The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible

by Jonathan Kirsch

  —JUDGES 11.9

  And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah: “The Lord shall be witness between us; surely according to thy word so will we do.”

  —JUDGES 11:10

  So Seila’s father made ready to go to war yet again. By morning, his armor and weapons were loaded atop a single ass, and Jephthah mounted another animal to ride alongside the elders of Gilead toward the encampment on the approaches to Mizpah. Once more he embraced his daughter, holding her perhaps a moment longer than on other partings, and he whispered yet again the words that he had already spoken to Seila several times during the long night: “If I return at all, I will return as a chieftain—and you will live out your life as befits the daughter of a chieftain.”

  As it turned out, the frightened throngs of Gileadites who camped out’ side Mizpah made a better bargain with Jephthah than the elders had offered the day before. The richest of the townsfolk, now refugees from their houses and estates back in Gilead, did not wait for Jephthah to meet and defeat the armies of Ammon before acclaiming him both general and chieftain, and the elders did not debate the point. Jephthah, after all, was the only man who was willing and able to turn the militia into an army and then, God willing, lead the army to victory over the invaders. Just the sight of Jephthah—strong, self-assured, sturdy, and reassuringly battle-scarred—inspired confidence in the militia and the cowering civilians whom they were supposed to defend and avenge.

  Jephthah was promptly installed in a pavilion suitable to his new rank—the question of who would take possession of his father’s estate in Gilead was left for another day—and his cohorts set to the task of drilling the rank and file of the army of Israel. Day by day, the lines filled out with new recruits. The elders congratulated themselves on their decision to draft Jephthah as commander: he had certainly risen to the task, bastard and mercenary though he was, and the soldiers of Israel might actually stand a chance against the professional army of the King of Ammon.

  Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and chief over them; and Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord in Mizpah.

  —JUDGES 11.11

  And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying: “What has thou to do with me, that thou art come unto me to fight against my land?” And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Jephthah: “Because Israel took away my land, when he came up out of Egypt, from the Arnon even unto the Jabbok, and unto the Jordan; now therefore restore those cities peaceably.”

  —JUDGES 11 12-13

  And Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon; and he said unto him: “Thus saith Jephthah: Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon.”

  —JUDGES 11.14-15

  But as the days passed the elders noticed that Jephthah himself did not seem to be in much of a hurry to field his troops against the Ammonites. Instead, the new-minted chieftain summoned scribes to his tent and spent long hours drafting a diplomatic letter that he dispatched by messenger under a flag of truce across enemy lines to the king of Ammon himself. “What have thou to do with me, that thou art come unto me to fight against my land?” Jephthah wrote to the king of Ammon, turning himself from chieftain to king and the plight of Israel into a matter of personal honor.

  To the amazement of the elders, the mighty king and conqueror deigned to write back to Jephthah. “Because Israel took away my land when he came up out of Egypt,” the king of Ammon parried. “Now, therefore, restore those cities peaceably.”

  Jephthah, it seemed, preferred to use words rather than arms—and a great many words at that—to turn back the Ammonite invaders. Much ink and parchment were squandered on his long letters, which harked all the way back to the Exodus from Egypt, recited the names and deeds of monarchs long dead, and even invoked the authority of the pagan god of the Ammonites rather than the Almighty.

  “Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God hath dispossessed from before us, them will we possess…. I therefore have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me; the Lord, the Judge, be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.” Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon hearkened not unto the words of Jephthah which he sent him.

  —JUDGES 11:24, 27-28

  “Will you not be content to possess the lands that Chemosh thy god gave to you,” Jephthah proposed, “and we will possess the lands that the Lord our God has given to us?”

  To the elders, the words of Jephthah to the king of Ammon seemed to be a plea rather than a threat, and the enemy king did not bother to reply. Everyone—the elders no less than the king of Ammon—waited to see if Jephthah would actually take up arms and go to war.

  As the sun rose over the tents of the Israelites the next day, the soldier who stood the night watch was roughly awakened by Jephthah himself. No longer was Jephthah draped in his chieftain’s robes. Instead, he was wearing his poor and battle-pitted leather armor. He had strapped his double-edged sword to his side, and he carried his long spear in his right hand. The sentry cringed slightly, fully expecting a blow or at least a reprimand for sleeping at his post, but Jephthah gave him only a sharp look.

  “Take your place in the ranks,” Jephthah said curtly to the sentry before moving on, “because today we march.”

