Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

This noble child of faith certainly was equal to her father’s trial, and lovingly replied, “My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth.”

There has been much discussion as to the real meaning of Jephthah’s vow, and the real fate of his lovely, obedient daughter. That the daughter of Jephthah was really offered up to God in sacrifice, slain by the hand of her father and then burned, is a horrible conclusion, and contrary to all we know of his life, upon which we have dwelt at some length in order to bring out its characteristics. With such a sweet trust and confidence in God as is manifest in his every act, we can not believe that either Jephthah meant to make a human sacrifice, or that his daughter so understood it. There are several passages and constructions which can leave no doubt in the mind of the candid reader that such was not the literal intention, and that this fair child of faith and obedience was not to be slain upon the altar like the children of Ammon before their god of fire, but that her fresh life was given in all its purity as a living sacrifice of separation and life of service to Jehovah.

In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy we find the most solemn warnings given to Israel against imitating in the least degree the cruel and wicked rites of the Ammonites, especially in offering human sacrifices. Now these Ammonites were the very people against whom Jephthah had gone forth to war, and as godly follower of Jehovah he must have been familiar with the commandments of the book of Deuteronomy. For him, therefore, to directly disobey these solemn injunctions would have been to prove false to all his character and all the meaning of his victory in the name of Jehovah.

Again, in the twelfth chapter of Exodus, it is clearly taught that the first-born of Israel were all to be recognized as the Lord’s, and liable, therefore, to death, like the Egyptian first-born. But, instead of their lives being literally required, they were redeemed by the blood of a lamb, and the Paschal lamb was offered instead of the life of the Hebrew, and that life was still regarded as wholly the Lord’s, given to Him in living consecration, of which the whole tribe of Levi was regarded as the type, and therefore it was separated unto the service of the Lord as a substitute for the lives of the first-born.

In all this was clearly taught the lesson that what God required from His people was not a dead body, but a “living sacrifice.” It is much harder to live for God than to die for God. It takes much less spiritual and moral power to leap into the conflict and fling a life away in the excitement of the battle than it does to live through fifty years of misunderstanding, pain and temptation. It would have been easier for Jephthah’s daughter to have lain down amid the flowers of spring, the chants and songs of a religious ceremonial, the tears and songs of the people who loved her, and know that her name would be forever enshrined, than to go out from the bright circle of human society and all the charms of youth and beauty and domestic and social delight, and live as a recluse for God alone, giving up the dearest hope of every Hebrew woman, not only to be a mother, but to be the mother of the promised Christ; giving up also, along with her father, the fond desire of a son to share his honor and his sceptre, to prolong his name. All this it meant. This was the sacrifice she made. And so we read that she did not go aside to bewail her approaching death, but she went aside for two months to bewail her “virginity,” the loneliness of her own life, then gladly gave her life a living sacrifice to God.

There are several other considerations that might be added if necessary to establish this construction of the passage. It is enough to briefly refer to the fact that the phrase in the eleventh chapter of Judges, verse thirty-nine, is in the future tense, and refers to her future virginity and not her past, and also that the translation of the fortieth verse in one of our versions, is that the daughters of Israel went yearly “to talk” with the daughter of Jephthah four times in a year. It is not necessary to pursue the argument further. Enough for our present purpose that we catch the inspired lesson. That lesson is supreme, unqualified, unquestioning fidelity to God.

How tender and beautiful the lesson which this passage gives to the young as well as the old! Just as Isaac stands out in the older story in a light as glorious as Abraham in yonder sacrifice on Mount Moriah, so Jephthah’s daughter’s sacrifice must not be forgotten in the honor we pay her father. Sweet child of single-hearted consecration! God help her sisters and her followers to be as true. Oh, beloved, do not wait until desire shall fail and age chill the pulses of ardent youth, and the world fall away from you itself. But when the flowers are blooming, and the cup is brimming, and the heart beats high with earthly love and joy and hope, then it is so sweet, it is so wise, it is so rare, to pour all at His blessed feet, as Mary poured her ointment on His head, and some day to receive it back amid the bloom and peals of yonder land, where they that have forsaken friends and treasures, fond affections and brightest prospects for His dear sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall have the still richer joy of knowing that they have learned His spirit and understood His love.

Following the story of Jephthah’s daughter and her heroic self-sacrifice, we next come to the touching scenes and incidents related in the life of Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. This is, confessedly, one of the sweetest idyls ever written. As a singular example of virtue and piety in a rude age and among an idolatrous people; as one of the first fruits of the Gentile harvest gathered into the Church; as the heroine of a story of exquisite beauty and simplicity; as illustrating in her history the workings of Divine Providence, and the truth of the saying, “the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous;” for the many interesting revelations of ancient domestic and social customs which are associated with her story, Ruth has always held a foremost place among the Women in White Raiment.

The story begins at Bethlehem, so dear to the Christian heart. A famine had occurred, and even the fertile plains of Bethlehem Ephratah (the fruitful) failed to give sufficient food to its inhabitants. On this account Elimelech, an Ephrathite, left his home with his wife and two sons and went to sojourn in the land of Moab, the hilly region south-east of the Dead Sea, where the descendants of Lot dwelt. Here Elimelech died, and Naomi, his wife, was left a widow with her two sons, Mahlon and Chilin.

The young men, when grown, took them wives of the women of Moab. Probably this was another severe trial to Naomi, for she had doubtless warned them that it was contrary to God’s law that they should marry daughters of the heathen. Other strokes came quickly upon her, for her two sons died also. Naomi, notwithstanding her nationality, had won the respect and warmest attachment of her sons’ wives; and now, when death had desolated their homes and laid in the dust the strong men to whom they had clung, they only drew the closer to each other.