Me too! And what a lovely story to share with your daughters. May they grow into the full blessing of being loved by God💜 Grace and peace, Joanne

pro life?

Thank you, I have been disturbed, too, for years. It makes me think of what faithfulness really means in relationships. When rumors go around meant to tarnish a person’s reputation, their friends are expected to stand up for that person. So when we read a story like this one, what lens are we using? A suspicion that God is, after all, as horrible as the rumors say? Or certainty that there must be an explanation? I decided I would read this story looking for God first, the God I know. And there it was, the story pretty much told itself after that.

​@@GraceandPeaceJoannewhich is what? Human sacrificed?

It is my contention that Jephthah's daughter did not become a human sacrifice, but rather dedicated her life to the service of the tabernacle. That Jephthah made his vow while swept up in the Spirit of God, and did not really know what he was vowing until he saw his daughter. The precedent is Abraham with Isaac, for God never intended that Isaac would become a.saceifice, but rather that Abraham would be willing to give up to God wall that Isaac represented, putting the fuflifillment of God's covenantal promises entirely in God's hands.

And what a wonderful connection to Phillip's daughters! I hadn't thought of that before, and I think you're right. Thank you for blessing me with your good word (as from the Lord).

You and I came to the very same conclusion! That is good exegesis, to begin with the character and ways of God.

Yes, that is a Jesus saying, to let our yes be yes and our no be no, to be people of our word. You and I are thinking along the same lines with this story. Jephthah experienced the heart of God in this, and it is for a reason that he continued as a wise judge of Israel.

I also have heard the kind of teaching you described, and I could never make peace with it. That's what drove me to do a deep dive myself. Grace and peace, Joanne

it is important to note that God did not accept Jephtha’s sacrifice of his daughter because it is against his law to sacrifice one’s son, daughter or any other human being, even if it is to fulfil a vow

​@@GraceandPeaceJoanne,the verse is pretty plain jephtaph made a rash promise to God that he'd sacrifice as a burt offering the first thing to come out of his house on his return,he wouldn't have torn his clothes and cried in agony if he were sending her to a convent he knew what hed promised and it says he carried out that promise which was to offer her as a burnt offering .nothing in the verse says any different.

Amen! You and I followed the same path with this story. The story of Abraham.and Isaac also helps, because Abraham.came first, so Jephthah surely remembered how God showed Abraham how different God is than the gods of Abraham's day.

Thank you for taking time to write out your reading of the text, and your concern about "rewriting" the text. Invariably, there will be a variety of perspectives on any biblical passage based upon our "a prioris." One of mine is the character and nature of God. Because God prevented Abraham from sacrificing his son -- albeit at the last minute -- and provided a sacrifice to take Isaac's place, and because that story preceded Jephthah and his daughter's story, I see the physical killing of Jephthah's daughter as not a viable understanding of what happened. Instead, I believe Abraham's story informs Jephthah's. God provided and alternative. In Jephthah's case (as I sought to explain in the video), his only daughter was his only family, and his only way -- in that time and place -- to gain any sense of his name living on, unless he could find someone willing to give him not only a wife but land. Because he had been denied any inheritance from his father, and because he did not carry his father's name, Jephthah had no other hope for a legacy but in his daughter. So though it might have been an honor, her dedication in service of the temple also cut his name short. Another of my "a priori"s is how the text introduces God, and how Jephthah's vow is introduced (also factors I sought to bring out in the video. The first mention of God comes from Jephthah, an irony that points out his godliness, though he was the illegitimate son, and the elders relative lack of faith, though they were the wise elders. And the way the vow is introduced, it is tightly linked with the Spirit of God: "Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord." (Judges 11:29-30 (NRSV) A vow made while in the grip of God's Spirit will be fulfilled in a way pleasing to God. There are biblical examples of vows made without God's inspiration, and that is made obvious in those texts. All those factors together tell me the surface reading of the text -- that Jephthah's daughter was killed -- is not the accurate understanding of the text. Again, thank you for engaging, I appreciate your concern for God's word. Would that all people held the Bible in such high regard.

And even if she was not killed, it was a great sacrifice to yield his only begotten child to the Lord. He yielded any chance of an earthly inheritance!

Good insight, exactly so! And you join great minds who agree with your insight. Jephthah is commended in two places, one in the Hebrew scriptures, one in the Greek, for having great faith.

The Bible condemns child sacrifice and considers it an abomination. Leviticus 18:21 states that "You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord." The Bible also states that child sacrifice was practiced by some of the Israelites’ neighbors, who burned their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. This practice was considered an abomination by God. Jephthah was a judge and would have been well aware that there is a law in Leviticus forbidding burnt sacrifices of sons or daughters so it's possible that if he did do it it was not because of God.

@@marcusmuse4787 this is exactly where I went in the video. It is my contention that Jephthah made his vow by God's prompting, and redeemed his daughter at the tabernacle, which the Torah also commands, and which was routinely practiced for the firstborn.