  Even before the drums and trumpets summoned the other soldiers to the drill field, word began to buzz through the encampment: Jephthah was ready to fight! The eiders of Gilead, hastily gathered on a rise overlooking the drill field, gladdened at the sight of soldiers stepping briskly into line and forming up into long phalanxes that bristled with spear points. Jephthah could be seen moving from column to column, con-suiting with his lieutenants, calling out by name to this man or that. When he finally joined the elders, they saw not only a new firmness in the set of his jaw but also an unmistakable light shining in his eyes. Suddenly, Jephthah seemed to have run out of words, but a fiery resolve communicated itself even without words. He saluted the elders, signaled to his lieutenants to set the columns of men in motion, and strode off to lead them into battle against the army of the king of Ammon.

  Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

  —JUDGES 11:29

  “Well, I am relieved to see that Jephthah is no longer content to sit in his tent and write letters to the enemy,” said one of the elders. “I wonder what put the will to fight in him at last.”

  “Surely,” one of the others answered, “the spirit of the Lord is upon Jephthah.”

  Jephthah marched in silence at the head of the army, but his trusted cohorts from Mizpah, following a step or two behind him, were full of chatter.

  “We could have used another week of drilling,” one of them muttered.

  “And another thousand men under arms,” said the other. “As it is, we are badly outnumbered—and we are fielding raw yokels against seasoned troops.”

  “It will be a miracle if a tenth of them survive in battle,” said the first one, “and a greater miracle still if we win.”

  Jephthah looked back over his shoulder without breaking step and silenced their words with a single glance. The two old soldiers, so accustomed to trading easy banter with Jephthah on the way to a fight, were struck by the chilly light in his eyes and the unfamiliar sternness of his expression.

  And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said: “If Thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering.”

  —JUDGES 11:30–31

  “If it takes a miracle,” Jephthah said, “then God will give us one.”

>   On any other day, they would have laughed out loud at Jephthah’s sanctimonious words, but something in his tone of voice warned them that they dare not laugh today.

  “If you will deliver the children of Ammon into my hands,” Jephthah continued in a low voice that was not addressed to anyone within sight, casting his eyes heavenward, “then I vow, when I return in victory from the battlefield, whatsoever comes forth out of my house to greet me will belong to the Lord, and I will offer it up on the altar as a burnt offering.”

  The two old soldiers who walked behind Jephthah exchanged a brief glance, but they said nothing.

  Seila occupied herself with her customary tasks during the weeks and months of Jephthah’s long campaign, but word of his exploits reached her through the young women who accompanied her on weekly excursions into the countryside. As they walked through the dusty streets of Mizpah, Seila was greeted by acquaintances and strangers alike with marked warmth but also a certain deference—after all, she was the daughter of the man in whose sure hands the fate of all Israel was now held, the daughter of the heroic fighter whose victories mounted with each new battle.

  So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hand. And he smote them from Aroer until thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto Abel-cheramim, with a very great slaughter. So the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

  —JUDGES 11:32–33

  “Jephthah fights like one possessed,” the townsfolk reassured one another, and Seila heard the phrase countless times as her father and his army engaged the Ammonites across the breadth of Israel. Word of each victory was a cause for celebration in the place where the young women gathered on their excursions, the secret cleft in the hill where Seila had found the spring and the spreading oak. Indeed, Seila and her companions often told each other that it was their song and dance, their rites and rituals, that assured victory to Jephthah as he rode into battle again and again.

  Twenty battles were fought by Jephthah, or so went the rumors that flashed through Mizpah like brushfire, and twenty cities of Israel were liberated from occupation by the king of Ammon. As the Ammonites were driven out of each city, another knot of refugees would pack up their belongings and move out of Mizpah. Soon enough, thanks to Jephthah’s successes over the king of Ammon in the field, the encampment outside Mizpah dwindled and then disappeared, and Mizpah itself began to resemble the sleepy backwater it had been before Jephthah was called to service.

  Then, one day, a clutch of young women appeared at Jephthah’s house in a frenzy of giggles and squeals, literally dancing up to the doorway and pounding on ribboned tambourines to call Seila forth.

  “Word comes that your father is on the road back to Mizpah,” one of the young women said, and then all of them gathered to embrace her, some laughing, some weeping. “Your father returns in victory tonight!”

  Seila spent the long afternoon tending to chores, but not much was accomplished. She started to sweep the floor, but then she thought to assemble the ingredients for a sweet loaf, and when she knelt by the pantry, it occurred to her to tidy up the courtyard, and then she hastened back into the house to pick up the broom—and still her father did not come home.

  The other young women had lingered at the house until the sun began to set, begging and then demanding to be allowed to join her in greeting Jephthah in the traditional manner—a line of dancing maidens, waving ribbons and pounding timbrels, is what the hero ought to encounter when he returned from war! Indeed, Seila’s companions insisted that the victory belonged to them, at least in part, because they had been so earnest and so devoted in devising prayers on behalf of Jephthah and sending them forth in such imaginative ways during their excursions to the great oak.

