The Story of Jephthah and his Daughter: Then and Now 339 YHWH imposed a morally reprehensible duty to sacrifice the first- born. Gen 22 has YHWH initially command the slaying of Isaac. Mic 6,7 can only be taken to say that child-sacrifice is wrong per se if (improbably, most think) it is taken also totally to reject animal sacrifice. Mesha’s offering of his son and heir in 2 Kgs 3,27 is represented as effective: it causes the withdrawal of the Israelite forces from Moab. It is quite possible, therefore, that the story of Jephthah’s daughter was originally understood on the lines that Levenson interprets it: it may have been rash of Jephthah to make such an open vow, but his execution of it was no less than his bounden duty, since as his only child his daughter belonged to YHWH. (The fact, it may be noted, that in 11,36 the daughter does not protest suggests that the story ultimately derives from circles in which such practices of child sacrifice were accepted.) YHWH by not intervening (perhaps indeed by arranging for the daughter to be the first on the scene) was in effect, Levenson says, “exercising his claim upon the first-born” (31). This, I say, may quite possibly be how the story was originally understood in the oral tradition, but in the context of the Book of Judges as it has come down to us, I cannot take the sacrifice as something morally acceptable, in view of the unfavourable view of Jephthah which (as I see it) the book portrays. Boling describes Jephthah as an “exemplary Yahwist judge” (32); this is not my reading of him. Furthermore, in 10,6 and 11,9 evidence has already been noted of Deuteronomic editing of the Jephthah cycle, and from a Deuteronomic perspective the immorality of human sacrifice is incontrovertible (cf. Deut 12,31; 18,10). What of the propriety of the vow in the text as it has come down to us? The ancient Jewish and Christian commentators took the view that this was an improper oath. What if an unclean animal had presented itself (33)? Josephus says that Jephthah’s vow to sacrifice the first living creature he met was “neither lawful nor pleasing to God” (Ant. 5 § 266). It was a rash oath, say the Apostolic Constitutions (7,37). One is inclined to agree. If, however, as argued above, a human being is specifically intended, in violation of the prohibition on human sacrifice, the vow is more than rash; it is morally repugnant. As noted earlier, the Book of Judges invites one to read its (31) LEVENSON, Death and Resurrection, 16. (32) R.G. BOLING, Judges (AB 6A; New York 1975) 210 (cf. 205). (33) So, for example GenR 60,3, LevR 37,4, and Ps Philo, LAB 39.