Commentaria in Judices
Moreover God permitted this to be done, says Serarius, for grave reasons. The first is, that it might be a most clear figure of the death which Christ the Lord was to suffer for our sake, not only in will and desire, but in effect and in fact. The second, that the faith of Jephte and his supreme religion towards God might shine the more, from which neither the loss of so dear a thing, nor love of posterity, nor so bitter a wound for present and future time could turn him. The third, that likewise the eminent faith of the tender maiden, her religion towards God, her piety towards her father and the whole country, and her surpassing greatness of soul, might be publicly set up, as a mirror in which the whole world could look. The fourth, that the whole world might understand how accurately, diligently and without delay whatever vows are made, whether by good counsel or by divine admonition and instinct, ought to be paid to God, even if a thousand most grievous difficulties occur.
37. LET ME GO THAT I MAY BEWAIL MY VIRGINITY TWO MONTHS, GOING ABOUT THE MOUNTAINS WITH MY COMPANIONS,—namely that I shall die a virgin without offspring and heir; for this in that age was sad and disgraceful, but now through Christ virginity is held in the highest praise and glory, as a heavenly conversation and an imitation of the angelic life.
This daughter therefore wept for her virginity, that is, her virginal age fit for marriage, but condemned to sterility by her father’s vow. Funeral rites of this kind (so called from nex, death) were also among the Romans, says Arias.
The form of lament, or the threnody, of Jephte’s daughter Philo the Biblical writer asserts to have been this: “Hear, ye mountains, my threnody, and attend, ye hills, to the tears of my eyes, and be witnesses, ye rocks, to the mourning of my soul. Behold how I am accused, but not in vain may my soul be received. Let my words go forth into the heavens, and let my tears be written before the face of the firmament, that the father may not prevail against the daughter whom he has vowed to sacrifice, that the prince may hear his only one promised in sacrifice. But I am not satisfied with my bridal chamber, nor filled with the crowns of my marriage.” And after some things: “Bend down your branches, ye trees, and bewail my youth; come, ye wild beasts of the woods, and tread upon my virginity, for my years are cut off, and the time of my life has grown old in darkness,” etc. So he, in his manner.
Moreover the Gentiles imitated Jephte. For so Erechtheus, waging war against Eumolpus, being taught that he would be victor if he immolated his daughter as a victim, having communicated the matter to his wife, slew his daughter as a victim unto death. So Plutarch in the Parallels. The same, in the same place, near the end: “When a pestilence oppressed Lacedaemon, it was divinely signified that the plague would cease if they sacrificed, as was customary, a noble virgin. When Helena, drawn by lot, was brought forth adorned, an eagle flying down snatched the sword, and carrying it to a herd laid it upon a heifer, so that the slaughter of the virgin was abstained from.” The very same happened to Valeria Luperca, who, destined for the altar, when an eagle had snatched the sword and cast it upon a heifer, Valeria made the sacred offering by sacrificing the heifer, says Plutarch. It is asked, why does she desire to go about the mountains in this lament of hers? Arias gives three causes. The first is, “that the cry and lamentation, uttered in a high place, might reach further and wider to the ears of the neighbours. For this is the nature and force of the voice.” Jeremias xxxi: “A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning.” The second, “that the farther prospect of the mountains might more frequently represent the memorial of so great a matter to inhabitants as well as guests and travellers.” The third, “that from the many solitary places seen and traversed by herself she might choose one where, shut within cloister walls, she might lead a solitary life;” but this cause I refuted above and shall soon refute more fully. The literal and proximate cause was that the whole region is mountainous. For she dwelt in Maspha, that is, on a high watch-tower of a mountain, from which one descends to the mountains below, as the Hebrew has it.
