he returns home and, as I said, as was the tradition, the women of the household or in this case the girl of household, for Jephthah's mother isn't mentioned here come to greet the men. Jephthah's daughter, tragically and through no fault of her own, runs towards her father to greet him with love, and what happens next is nothing more than victim blaming. Alas, my daughter. He exclaims you have brought me very low. You have become for me the cause of great trouble for me.

Speaker 2:

This is a common refrain for abusers in domestic violence situations. The abuser never takes responsibility or holds themselves accountable. Instead, they manipulate the victim and gaslight them into believing that the violence is somehow a punishment of their own making. A faithful reading of this text recognizes this gaslighting for what it is and clearly disavows it. So at this point in the sermon, we're going to give Jephthah's daughter a name because, as womanist scholar Wilda Gaffney points out, her namelessness in this story is in itself an act of violence. So you and I, for the remainder of this sermon, will refer to Jephthah's daughter as Nictela. We'll say it up on your screen there Nictela. Everyone say that together, nictela. Nictela is the name that Wilda Gaffney gives for her because in Hebrew it simply means she was killed.

Speaker 2:

Her father cruelly blames her for his actions and I wish, as I'm sure you do too, that maybe she had been able to find within herself a way to respond differently. No, father, no, this is not of God's doing. This was your choice, and I refuse to be the collateral damage of your shameless pursuit of power and privilege. We wish that Nik Tila had stood up for herself, that she would leave her abuser, but those who have experience in situations of domestic violence know that such decisions are much, much more complicated than we would like them to be. Instead, nektila concedes she does ask for something. She asks she does ask for something. She asks for two months to mourn with her friends in the mountains before the thing is done. And then the thing is done Jephthah kills his daughter, and the story ends with a note that, because of this senseless domestic violence, moving forward, the daughters of Israel would observe four days every year to go out to the mountains to mourn Nick Taylor's murder.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's an act of protest, not only for Jephthah's heinous actions, but also a protest of the violence inflicted on women and girls everywhere. So what do we do with this text of terror we certainly. It's very tempting, when these things happen, to bury them, to pretend that it never happened and to move on with our lives, but burying these stories only perpetuates the very violence in them that we find so repulsive. No, I think that the church must wrestle with this story and those like it, because only in doing so can we, as practitioners of faith, as followers of Jesus Christ, can interrupt cycles of violence, observations that I hope honor Nick Tilla and the girls and the women and the people like her who suffer gender-based acts of violence.

Speaker 2:

First of all, I want to reiterate that just because a story is in the Bible does not mean that God automatically endorses the actions of the characters within it. We must pay attention to God's divine no, that divine no that comes from God's voice. It's not in the text, but I choose to believe that God gave a divine no to Jephthah during the gap between him making his vow and fulfilling it. I think that Jephthah chose not to listen to God's no, and I think he instead listened to the voices in his head telling him that his political power was more important than someone else's life, in this case his daughter's life. Secondly, lynn Jopinga, who wrote the book that we're reading this summer, suggests that this text of terror is the result of what happens when bad religion, bad parenting and bad judgment collide, and it's the bad religion part of that equation I want to focus on for just a second.

Speaker 2:

Religion can be a beautiful thing. Can be a beautiful thing. It can be a shared identity and story that unites us and people of all kinds of faith, that can foster healing and justice in the world. Many kinds of religions have the potential to bring out the best in us and to bend that moral arc of the universe towards justice. But you and I also know that religion can spoil and rot. Jephthah chose to manipulate his religion, not God's, to gain power and privilege. Where do we see today, here and now, religion being weaponized, not to serve our neighbors but to dominate and to intimidate and to oppress? Christian nationalism twists and distorts religion to shift from a theology of abundance to a theology of greed. Faith leaders quote scripture to victims of domestic violence to pressure them into staying in abusive relationships. Fundamentalism in many religions, including our own, subjugates the vulnerable among us in a pursuit of rigid doctrines that rarely promote justice, love and kindness and humility. And so together, I think you and I can use the language of this story to condemn such practices and work together to find a better way.

Speaker 2:

And a final question that I want to lift up for us this day is where was everyone else when this was going down? The text shows us that Niktila spent two months with her ostensibly many friends mourning the violence that was about to be inflicted on her. Therefore, it's fair to assume that the larger community knew what was coming. Where were they? Why didn't somebody pull Jephthah aside and said don't do this? Pulled Jephthah aside and said don't do this? Why didn't anyone come to rescue Nektila and take her away from an abusive situation? Where were her advocates? Now, to be sure, jephthah is to blame for the violence done to Nektila, but he isn't the only one who shares the blame. All those who chose to keep silent share a bit of the blame as well, and this is why we must do better. This is why we have child protection policies and sexual misconduct policies. This is why myself and every other elder in this church, past and present, is a mandatory reporter in the state of North Carolina. This is why we must hold each other accountable, so that we can protect one another in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2:

So I'll conclude with just a brief story that happened to me yesterday when I was struggling to write this sermon. I don't know what the heck I was thinking preaching on this sermon. It was a difficult one to write and I imagine it's also a difficult one to listen to. I was putting the finishing touches in my office upstairs at our home when Winnie, our three-year-old daughter, came to visit me and curled up in my lap. Let me tell you it's a bizarre feeling writing a sermon on today's text with your daughter in your lap. But in this case maybe it was divinely inspired, because writing this sermon was a heavy thing and Winnie brought some much needed playfulness and levity to me in that moment.

Speaker 2:

Winnie came into my office dressed in her ballet leotard, holding a big bag of pirate's booty as a snack. It's her favorite snack currently. It's good stuff and she graciously offered to share it with me. And she asked to sit with me. And, as fate would happen to it, I've been on a yacht rock binge lately. So I was listening to Journey. Anybody know the band Journey and their great song Love and Touch, and Squeezin' with that famous outro. You know how it goes Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na. Swaying back and forth, she picked up the melody pretty quickly and a big grin spread across her face. I went yes, my kid, this is Yacht Rock, you are welcome.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and then, Hazel Grace came and entered the room and she started dancing too, and as the song, and there to make a vow to God, a different kind of vow. I vowed to God to never use my religion to bring harm to either one of my daughters or to anyone else, and I invite you to make that vow with me today, because I think that's a vow that God wholeheartedly endorses. In the name of God, the creator, redeemer and sustainer, may all of us, god's beloved children, say Amen.