The sacrifice of sense: Genesis 22:1-19 and Judges 11
The text for last Sunday is a profound and disturbing story that takes us into the very heart of religious violence.
It is a well-known text. It is powerful and evocative. It deliberately focuses on the main protagonist of Abraham and ignores the potential thoughts and feelings of other characters in the story. It is a story that demands our full attention and should be examined from many points of view.
Part of why it is disturbing is that even today, people carry out acts of violence against children and claim they have heard God directly authorising such violence. In our modern culture, we call such people criminally insane and lock them up.
Despite this, many today will hear this story, and praise Abraham for his great faith and obedience to God. I am sure that you must have heard sermons that have this as the central message. Despite the fact that Abraham is prepared to plunge a knife in his hapless son’s throat, few Christian people suggest that Abraham should be locked up. Is it because we accept that God was always going to save Isaac? Is it because it is so far removed from our time and life that it is a little like hearing a fairy story?
In Abraham’s day, human sacrifice – killing and then burning the remains of human beings of all ages – would not have been understood as madness, violence, or abuse, but as something that demonstrated devotion to the greater good – and the greater god. It was a terrible and costly price to pay but seen by many in the cultures of the Ancient Near East as necessary from time to time to placate angry gods, or ensure a good harvest.
Some biblical scholars believe that the Isaac story was written to counter such practices, and the Law expressly prohibited any sort of human sacrifice. That this law was deemed necessary suggests that such sacrifices had indeed taken place.
It is easy for us to interpret this as the ultimate test of faith that Abraham passes. But surely the story should be raising other questions for us. How did this affect Isaac? How did he feel when bound by his own father to a sacrificial bier? What did he think when he saw the knife about to plunge into his throat? How could he ever trust his father again? What sort of a God demands such a terrible test of faith?
We find another such story of a child presented for sacrifice in the book of the Judges (Judges 11:29-40), a story about a man called Jephthah, who was commanding the Israelite army who were fighting the Ammonites. The story says that “the spirit of the LORD came upon him”, and Jephthah made a vow stating that if God delivered the enemy to him, Jephthah would sacrifice the first living thing to come out of the doors of his house to meet him. It would seem that God accepted his oath, because he was successful in defeating the enemy.
Jephthah goes home, and his daughter, his only child, is first out to meet him with music and dancing, to celebrate his victory. When he sees her, he tears his clothes, and says, “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.”
What does the daughter of Jephthah do? Rather than blaming her father for his vow, she agrees that he cannot take it back, and she is willing to be sacrificed. And sacrificed she is, after she mourns her fate for two months.
This does raise the question of where God was when this child was being sacrificed for a father faithfully carrying out his oath. Why did no angel call out, why was no ram found in the thicket for her? Is it because girls were not valued as highly as sons? Why don’t we celebrate Jephthah’s daughter for her faith? Have most of us even heard of her?
Isaac is saved by divine intervention and the daughter of Jephthah is saved by no one. Why do we continue to retell only one of these stories in our churches? Why do we laud one father as having great faith and great wisdom and not the other father?
Our own Christian tradition has consistently interpreted as faithful obedience what would be considered religious infanticide in any other setting in history. Jephthah is labelled mostly as a madman who is cursed by God, Abraham is labelled father of faith. Why?
Where are the Isaacs and daughters of Jephthah today? Are they listed as statistics in royal commissions, silenced and hidden? What happens to them if they speak? Do we just sit back, and half-heartedly hope for a miracle, only to find Jephthah’s daughter lies broken and bleeding on our doorstep and Isaac has profound depression and suicidal thoughts? Do we remember every year the names of those who have died by violence at the hands of those they loved and should have been able to trust?
Perhaps it is time we gave a lot more thought as to how we should respond as Christians to such stories today.
The attached video is shows artist Kevin Rolly giving Jephthah’s daughter a face. The music accompanying the painting is With This Love by Peter Gabriel
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