Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- In the Bible, a judge of Israel who vowed to sacrifice to God the first thing to come out of his house to greet him upon his return, in exchange for victory over the Ammonites. He was victorious and, upon returning home, was met by his only child, a daughter.
Etymologies
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Examples
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"Jephthah," she cried, though the voice as well as the form were greatly changed in these two years between boyhood and manhood.
Under the Storm Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862
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Just mention "Jephthah" and see how many in the church even know the story.
Jesus Creed 2010
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Phinehas, however, said: “I am a High Priest, the son of a High Priest; shall I debase myself and go to Jephthah, who is a boor?”
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The Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, who wrote several works on biblical themes, composed Jephta (1659), a drama with a typically tragic plot, where Jephthah repents too late for his hard-headedness in deciding to carry out his vow.
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The midrash asserts that if Jephthah had read the laws of vows in the Torah, he would not have lost his daughter (Tanhuma [ed. Buber], Behukotai 7).
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Jephthah likewise said: “I am the head of the tribes of Israel, shall I debase myself by going to a commoner?”
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An echo of one such ballad occurs in Hamlet (II, 2), where Polonius is compared to Jephthah.
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It portrays Jephthah and Phinehas as sabotaging the task that has been entrusted to them; instead of helping to impart life, they take it.
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Hannah (mother of Samuel) formulated the structure and style for much of how we pray today, the Daughter of Jephthah the warrior led women to the mountains for two months “to lament her maidenhood” (Judges 11: 38) and the Apocryphal Judith used brains, beauty and bravery to kill Holofernes.
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In order to depict what befell the daughter of Jephthah, the Rabbis use a popular proverb: “Between the midwife and the woman in labor, the son of the unfortunate woman was lost” (Gen. Rabbah 60: 3).
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