Ask the Christian

[Justtristo]

Yes, He offered her as a spiritual burnt offering to the Lord, to serve Him in chastity. Again, why do you think she was mourning her virginity? Why do you think the passage highlighted the fact that after he fulfilled his vow that she never knew a man? It's pretty obvious what is going on if you actually read the text. Again, human sacrifice was against Gods law. There is no way that would be acceptable.

And wikipedia as an authority on the bible? That's pretty hilarious.

I will happily quote Judges 11:29-40 from the Holman Standard Christian Bible which I own a copy.

The Spirit of the LORD came on Jephthah, who traveled through Gilead and Manasseh, and then through Mizpah of Gilead. He crossed over to the Ammonites from Mizpah of Gilead. Jephthah made this vow to the LORD: "If You will hand over the Ammonites to me, whatever comes out of the doors of my house to greet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites will belong to the LORD, and I will offer it as a burnt offering."

Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD handed them over to him. He defeated 20 of their cities with a great slaughter from Aroer all the way to the entrance of Minnith and to Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

When Jephthah went to his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no other son or daughter besides her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, "No! [Not] my daughter! You have devastated me! You have brought great misery on me. I have given my word to the LORD and cannot take [it] back.

Then she said to him, "My father, you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have said, for the LORD brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites." She also said to her father, "Let me do this one thing: Let me wander two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity."

"Go," he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned to her father, and he kept the vow he had made about her. And she had never been intimate with a man. Now it became a custom in Israel [that] four days each year the young women of Israel would commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

It is clear from this particular passage that Jephthah "offered" his daughter as a burnt offering. Because that was the vow he had to Yahweh and he kept the vow after his daugther came back from "lamenting her virginity". Since I am guessing you are familiar with what a burnt offering is in the bible. Thus, we can be confident that Jephthah in this killed his daughter and then burnt her body as an offering to Yahweh.

Although I get a feeling this story was old when the book of Judges was written (probably in the 6th or 5th centuries B.C.E), which described why a certain custom came about, back in the days when it was custom for Israelites to "pass children through the fire" to the gods (including likely Yahweh who was likely the chief god of the Israelites).