  But Seila refused to share the moment of glory with even these intimate friends, and she sensed that her father would want it precisely that way. “Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood,” her father always said, “it’s the two of us against the world.” So Seila shushed her friends, urged them out of the house and down the road before they could spoil the sublime encounter between Jephthah and Seila, the conquering hero and his beloved daughter, his one and only child. From her friends she took a pair of timbrels, each one gaily decorated with long ribbons of many colors. But it would be Seila alone who danced out of the house and welcomed Jephthah in his moment of greatest glory.

  The sun was nearly gone, and the sky had taken on shades of fire and quicksilver, when Seila heard the sound of a horse clip-clopping up to the gate. She crept to the window, peered out, and saw her father slowly and wearily dismount. Even in the half-light she could see that he had been injured, and he moved with an awkward gait. Still, she saw what she imagined to be an aura of golden light around his head, and he seemed longer and leaner than when he had left so many weeks ago.

  With a squeal of delight, Seila seized a timbrel in each hand, butted open the door of the house with one hip, and skittered into the courtyard. Then she stopped, straightened up, raised one timbrel high above her head and held the other at arm’s length along her leg. Slowly, solemnly, but with a tautness that bespoke her passion, Seila set up a rhythm of clanging timbrels, intoned a sinuous melody in a high ululating voice, and danced slowly and solemnly across the courtyard toward the gate where her father now stood.

  And Jephthah came to Mizpah unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

  —JUDGES 11.34

  And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said: “Alas, my daughter] thou hast brought me very low, and thou art become my troubler; for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.”

  —JUDGES 11.35

  Seila performed the same dance that she and the other young women had danced so many times before in a circle around the great oak, but now she felt as if she were floating three inches off the ground. At last, as she reached the place where her precious father stood, she suddenly bowed low, rattling the timbrels all the while, and finally lifted her eyes to behold him at his moment of triumph.

  She gasped. Jephthah was staring at her with an expression of unspeakable sadness and horror.

  “My daughter—” he croaked, and then all at once he threw himself down in the dust of the roadway. With one clenched fist he began to beat his breast, and with the other he pulled at his tunic as if to rend his clothing from top to bottom. “My one and only child!”

  Seila rushed to his side and threw herself to the ground next to him. “Father!” she cried. “What is wrong?”

  “Alas, my daughter!” he said, gasping and wheezing. “You have brought me low!”

  Seila felt suddenly breathless. She had the thought that somehow her father had learned of the goings-on beneath the ancient oak where she gathered with her companions every seventh day. Had someone spied out Seila and her companions and reported back to the elders? Was her father brought low by what his own daughter had done in that secret cleft in the hills?

  “What troubles you so?” Seila pleaded, weeping openly and hanging on his neck. “Tell me, Father.”

  Jephthah drew away from Seila and wrapped his arms around his own shoulders as if to comfort himself.

  “I have opened my mouth,” Jephthah said, “and I cannot go back.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, still weeping, still fearful of what words her father had spoken—and to whom.

  Jephthah looked at his beloved daughter, his one and only child, but he found that he had no more words to speak.

  Long afterward, the townsfolk of Mizpah still spoke of the death of Seila by her father’s hand. They described the crude altar he erected in the courtyard of his house, and how he escorted the compliant and uncomplaining young woman from the house, how he laid her—ever so gently—on the rough stones of the altar, how he dispatched her quickly and mercifully
with a sure stroke of his dagger, the same one he had used in battle so many times before to slay a wounded but still-dangerous enemy. And they praised Seila as a heroic woman whose fidelity to the Almighty and loyalty to Israel allowed her to see the necessity and even the sanctity of her death.

  “My father, you have opened your mouth and made a vow to the Lord, so do to me what you have vowed to do,” Seila was said to have reassured her father in a clear and certain voice in the moments before her death, “because the Lord has taken vengeance against your enemies, just as you asked, and delivered the children of Ammon into your hands.”

  And she said unto him: “My father, thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord; do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.”

  —JUDGES 11.36

  And she said unto her father: “Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may depart and go down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.” And he said: “Go.” And he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed; and she had not known man.

  —JUDGES 11.37-39

  Of course, none of the pious gossips actually saw the sacrifice of Seila with their own eyes or heard her final words to her father, and the unlikely little congregation that witnessed her death—the comrades who fought alongside Jephthah in battle and the young women who danced with Seila around the ancient oak—never spoke of it to anyone except themselves, soldier to soldier and maiden to maiden. But the townsfolk found it comforting to tell themselves that Seila did not cry out, did not plead for her life, did not struggle against the blade in her father’s hand, did not groan in misery as her blood spilled over the stones of the altar and the flames turned her beautiful young body into charred meat. “Do to me what you have vowed to do” were Seila’s words to Jephthah, at least according to the story that was repeated, generation after generation, by the children of Israel.