What Was the Name of Jephthah's Daughter, and What Is the Full Depth of the Story

Greetings and blessings

Our rabbis disagreed about what became of Jephthah's daughter. Some say [the commentators according to the plain meaning] that the vow was made conditionally: if the one who came out to meet Jephthah would be a human being who could not be brought as a sacrifice, then the meaning of Jephthah's vow, `then I will offer him up as a burnt offering, would be that she would be secluded and isolated from people and devoted solely to the service of Hashem, and that is in fact what he did to her: he built her a house far from the settlement, brought her there, and she remained there secluded from people and from the ways of the world. And it was an established custom in Israel that from year to year the daughters of Israel would go to her. So wrote the commentary of Radak and Ralbag on Judges, chapter 11.

And some say that the meaning of the verses is literal, that Jephthah offered her as a sacrifice to Hashem, and so held the sages in the Talmud and in the Midrashim. Thus they said in tractate Ta'anit, first chapter (4a), regarding what Jeremiah said, when Jeremiah saw the men of his generation slaughtering their sons and offering them up on the altar, he protested against them, and they said to him: Did not Jephthah offer his daughter upon a platform? Did not Mesha king of Moab offer up his son on the wall? And we learn from Abraham who bound his son upon the altar. The Holy Spirit replies and says: Is this not that which I commanded not, and did not speak, and did not enter My mind (Jeremiah 19)? That which I did not command is the son of Mesha king of Moab, as it is written: And he took his firstborn son, who should have reigned in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall (II Kings 3). And did not speak is Jephthah's daughter. And did not enter My mind is Isaac son of Abraham.

Indeed, there was here a chain of errors that led to the tragic result of her being brought as a sacrifice, contrary to the law of halacha, and the root of the error was explained by the Ramban (Leviticus, chapter 27, verse 29); see there. And Ben Ish Hai, in his book Amrei Binah, takes a middle path between the explanations, namely that Jephthah did not slaughter his daughter with his own hands, but rather, because she separated herself from the world, she began to fast, and the reduction of her flesh and blood was as a burnt offering to Hashem, until she died at an early age. This is the intent of the sages when they said that he brought her up as a burnt offering, meaning that he caused her a reduction of flesh and blood, which is considered before Hashem like a burnt offering, as we say in the prayer after a fast. And this is the wording of Midrash Tanchuma (Parashat Bechukotai):

When a man makes an extraordinary vow concerning souls, thus it is written: the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and the wise wins souls (Proverbs 11). If a person is righteous, and even though he is righteous he does not engage in Torah, he has nothing in his hand. Rather, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life - this is Torah, for through being a Torah scholar he learns how to win souls, as it is said: and the wise wins souls. If he vows to evaluate souls, he learns from the Torah how to do it; and if he has no Torah, he has nothing. So you find with Jephthah the Gileadite: because he was not a Torah scholar, he lost his daughter. When was this? When he fought with the children of Ammon and vowed at that time, as it is said (Judges 11): And Jephthah vowed a vow, etc., and whatever comes out, etc., shall be Hashem's and I will offer it up as a burnt offering. At that time the anger of Hashem was upon him. He said: If a dog or a pig or a camel had come out of his house, would he have offered it before Me? Therefore He brought his daughter to him.

Why all this? So that all those who make vows should learn the laws of vows and dedications, so as not to err in vows. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him, and when he saw her he tore his clothes and said: Alas, my daughter, etc., and I have opened my mouth to Hashem, and I cannot go back. But was not Pinchas there, and he says, I cannot go back? Rather, Pinchas said: I am a High Priest, son of a High Priest, and how shall I go to a common man? Jephthah said: I am the head of the judges of Israel, the chief of the officers; shall I humble myself and go to a commoner? Between the two of them the matter came forth, and that maiden was lost from Israel, and both of them were held accountable for her blood. From Pinchas the Divine Presence departed [for seventy-two years, and during all this time the priesthood was taken from Pinchas, as it is said: Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? (Jeremiah 8)]. Jephthah's bones were scattered [for he became ill and his limbs fell off and he was buried in many places], as it is written: and he was buried in the cities of Gilead. So far.