@@GraceandPeaceJoanne sorry, I didn't see the whole video before my response.

Thank you for taking time to respond to the story of Jephthah's daughter. I actually spend a good deal of time in the middle of the video talking g about this very misconception, and how Jephthah's vow was made after he is filled with the Spirit of the Lord. The story of Abraham and Isaac precedes the story of Jephthah and his daughter, and acts as the scriptural precedent for understanding this account. Grace and peace, Joanne

@@GraceandPeaceJoanne I understand the story completely, without putting a scriptural spin on it, Abraham was instructed to make a sacrifice of his son by Yahweh, Jaepthah without being asked made a vow to sacrifice without being asked by God to do so. Yahweh knew his daughter would be the first to greet him but agreed anyway, because Yahweh is a moral monster not above child sacrifice.

Ahh, thank you for clarifying your position, I appreciate that. Of course, this is where you and I must part ways, as I read this story through a completely different lens that presumes the goodness of God.

@@GraceandPeaceJoanne “I read this story through a different lens” means you read the story with god glasses on. Nothing in this story shows Yahweh to be a loving god. He wasn’t a loving god when he drowned the world in a flood killing men, women and children (a story borrowed from older cultures) he wasn’t loving when he ordered Joshua to slaughter everybody in the towns they ransacked including the animals, he wasn’t a loving god when he ordered the continue slaughter of all canaanites, or in any other of the many stories where he was responsible for wholesale genocide. I could go on but won’t. You may have gathered I am a secular humanist and historian capable of critical thinking, I read these myths without the benefit of those god glasses which blinds you to the obvious holes in this and many other bible stories.

Where I can agree with you is my bias towards a good God, and your bias as the Biblical God being, at the least, bad. All the stories you mention are certainly troubling, and some of them are told (as you surely know) from a seemingly neutral point of view that appears to be reporting the event without comment. So the both of us have interpreted those stories, or at least -this- story, from our particular perspectives and come up with entirely different findings. No person ever has used critical thinking and the scientific method without bias of some kind, and those biases will guide both the questions and the answers.

Thank you for weighing in Charles. As you may imagine, I do not agree with you about the point of the story. I think the point of the story shows God at work in unexpected ways, guiding Jephthah to dedicate his daughter to a calling he would most likely not have even considered, otherwise, given his time, and the value she represented to him. I see this story as one of those rare situations-particularly for that time and place, when a woman became renowned as a spiritual leader, for the women went out to her every year, for four days. For the women, especially, this yearly retreat must have been quite something. Though she mourned relinquishing the role in society that would ordinarily have brought her standing in her culture, what God had in mind for her memorialized her for millennia, for here we are today, talking about her life. I was puzzled by your last phrase, that I might be telling this story as a children’s book. How do you mean?

Charles Doyle, the story remains whether you want to read it from the Torah, Bible, Qur'an, etc. You need not claim Christianity to understand the story. The creator is the same creator under the sky that blankets all nations, no matter what one chooses to name it. P.S. I have learned so much from children's books. You may try to read some for yourself.

And yet you come to her channel and stay shit like this, If you left the faith stop turning to it then!!!

You have 82 subs and no videos and you had to come on here and say that crap!?

Dear Charles, I am sorry for you because you don't believe the Word of God to help you when you are at a 🥌 and a hard place, and you need Someone bigger than You: and that Someone is the LORD GOD, Creator of heaven and earth 🌎🌍! These are people who lived before the coming of the Messiah, realized that they needed GOD'S protection, provision, and power to sustain them, to have them to survive and thrive against their enemies whom tried to steal and destroy them to nothing, but GOD intervened because they depended upon Him. GOD always fulfilled His Covenant to the Israelites, and He did as long as they depended upon and trusted Him for their protection, provision, and power! That is the example of Jephthah and his daughter. And Yes, GOD, my heavenly Father, is Holy! Absolutely, yes and Amen!!! Everybody needs the LORD, including YOU!!! I pray 🙏 that you would accept Jesus Christ who died for you for the remission of your sins because He is our sin offering. Jesus Christ died for the propitiation for our sins whom endured the cross, despised the shame, conquered death, grave, and hell for mankind, and resurrected from the dead, and sitting next to our good heavenly Father GOD 🙏. Therefore, consider Jesus Christ, the Beloved Son of the Living GOD 🙏❤️! Christianity means to have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Christianity means to believe on the finished works of Jesus on the cross after He shed His blood for you and me and everyone else, and didn't stop 🛑 there: Everything that we need, He provided. Because of Him, we are reconciled to GOD, our heavenly Father. He had stand in the gap for us because He loves us as a sacrificial Lamb of God! He was the promise that GOD gave the chosen people, the Israelites first, then He gave the gospel of grace to the Gentiles, second. That is Christianity. Believe in the revelation of Jesus Christ and the gospel of grace! Check out Hebrews 11. It speaks volumes!!!

