The Story of Jephthah and his Daughter: Then and Now 335 however, that hwhyl hyh is an unusual way to refer to a sacrifice. The phrase is used of Levites being consecrated to the divine service (cf. Num 3,12) and of Israel belonging to YHWH (as in Jer 24,7; Mal 3,17). Also, one would expect to find hlw[l, although the l is admittedly missing from 2 Kgs 3,27, where Mesha offers up his firstborn as a holocaust. (ii) It is possible to take the vow as a promise to dedicate someone to virginity under the image of a holocaust. In that case the language of holocaust-offering is being meant metaphorically and hwhyl hyh directs one to read it in terms of dedication to God. So D.Marcus and P.T.Reis (15). According to Pamela Reis, what Jephthah intends is to dedicate to YHWH one of his slaves but (in accordance with the laws found in Lev 27) thereafter to redeem him for a sizeable sum of money, which would be shared among the priests. Jephthah is thereby seeking to bribe the people by his financial generosity. The redeemed slave would, in accordance with the aforesaid laws, remain “holy” and would never work again. Jephthah’s daughter is a “spoiled brat” (16), as pampered by Jephthah as Adonijah was by David, who never asked the latter why he had done anything (1 Kgs 1,6). In his other three speeches Jephthah challenges his interlocutors to provide him with a “Why?” (11,7.26; 12,3), but in addressing his daughter (11,35) he does not do so. Knowing of her father’s vow, the daughter runs out of the house to greet him, perhaps thinking that he will break his vow for her sake, but perhaps also choosing the consequences of his not doing so, namely that she would, after redemption, remain “holy” by not doing women’s work, the birth and rearing of issue. “She would rather continue to be the one and only love of an extremely indulgent father than become some man’s first wife” (17). Ingenious as this reading it, it fails to convince. Since when has a good knowledge of history or the frequent use of religious language been a sufficient proof of virtue? If redemption of a slave is meant, the terms of the vow are expressed with intolerable obliqueness. Moreover, that a redeemed woman would have to remain a virgin has to be argued by analogy with what Talmudic tradition, rather than the biblical text, prescribes for a redeemed animal. (15) D. MARCUS, Jephthah and His Vow (Lubbock 1986) 25-26. P.T. REIS, Reading the Lines. A Fresh Look at the Hebrew Bible (Peabody 2002) 105-130: “Spoilt Child: A Fresh Look at Jephthah’s Daughter”. (16) REIS, Reading the Lines, 120. (17) REIS, Reading the Lines, 126.