[Now certainly the simple meaning cannot be that way, for even the least of the least would not let his pride stand before his eyes in such a place of life-threatening danger for his daughter, and moreover she was his only child, and all the more so Jephthah, who was the great one of his generation and merited a spirit akin to prophetic inspiration. And although in relation to Moses, Aaron, and Samuel he is considered lesser, he is not lesser in our terms. We would have been consumed and nullified before the greatness of Moses and Aaron, yet he is counted with them in one breath. Rather, the holy books explain that Jephthah made an accounting: if there had been grounds to annul his vow, surely Pinchas would have come of his own accord to annul it or to tell him that such a vow had no validity. But he thought that the vow had been made with the consent of the public and in a time of distress, and that such a vow cannot be dissolved, and why should he go in vain to Pinchas? Pinchas, for his part, thought that if Jephthah wanted to annul his vow, he would surely come, and if so, apparently he wanted it that way, and how could he hint to him to ask about his vow? But in the depths of the soul, they are blamed because in such a life-threatening situation one does not rely on the uprightness of another, that he would surely awaken on his own, and so on. And for this they were punished so bitterly.

Indeed, there was here a chain of mistakes: first, that there was no validity to it at all, and second, that it could be annulled, and so on, and so on. However, according to what is explained in the Midrash, there was a reason why Hashem did not open their eyes to such obvious matters, because of Jephthah's sin in slaughtering the sons of Ephraim, which apparently had already occurred before he brought his daughter for slaughter.

And this is the wording of the Midrash further on: When he sought to bring her near, she was weeping before him. His daughter said to him: My father, I went out to meet you with joy, and you are slaughtering me? Did Hashem perhaps write in the Torah that Israel should offer human souls before Hashem? It is not written in the Torah, When a man from among you brings an offering to Hashem, from the animals (Leviticus 1) - from the animals and not from human beings. He said to her: My daughter, I vowed, and whatever comes out, shall be, and I will offer it as a burnt offering. Can every person who vows refrain from paying his vow? She said to him: But behold, our father Jacob vowed, And of all that You shall give me, etc. (Genesis 28), and Hashem gave him twelve sons. Did he offer one of them to Hashem? She said all these things to him, but he did not listen to her.

When she saw that he did not listen to her, she said to him: Leave me and I will go down to the court, perhaps they will find a basis for your vow, as it is said (Judges 11): Let me go for two months, and I will go and descend upon the mountains, etc. Rabbi Zekharia said: Is there a person who descends upon the mountains? Do not people ascend to mountains? What is I will go and descend upon the mountains? These are the Sanhedrin, as it is said: Hear, O mountains, Hashem's controversy (Micah 6). She went to them, and they did not find a basis for Jephthah, nor could they annul his vow because of the sin of those he slaughtered from the tribe of Ephraim. And concerning him it is said (Proverbs 28): A poor man who oppresses the poor is a sweeping rain and no bread. A poor man who oppresses the poor - this is Jephthah, who was poor in Torah like the trunk of a sycamore tree, and who oppressed the poor, as it is said (Judges 12): And they said to him, Please say Shibboleth, and he said Sibboleth, and he could not frame it right. And he was slaughtering them; therefore, it is a sweeping rain and there is no bread - he had someone who could annul his vow, but there is no bread, because Hashem concealed the law from them so that they would not find a basis to annul his vow. He went up and slaughtered her, and the Holy Spirit cried out: souls I wanted you to offer before Me - that which I did not command, and did not speak, and did not enter My mind (Jeremiah 7). That which I did not command - to Abraham that he should slaughter his son, but I told him, Do not send your hand, to make known to all the nations the belovedness of Abraham, who did not withhold his only one from Me to do the will of his Creator. And did not speak to Jephthah to offer his daughter.

Therefore Jephthah needed great rectification for the deed he had done. And it is already written in Sefer Hasidim - Siman 644, that although sincerity is a very great thing among the righteous, that is not so in our case. And this is his wording: "A person who thinks to do a mitzvah, but it is not a mitzvah but rather a transgression, and he did it because he had no one to ask, receives reward like the daughters of Lot; but if he had someone to ask and did not ask, he is punished, like Uzzah, and like Jephthah who did not want to ask Pinchas about his vow, to save his daughter." Therefore he was forced to make amends through various reincarnations.

Reincarnation, form one (R. Menachem Azariah of Fano - Sefer Gilgulim Neshamot - letter bet): Jephthah's soul was the wife of Ham, who became pregnant from the sons of God in licentiousness before the Flood and carried Sihon, brother of Og, in her womb. If not, how did he survive the Flood? For Og was broad upon the ark. Therefore Ham served on the ark in order to cover up her licentiousness with the sons of God. And now, when she came in this reincarnation for her rectification, many troubles passed over her. Therefore, in order to rectify her, she was brought near by her father, according to those who say that she was slaughtered.