The Rabbis and Lyranus, Pagninus, Vatablus relate that the scribes and wise men of the Hebrews, being consulted, answered that the natural death of the daughter promised by her father in the vow could be commuted into a civil death, namely into a religious and chaste life; and that so it was done; wherefore this daughter was not slain by her father, but made herself a Nazarite, that is, a religious and as it were a nun. As St. Bernard, meeting criminals about to be hanged by the Praetor for their crimes, freed them, and made them monks, saying: You wish to kill them by a short death, I shall consume and destroy them by the long death of mortification assiduously in a monastery.
Refutation.—But this opinion is false, and plainly repugnant to this verse: “He did to her,” it says, “as he had vowed.” But he had vowed to slay her to God and also to offer her as a holocaust, that is, to cut her throat and wholly burn and consume her in honour of God (for this a holocaust demanded); therefore he in fact slew and burned her. This is the common sense of the Fathers, as of Theodoret, St. Augustine, Bede, Procopius, Rupert, Abulensis, Hugh of St. Victor, Dionysius, Serarius, Salian, Tornielli here, and of St. Ambrose, book I Offices last chapter, Tertullian, book III Against Julian, St. Chrysostom, homily On Jephte, Origen, tom. IX On John, Nazianzen, oration On the Machabees, St. Thomas, IIa IIae, Question LXXXVIII, art. 2, ad 2, Suarez, Lessius, Azor and others everywhere.
Finally Philo says that the name of this daughter was Seila, certainly worthy of eternal memory.
40. AND LAMENT THE DAUGHTER OF JEPHTE.—Hebrew letannot, which the Septuagint render, to weep; the Chaldee, to lament the daughter of Jephte; others, to recount; others, to give, namely praise to the daughter of Jephte. But the Rabbis, Pagninus and Vatablus render: to speak to or console the daughter of Jephte, because by her father’s vow she was to remain unmarried. For they think that natural death was commuted into civil death, or into celibacy. Hence on four days in the year access to her lay open, says Vatablus, that they might speak to and console her, as to nuns shut up in a cloister access lies open at certain times in the year; but this I have already refuted.
Finally St. Augustine, Question XLIX, and from him Hugh of St. Victor shows that Jephte was in all things a type of Christ. For first, he says, Jephte in Hebrew is the same as a door that is opened. And so Christ says: “I am the door,” John x, by which access to heaven lies open: “For he openeth, and no man shutteth.”
Secondly, the brothers of Jephte cast him out of the house as the son of a harlot: so the Scribes cast Christ out of their Synagogue as a violator of the law, and not a lawful son of the Synagogue.
Thirdly, Jephte in exile dwelt in the land of Tob, that is of goodness, that is the best: so Christ, expelled from life by the Jews, went to the blessed life in heaven.
Fourthly, to Jephte were gathered the needy and robbers: so to Christ harlots and publicans, and among them the thief on the cross, and mystical plunderers, who by their penance and virtue do violence to heaven, and seize the kingdom of heaven.
Fifthly, the Galaadites sought out the exiled Jephte to be their leader in war against the Ammonites: so the Gentiles sought out Christ, despised by the Jews, that they might be freed from the yoke of sin and the devil. Thus far St. Augustine.
Sixthly, Jephte before the battle made a vow to the Lord: so Christ before the duel of his passion and death prayed in the garden, and devoted himself as a victim to God, saying: “Not my will, but thine be done.”
Seventhly, Jephte immolated his daughter: Christ his flesh and humanity.
Eighthly, the Israelites lamented every year the death of Jephte’s daughter. So Christians every year in Holy Week lament the death of Christ, and sing to him the lamentations of Jeremias: then too the Church as a virgin laments the sins of her faithful. Hear St. Augustine, Question XLIX:
“Through the six ages of the world, as through sixty days, the holy Virgin Church wept for her virginal things, because although virginal, yet they were sins to be bewailed, on account of which the whole virgin herself, diffused through the whole world, says daily: Forgive us our trespasses. But those same sixty days he chose to call two months, as I think, on account of two men, one through whom came death, the other through whom came the resurrection of the dead, on account of whom also the two testaments are named.”