Thank you for taking time to write your comment, I appreciate that. I am not familiar with your perspective. What is its background?

@@GraceandPeaceJoanne well when you consider the facts that: Yahweh condoned, commanded or he himself committed: genocide, child murder, child sacrifice, infant baby slaughter, kidnapping of young women and virgin girls, rape, sexual slavery, forced labor slavery, forced abortion, pagan ritualistic blood sacrifices, mass innocent animal slaughter, arson, theft, looting, pillaging, rigged justice systems, brutality, torture, multi-generational curses on innocents because of the “sins” of their great-grandparents, extremely harsh punishments for trivial “offenses” against his own chosen people or leaders (even if they had absolutely nothing to do with said offenses).

@GraceandPeaceJoanne it is my belief that Yawheh is in fact an Annunaki Extraterrestrial, most likely the sky commander Enlil from the old stories (with many parallels in the Bible) of ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians.

@GraceandPeaceJoanne The benevolent Angels in the Bible - the most powerful of all of the Elohim are the most powerful race of ETs in the Milky Way Galaxy - The Pleiadians. Who are also kin of Christ. Christ is the highest ranking Pleiadian Angel

I'm unfamiliar with that cosmology, so thank you for your reply. The Bible is a chronicle of stories, poems, oracles, and wisdom literature that spans about three thousand years, not including the first few chapters of Genesis, and was completed two thousand years ago. There is a potential five thousand year span between you and I today, and the earliest history recorded in the Bible, creating a massive culture gap between our ethos and the ethos of the people that day. For the west, reading the Bible for two thousand years has shaped us far more than we probably realize. The redemptive trajectory that begins in Genesis 3 and travels all throughout Scripture has opened our eyes to all the horrors of the devastation you've described. That does not condone or dismiss what was done in those ancient times, but it does show us the power of that redemptive arc. Rather than see God as the author of all that monstrosity, I see God persevering with a people who would one day bring forth Messiah. Really it is people who came up with all that grisly abomination. We could probably, you and I, go passage by passage, and read the words of God and the commands of God together, but I'm thinking we might come to different conclusions about the why's and wherefore's for God's statements. I also struggle with cherem (which, I think, you might be alluding to with some of those war crimes), but I return to what I know of God's goodness, and God's patience, and hope, one day, I will understand better. In the meantime, everything that happened in those rough early years of the Exodus, the settling of Canaan, the many wars. all happened in ways that were culturally endorsed. Thankfully, we repudiate those ways today--because our western culture has been profoundly changed by the Bible.

Yes, based upon the stories that would have been available to Jephthah at the time, the Law of God, also known by the tribes, the evidence points to Jephthah's daughter becoming a living sacrifice, serving the Lord for the rest of her life.

Thank you for taking the time to write your thought. I'm not quite sure what you mean, though from the context it sounds like your impression of God is not good. It can be hard work to remain self-aware about personal biases, owning the ones we have, and choosing the ones we're willing to let go of, however temporarily, in order the learn something new. One of our kids decided to major in materials science engineering in college, and her freshman class in physics began with the alarming announcement that everything she'd learned in high school was just plain wrong. That physics, applied as well as theoretical, was far too difficult for high schoolers to understand, so a simplified (and wrong) version is taught just to get across basic ideas. She was floored, realizing she was going to have to unlearn everything she knew in order to learn what her class had for her. But that's how I've approached reading the stories about women in the Bible. I've had to let go of what I'd been taught and told in order to see what's really there. And what's there is a very good God who is willing to love and work with really flawed people.

@GraceandPeaceJoanne hey thank you for the reply. Points for audience engagement. I haven't gone to school for theology or history. But I can read. My criticism is that much of what you glean when reading the biblical text, you supplement with other sources about those times and cultures, rather than simply reading what the text actually says. I haven't looked into the meaning behind the hebrew word you cited for a burnt offering and its alternative use. And i will later after work. I think the text clearly implies that he performed a physical sacrifice to God, but even if Jeptha didn't follow through with a burnt offering of his daughter, there are still 40 thousand reasons why Jeptha was a terrible evil warlord that should have been condemned if there is a good and just God.

I see what you mean. Yes, "reading what the text actually says" is harder than one might think. The oldest texts are in Hebrew, and Greek (the Septuagint). The English text is a heroic effort of scholars trying to get across a readable translation that is as faithful as possible to the actual words, and meaning. But consider how hard that is, with thousands of years in between us and the writer (and audience) and the wildly different cultures between us and them. Culture shapes us, including our language. Even today, international diplomacy is a very careful, mindful discipline because of the sometimes terrible gaffes that cause real problems that can happen one one is ignorant of the other's culture and language. Even in English, we can unwittingly offend between American English and British English. So that's why I try to give context, and look at the actual words of the text, not just the English words, and hope to bring across a better idea of what the text actually says, and actually means. I appreciate you giving me a chance to say all that. I'd have wanted to know all those things before I went to seminary. And I, too, value reading what the text really says.