And she later came in the reincarnation of the daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon, who was the reincarnation of Jephthah, and was burned for the sanctification of Hashem to repair what he had done in Jephthah's time. And there too he was pronouncing the Name with its letters, in the manner of what is said of Jephthah: and I have opened my mouth to Hashem, and I cannot go back. And the daughter was saved, because she had already been rectified earlier in her rectification by being slaughtered. And when that daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon was placed in a brothel, she guarded herself so as not to sin through licentiousness, as she had previously done in the reincarnation of the wife of Ham, as told in the Talmud, and Rabbi Meir, who was her brother-in-law, saved her when he saw that she was virtuous, for Rabbi Meir tested her to see whether she was maintaining her purity. And the wife of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon was handed over for execution because she did not protest against him, because Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon pronounced the Name of Hashem with its letters, and she was also his wife when he was Jephthah. And just as she did not protest then against offering the daughter, so now she did not protest against his pronunciation of the Name.

Reincarnation, form two: in Chomat Anach of our master the Chida, it is brought בשם Sefer HaLikkutim of the Arizal, that Jephthah was a spark of Zimri and his daughter a spark of Kozbi. And because at first he died because she caused him to stumble, here they came again, so that she should be killed by him. The Chida explained thereby what she said to him: You have forced me, a doubled expression, meaning that you had joy in my blood when I was killed by Pinchas; in this reincarnation you have forced me that I should be punished through you by the removal of limbs. And see Maf'alot Temim De'im, that this was Pinchas the man who was zealous for his God, and when the law was hidden from the congregation of Israel, he arose and killed Kozbi and Zimri. For this he merited the covenant of an eternal priesthood. And now he came again into their hands, and now that law was hidden from his hand, and the gift was lost for a time because he did not save her from slaughter.

I saw in Sefer Devash Lefi (section Peh, letter Zayin) of the Chida a wondrous thing according to this, regarding the intent of our sages in saying that Jephthah said: I am the head of the officers of Israel, and I am going to Pinchas. That is, I am the reincarnation of Zimri, who was a prince of Israel, and it is not enough that Pinchas killed me; I am still going and humbling myself before him to ask for an annulment of my vow. And Pinchas, who knew the root of the matter, should have gone to rectify it, just as he had rectified it by killing them in the previous reincarnation. And how do these two matters connect together? I thought in this manner: according to the doctrine of reincarnation of the Arizal, Zimri and Kozbi are in fact Dinah and Shechem son of Hamor, as written in the writings of the Arizal and brought in Sefer Avodat Yisrael (Parashat Pinchas), as follows: It is written in the writings that Zimri was a reincarnation of Shechem son of Hamor. And Kozbi was a reincarnation of Dinah. For in the heavenly judgment Shechem argued in his first reincarnation: Since I came from uncircumcised and impure Hamor, therefore I did not subdue my inclination. And there is also no wonder that Dinah, daughter of Jacob, maintained her righteousness, since she was from the seed of Israel. Therefore they showed him the sequence in reverse, and he was reincarnated as Zimri son of Salu, prince of a father's house among the Simeonites, and nevertheless he defiled the covenant, and she did not want this, as it is stated in Midrash Rabbah (Bamidbar Rabbah 20), that they seized her forelock against her will, see there.

And the Arizal wrote, and the Or HaChaim HaKadosh brought it, that Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon was a spark absorbed in the shell of Shechem and was first redeemed through Dinah, and this is alluded to in the verse where Shechem son of Hamor said to the sons of Jacob, (Genesis 34:21) "And the land, behold, broad was the yadeim, רחבת ידים" - Rechavt is an acronym for Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon, whose holy spark was hidden in Shechem son of Hamor. Therefore Dinah's soul attached itself to that impure gentile, because she sensed that there was a holy spark in him. And these are the words of the Arizal, that Zimri, who is Shechem, then came in reincarnation as Jephthah, and they complete the words of R. Menachem Azariah of Fano, that afterward Jephthah came in the reincarnation of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon. Thus Dinah is Kozbi, and then came again in Jephthah's daughter, and again came in the daughter of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon. A marvel of marvels. And it all goes to one place. As far as I know, the name of Jephthah's daughter in that reincarnation was not explained.

Success - Menashe Yisrael